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More "Brackish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stunted; it scants them both in food and drink. Its miserliness is deep-set: artesian wells sunk a thousand feet through its dull grey sands bring up only a brackish yellow water; a precarious ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... black. I pulled off my stout gloves with the hope of getting my fingers to tingle by handling the snow; but it was frozen so hard I could not scrape up with my nails as much as a half-dozen of flakes would make. What I got I dissolved in my mouth and found it brackish; however, I suspected it would be sweeter and perhaps not so stonily frozen higher up, where there was less chance of the salt spray mingling with it, and I resolved when the light came to fill my empty beer-bottles as with salt or pounded sugar for use hereafter—that ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... stations, and by the use of cucumbers and pomegranates, both of which we carried with us on the long desert stretches. Melons, too, the finest we have ever seen in any land, frequently obviated the necessity of drinking the strongly brackish water. ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... from the sea on the right or west bank of the Fleet stream. This rivulet, which is so narrow as it passes the houses that I have known a good jumper clear it without a pole, broadens out into salt marshes below the village, and loses itself at last in a lake of brackish water. The lake is good for nothing except sea-fowl, herons, and oysters, and forms such a place as they call in the Indies a lagoon; being shut off from the open Channel by a monstrous great beach or dike of pebbles, of which I shall speak more hereafter. ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... between the marshes of Arabia and Susiana, at the spot where the streams of fresh water met the tidal waters of the sea, and all that was left of the ancient gulf was a vast lagoon, or, as the dwellers on the banks called it, a kind of brackish river, Nar marratum. Bit-Yakin occupied the southern and western portions of this district, from the mouth of the Tigris to the edge of the desert. The aspect of the country was constantly changing, and presented no distinctive features; it was a region difficult to attack and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... over the range, which is rather difficult to get the horses up and down. On the top it is very stony, with salt bush and scanty grass. Crossed the Margaret and a salt creek, in which there is water, some of which is salt and some brackish, but not unfit for the use of cattle. There is abundance of feed all round. We arrived at Hamilton Springs a little before sundown. Distance, ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... by biological speculators who have never set foot in Mexico, especially Weismann's picture of the dismal condition of the salt-incrusted surroundings which were supposed to have hemmed in the axolotl—the brackish Lago de Texcoco, the largest of the lakes near Mexico, being evidently in the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... no more examples. Every reader of the Dreiser novels must cherish astounding specimens—of awkward, platitudinous marginalia, of whole scenes spoiled by bad writing, of phrases as brackish as so many lumps of sodium hyposulphite. Here and there, as in parts of "The Titan" and again in parts of "A Hoosier Holiday," an evil conscience seems to haunt him and he gives hard striving to his manner, and more than once there emerges something that is ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... from the mouth of a salmon river, the more voracious are the fish. Now, the foss, or fall of the Sand river, is scarcely five hundred feet from the shore of the Fiord, and the water is salt, or, at least, brackish; and salmon are not caught ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... most of them died within two or three days. So long that we had thirty at a time sick of this calenture, which attacked our men, either by reason of the sudden change from cold to heat, or by reason of brackish water which had been taken in by our pinnace, through the sloth of their men in the mouth of the river, not rowing further in ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... longer known to stay Than from the smooth wave it had swept away The new divorced leaves, that from each side Left the thick boughs to dance out with the tide. At further end the creek, a stately wood Gave a kind shadow (to the brackish flood) Made up of trees, not less kenn'd by each skiff Than that sky-scaling peak of Teneriffe, Upon whose tops the hernshew bred her young, And hoary moss upon their branches hung; Whose rugged rinds sufficient were to show, Without their height, what time they 'gan ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the face of the cliffs in little cascades of foam and vapor, but others spouted from the base of the rock. Dick knelt down to drink from one of the latter, but as his face approached the water he jumped away. He dipped up a little of it in his soft hat and tasted it. It was brackish and almost ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... said, had abandoned them upon this desolate island, telling them to make shift for themselves, and to learn from the hardship of their lot repentance for the act of piracy they had committed in stealing our ship. On searching the island they found it to contain no water except a brackish liquid, to be had by digging, The only food obtainable was shell-fish, and occasionally the rank flesh of sea birds. They had neither the tools nor materials to build habitations, and were forced to ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... for the huts of the natives. Some animals were seen resembling wolves, lean as skeletons,—probably dingoes. At last some brackish water was found, and the Roebuck proceeded to Timor. Here the ship, being refitted and the crew refreshed, Dampier sailed on the 20th of December for the coast of New Guinea. It was made on the 1st of January, 1700, and appeared to be high, level land, covered ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... breaker lay on its bilge, in the middle of the boat, where more or less sea-water always collected. And ever and anon, dipping his finger therein, my Viking was troubled with the thought, that this sea-water tasted less brackish than that alongside. Of course the breaker must be leaking. So, he would turn it over, till its wet side came uppermost; when it would quickly become dry as a bone. But now, with his knife, he would gently probe the joints of the staves; shake his head; look up; look down; taste of the water ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... would scent water. This was sometimes very easy to smell, however, for it was almost impossible to drink out of a waterhole without holding the nose and straining the liquid through my closed teeth. Chaco water at best is very brackish, and on drying off the ground a white coat ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... it, as the bed was so fearfully ploughed up by the pack-horses ahead of them. The whole bed of this peculiar creek appears to be a quicksand, and when I say it was nearly a quarter of a mile wide, its formidable nature will be understood. Here a stream of slightly brackish water was trickling down the bed in a much narrower channel, however, than its whole width; and where the water appears upon the surface, there the bog is most to be apprehended. Sometimes it runs under one bank, sometimes under the opposite, and again, at other places ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... well at Potoor[1], on the west side of the road leading from Jaffna to Point Pedro, where the surface of the surrounding country is only about fifteen feet above the sea-level. The well, however, is upwards of 140 feet in depth; the water fresh at the surface, brackish lower down, and intensely salt below. According to the universal belief of the inhabitants, it is an underground pool, which communicates with the sea by a subterranean channel bubbling out on the shore near Kangesentorre, about seven ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... to detest us, Herrick!" said Mr Brooke, after we had been waiting patiently for about a quarter of an hour, impatiently another, but not quite in idleness, for, after tasting the river water to find that it was very slightly brackish now, the tub and the jar were both filled ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... their craws but an acorn. And, as the tides of the sea arise in the month of September, Flooding some silver stream, till it spreads to a lake in the meadow, So death flooded life, and, o'erflowing its natural margin, Spread to a brackish lake, the silver stream of existence. Wealth had no power to bribe, nor beauty to charm, the oppressor; But all perished alike beneath the scourge of his anger;— Only, alas! the poor, who had neither friends nor attendants, Crept away to die in the almshouse, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... roused by the beat of rain, and I crawled from hole to hole, lapping up the rain or licking it from the rocks. Brackish it was, but drinkable. It was what saved me, for, toward morning, I awoke to find myself in a profuse perspiration and quite free ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... The water was rather brackish, but not sufficiently so to be of consequence. All night the boat was tossed heavily on the waves. Vincent dozed off at times, rousing himself occasionally and bailing out the water, which came in the shape of spray and rain. The prospect in the morning was not ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... slimmer than ever by his side, started on their tortuous way, here and there turning to the right and to the left to follow the course of some tidal stream, or avoid the swampy places. The faint odour of wild lavender was mingled with the brackish scent of the sea. The ground was soft and spongy beneath their feet, and a breeze as soft as a caress blew in their faces. Up before them always, gaunt and bare, surrounded by its belts of weather-stricken trees, stood the Red Hall. Andrew looked ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and flows every six hours, with a strong current. The tide comes up for about thirty miles so full, that there is nothing but salt water in the river, the fresh water being driven back with its force; and above that, for some miles, the water is brackish; but a little higher, as it runs by the town, it is quite fresh; and when the tide ebbs, it continues fresh all along to the sea. There is a bridge cast over the river, not of timber, but of fair stone, consisting of many ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... of the Mackenzie, until the 7th of that month, when finding that it distributed itself by various outlets, of which the more easterly were not navigable, for their boats, they chose a middle one, and that night got into brackish water, with an open view of the sea, in lat. 69 deg. 29 min. N., long. 133 deg. 24 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 278, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... character of two rivers. Unfortunate result of Piper's interview with the natives of the lake. Discovery of the Jerboa in Australia. Different habits of the savage and civilized. A range visible in the south. Peculiarities in the surface of the country near the river. Water of the lakes brackish, or salt. Natives fly at our approach. Arrival in the dark, on the bank of a watercourse. Dead saplings of ten years growth in the ponds. Discovery of Mount Hope. Enter a much better country. Limestone. Curious character of an original ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... or 100 persons with their beasts, but not for more. And all across the Desert you will find water in like manner, that is to say, in some 28 places altogether you will find good water, but in no great quantity; and in four places also you find brackish water.[NOTE 1] ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... the estuary still occupying the valley which lay to the west of us." ... "At the end of a mile in a south by east direction, we found ourselves on the banks of a river, the Hutt, from forty to fifty yards wide, which was running strong, and was brackish at its mouth," etc. Such was the appearance of the estuary and of the Hutt River in the eyes ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... indicated was about two miles distant to the eastward, and the crews gave way with good will, for the prospect of having a drink of pure water after the brackish and ill-smelling stuff we had been drinking for a fortnight, was very pleasing. Although but a little past nine o'clock in the morning the day was intensely hot, and windless as well, and the perspiration was streaming down the naked chests and backs of our sturdy native sailors. ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... cargo. I was immediately ordered into the boat with my crew, not allowed any breakfast, and carried about three miles to a small island out of sight of the Exertion, and left there by the side of a little pond of thick, muddy water, which proved to be very brackish, with nothing to eat but a few biscuits. One of the boat's men told us the merchant was afraid of being recognized, and when he had gone the boat would return for us; but we had great reason to apprehend they would deceive us, and therefore passed ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... by the hair!" The loud Ocean heard, To its blue depth stirred, And divided at her prayer; And under the water The Earth's white daughter Fled like a sunny beam; Behind her descended, Her billows, unblended With the brackish Dorian stream. Like a gloomy stain On the emerald main, Alpheus rushed behind,— As an eagle pursuing A dove to its ruin Down the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... searching for water, more anxious to save the life of her son than her own, Ishmael, boy-like, sat poking the sand with his heel; when, behold, a spring of water bubbled up in his footprint. And this was none other than the sacred well Zemzem, whose brackish waters are still eagerly sought by every Moslem pilgrim. As Ishmael grew to manhood and established his home in the sacred city, Abraham was summoned to join him, that they together might rebuild the Kaaba. But in the ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... to build a small vessel. The men labour diligently, though they grumble. We, the officers, keep watch over the spirit casks. Our great want is water. We dig deep, but the little we find is brackish. ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... "caravanserai," (all which names people called it,) with a large wall round the principal wells, the materials of which were red earth and lumps of salt, some of which appeared as hard as the soft Malta stone. The water is, of course, brackish, but nevertheless the camels drank it with eagerness. I was staring at the eagerness with which the camels were drinking, when the Commandant said, "Enhār săkoun, Yâkob," (a hot day, James,) "do the camels in your country drink water in that way?" Hereat a merchant interposed, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... "there is a great deal of hesitation among them sometimes before they go up the river to spawn, and we want to find out whether they go back to the sea again, whether they swim directly up the stream, or whether they remain in the brackish water at ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... endurance, when a halt was called in the hod. I dropped under a palm tree with a group of men, slipped off my load, and then lay quite still for a long time. After a while I had my first drink of water for that day. We stayed there some time, and one or two of the men had found a well. But it was brackish and the men should not have touched it, for it made them worse. Several were ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... that Des Esseintes was awake in the afternoon, he operated the stops of the pipes and conduits which emptied the aquarium, replacing it with pure water. Into this, he poured drops of colored liquids that made it green or brackish, opaline or silvery—tones similar to those of rivers which reflect the color of the sky, the intensity of the sun, the menace of rain—which reflect, in a word, the state of the season ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... through the Loudon Branch, we now followed the main stream, and on our way landed on the south bank, upon a piece of open forest land, abundantly clothed with luxuriant grass and moderate-sized timber. The water here began to taste brackish, but it was quite fresh about a quarter of a mile higher up, above a spit of rocks which nearly crosses the channel, leaving a passage of ten feet water, over which there is a trifling fall. About three-quarters of a mile lower down we landed on the north bank, on Rawdon ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... Creek, So great a no of Salt Springs are on it that the water is brackish N 51 W to a Belge of an Isd on the S. Sd. at 3 ms. Passed a Willow Isd. in Middle, Some wind in the after part of to day from the S E, (the Banks are falling in greatly in this part of the river) as also is one Side or the other in all the ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... the bay are scarce; those we caught were mostly sharks, dog-fish, and a fish called by the seamen nurses, like the dog-fish, only full of small white spots; and some small fish not unlike sprats. The lagoons (which are brackish) abound with trout, and several other sorts of fish, of which we caught a few with lines, but being much encumbered with stumps of trees, we could ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... where the army struck the Little Colorado River, the stream was quite wide and of sufficient depth for navigation. The water was brackish and the banks were fringed with timber. Here the whole army concentrated before attempting to cross. The army was not accompanied by a pontoon train, and at that time the troops were not instructed in ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... these things thou hast seen already. Yet there are more." Eagerly she lifted from the ground, which was covered with rugs, a large green earthern jar. "It is full of rosewater to bathe thy face, for the water of the desert here is brackish, and harsh to the skin, because of saltpetre. The Sidi ordered enough rosewater to last till Ghardaia, in the M'Zab country. Then ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... ourselves from every experience through which we pass. No ingratitude, injustice, or unworthiness in those to whom we try to do good, should ever be allowed to turn love's sweetness into bitterness in us. Like fresh-water springs beside the sea, over which the brackish tide flows, but which when the bitter waters have receded are found sweet as ever, so should our hearts remain amid all experiences of love's unrequiting, ever sweet, thoughtful, ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... out kindly hands, smile with sympathetic eyes; and yet their very help might weaken us. When we have beaten our way across with the roar of the distant waves still in our ears, the shadows of the black, fierce, jagged cliff hardly faded, the taste of the brackish spray still lingering on our lips, an exultant thrill speeds through every nerve as we clasp a hand that has had to buffet ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... they were to find sweet water or alkali. Sweet, likely, since it was in the hills; Midnight was sure he hoped so. The best of these wells in the plains were salt and brackish. Privately, Midnight preferred the Forest Reserve. It was a pleasant, soft life in these pinewood pastures. Even if it was pretty dull for a good cow-horse after the Free Range, it was easier on old bones. And though Midnight was not insensible to the ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... brought it from Alexandria. It was filthy water, full of dirt, and very brackish to taste. Also it was warm. During the two months at Suvla Bay I never tasted a drop of cold water—it was always ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... cisterns; there are a few orchards of pomegranate and fig trees, and some vine plantations. The place is supplied with vegetables from Rieha, and from Aere, a village two hours distant, lying between Darkoush and Djissr Shogher. There is a single spring in the town of brackish water, which is never used but in seasons of great drought; a man who had cleansed the bottom of the deep well in which the spring issues, told me that he found two openings in the rock, near each other, from the one of ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... that the yellow clay was deposited in fresh water, and the blue clay in salt water, and hence the difference in the color. But how did the water change instantly from salt to fresh? Why was there no interval of brackish water, during which the blue and yellow clays would have gradually shaded into each other? The transition from the yellow clay to the blue is as immediate and marked as if you were to lay a piece of yellow cloth across a piece ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... country one expects to find springs, but not to depend upon them; for when found they are often brackish and unwholesome, or maddening, slow dribbles in a thirsty soil. Here you find the hot sink of Death Valley, or high rolling districts where the air has always a tang of frost. Here are the long heavy winds and breathless calms on the tilted mesas ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... Her thirst was too great to allow niceties to interfere with it. She picked up one of the clean coffee-cups that had rolled to her feet, rinsed it several times, and then drank. The water was warm and slightly brackish, but she needed it too much to mind. In spite of being tepid it relieved the dry, suffocating feeling in her throat and refreshed her. The Nubian went away again, leaving the woman ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... moment, bridging the morphean chasm that lay between last night and this morning. It was 6:30 A.M. It is bad enough to open one's eyes at 6:30 on Monday morning. But to open them at 6:30 on Tuesday morning, after an indigo Monday.... The taste of yesterday lingered, brackish, in Martha's mouth. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... irregular lumps at Portland to small polished stones at the western extremity. It is said that a local seafarer landing on the beach in a fog can tell his whereabouts to a nicety by handling the shingle. For about half the distance, that is to Abbotsbury, the Fleet makes a brackish ditch on the landward side. Behind this barrier is a country of low hills and quite out-of-the-world hamlets seldom visited or visiting. Chickerell, the nearest of them to Weymouth, has a manufactory ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... soldiers, who carried off the journals of Say and Lieutenant Swift with a number of other valuable effects. Both parties also suffered from want of provisions in the sandy deserts, whose streams yield nothing but brackish and muddy water. The expedition brought to Washington sixty skins of wild animals, several thousands of insects, including five hundred new species, four or five hundred specimens of hitherto unknown plants, numerous views of the scenery, and the materials ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... interior no fresh water is obtainable, although in the rainy season some of a brackish quality can be had by sinking shallow wells. This water rises and falls in the wells in unison with the tides. Here and there are very extensive swamps of sea-water, evaporrated to a strong brine; the margins of these are clothed with a fair growth of the pandanus or screw-pine ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... carried on without a smart boat. The gondola is a source of continual expense for repairs. Its oars have to be replaced. It has to be washed with sponges, blacked, and varnished. Its bottom needs frequent cleaning. Weeds adhere to it in the warm brackish water, growing rapidly through the summer months, and demanding to be scrubbed off once in every four weeks. The gondolier has no place where he can do this for himself. He therefore takes his boat to a wharf, or ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... above mentioned, entirely lost the deliciousness of its pristine quality. Whether its sources were disturbed by the depth of the new cellar, or whatever subtler cause might lurk at the bottom, it is certain that the water of Maule's Well, as it continued to be called, grew hard and brackish. Even such we find it now; and any old woman of the neighborhood will certify that it is productive of intestinal mischief to those who quench ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... which, when poured into a brazen or silver vessel, does not produce a blackish sediment. Hippocrates says, "Water which is easily warmed or easily chilled is alway lighter." But that water is bad which takes a long time to boil vegetables; and so too is water full of nitre, or brackish. And in his book 'On Waters,' Hippocrates calls good water drinkable; but stagnant water he calls bad, such as that from ponds or marshes. And ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Again, with the exception perhaps of some Pinnulariae and Asterophyllites, there is a remarkable absence from the coal measures of any form of properly aquatic vegetation. (7) The occurrence of marine, or brackish-water animals, in the roofs of coal-beds, or even in the coal itself, affords no evidence of subaqueous accumulation, since the same thing occurs in the case of modern submarine forests. For these and other reasons, some of which are more fully stated ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the sea-harvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight and gayclad lightclad figures of children and girls and voices childish ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... from the surface soil, and sometimes from a lower source, and at other times from a great depth, and even as some of these waters bubble forth continuously, and their taste is sweet, while others that come from deep wells are brackish or sulphurous, even as some pour forth in abundance while others flow drop by drop, thus, understand thou, is it also with our choices. Some choices are swift and exceeding fervent, others languid and cold: some have a bias entirely toward virtue, ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... lake of Tezcuco is that it is a salt lake, containing much salt and carbonate of soda. The water is quite brackish and undrinkable. How it has come to be so is plain enough. The streams from the surrounding mountains bring down salt and soda in solution, derived from the decomposed porphyry; and as the water of the lake is not drained off into ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... the Cimarron was a brackish stream. But numerous tributaries put in from either side, and by keeping above the river's ebb, an abundance of fresh water was daily secured from the river's affluents. The fifth day out from Red Rock was an excessively sultry one, and suffering would have resulted to the herd had we not ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... footsore and tired again before she found it, some distance away, in a gully coming from a fissure in a dislocated piece of outcrop. It was beautifully clear, cold, and sparkling, with a slightly sweetish taste, yet unlike the brackish "alkali" of the plains. It refreshed and soothed her greatly, so much that, reclining against a tree, but where she would be quite visible from the trail, her eyes closed dreamily, and ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... philosophize a little." Then the youthful Youkahainen Thus replied to Wainamoinen: "Know I well the titmouse-fountains, Pretty birdling is the titmouse; And the viper, green, a serpent; Whitings live in brackish waters; Perches swim in every river; Iron rusts, and rusting weakens; Bitter is the taste of umber; Boiling water is malicious; Fire is ever full of danger; First physician, the Creator; Remedy the ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... from thirty to forty in width. With such an expanse of water, I am correct in stating its medium depth at four feet. There is a large bight in it to the S.E. and a beautiful and extensive bay to the N.W. At about seven miles from the mouth of the river, its waters are brackish, and at twenty-one miles they are quite salt, whilst seals frequent the lower parts. Considering this lake to be of sufficient importance, and in anticipation that its shores will, during her reign, if not at an earlier period, be peopled by some portion of her subjects, ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... threw itself upwards into broken spray, which flew to leeward at a sharp angle, blown from the summit of the wave like froth from an over-filled tankard. After a night of squally restlessness, accompanied by a driving rain that tasted brackish, things had settled down with the dawn into a steady, roaring gale of wind. In the growing light sea-gulls rose triumphantly with smooth ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... successful: in a few minutes we found a pool of brackish water which appeared, under the present circumstances, to afford the most delicious draughts, and, having drunk, we lay down by the pool to rest ourselves. Being however doubtful as to which was ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... cup and a small breaker; but the men, supposing that they would not be long absent from the schooner, had neglected to fill it with water, while that in the stream, as the tide was then rising, was brackish. They continued grumbling for some time, till Uncle Denis produced the biscuits and a bottle of wine, which he divided among them and ourselves. Our scanty supper being finished, the men threw themselves down by the side of the fire, hoping that the smoke would ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... twenty yards wide, called Split Rock creek, from a fissure in the point of a neighbouring rock. Three miles beyond this, on the south is Saline river, it is about thirty yards wide, and has its name from the number of salt licks, and springs, which render its water brackish; the river is very rapid and the banks falling in. After leaving Saline creek, we passed one large island and several smaller ones, having made fourteen miles. The water rose a foot during the ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... authorities did all they could, and pumped up water from the Scheldt for a few hours each day, enabling us, with considerable difficulty, to keep the drainage system clear. But this water was tidal and brackish, whilst as to the number of bacteria it contained it was better not to inquire. We boiled and drank it when we could get nothing else, but of all the nauseous draughts I have ever consumed, not excluding certain hospital mixtures of high repute, tea made with really salt ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... filling and emptying his lungs in diver fashion, Grief turned over and went down through the water. Salt it was to his lips, and warm to his flesh; but at last, deep down, it perceptibly chilled and tasted brackish. Then, suddenly, his body entered the cold, subterranean stream. He removed the small stopper from the calabash, and, as the sweet water gurgled into it, he saw the phosphorescent glimmer of a big fish, like a sea ghost, ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... Steller hurried off to hunt anti-scorbutic plants, while Waxel, who had taken command, and Khitroff ordered the water-casks filled. Unfortunately the only pool they could find was connected with an arm of the sea. The water was brackish, and this afterward ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... which have been called the Wealden, from their full development in the Weald of Sussex; and these as incontestably argue that the dry land forming the dirt-bed had next afterwards become the area of brackish estuaries, or lakes partially connected with the sea; for the Wealden strata contain exuviae of fresh-water tribes, besides those of the great saurians and chelonia. The area of this estuary comprehends the whole south-east province ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... had pitched their camp where a few barren, withered trees gave a semblance of shelter, and a little thread of brackish water oozed ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... source, the Fountain of Elisha, so called as being probably that healed by the Prophet. If so, the healing was scarcely complete. The water, which gushes up strong and free at the foot of a rocky mound, is warm and slightly brackish. It spreads into a shallow pool, shaded by a fine sycamore tree. Just below, there are some remains of old walls on both sides, and the stream goes roaring away through a rank jungle of canes fifteen feet in height. The ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... allowed to spread out so much, the educational stream is confined between narrow banks, it will show a deep and full current. If allowed to spread over the marshes and plains, it becomes sluggish and brackish. Our course of study for the common schools in recent years, has been largely added to and has been extended over the whole field of knowledge. History, geography, natural science lessons and drawing have been added to the old reading, writing, arithmetic, and grammar. There ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... tenaciously to that square mile of crags and cliffs. The great spirit of cheery optimism, the light-hearted, careless good fellowship, and the muscle and grit of the invaders looked lightly at all this. Regiments might dwindle sadly from dysentery and shrapnel, the water-supply might be short and brackish, the flies might be getting more persistent; but reinforcements would come some day soon, the British at Cape Helles would get Achi Baba, and ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... retained some part of its density; the same is observed in all those things which are strained through ashes. The schools of Plato, that the element of water being compacted by the rigor of the air became sweet, but that part which was expired from the earth, being enfired, became of a brackish taste. ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... lake's contents bottled in her ample hold. She is ballasted with utilities; not altogether with unusable pig-lead and kentledge. She carries years' water in her. Clear old prime Nantucket water; which, when three years afloat, the Nantucketer, .. in the Pacific, prefers to drink before the brackish fluid, but yesterday rafted off in casks, from the Peruvian or Indian streams. Hence it is, that, while other ships may have gone to China from New York, and back again, touching at a score of ports, the ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... same hand, it figures as a 'gentle river,' is characterized as 'christall Thamis,' and is lauded for its 'pure streames' and 'sweete waters.' Chapman, in his 'Ovid's Banquet of Sense,' discourses eloquently of the 'wanton Thamysis that hastes to greet The brackish ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... our situation; fowls are extremely abundant, but I have not seen any, the inhabitants having carried them up the country along with their cattle and provisions of every description. The water here is so brackish that it is almost impossible to drink it; there are, however some wells of delicious water in the neighbourhood, which would be a real treasure to us if the Chinese had not poisoned them. Notwithstanding these unavoidable privations, the courage of our troops is indomitable; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... could I feel as I have felt, or be what I have been, Or weep as I could once have wept o'er many a vanish'd scene,— As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish though they be, So midst the wither'd waste of life, those ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... life is that of the freshwaters, including river and lake, pond and pool, swamp and marsh. It may have been colonised by gradual migration up estuaries and rivers, or by more direct passage from the seashore into the brackish swamp. Or it may have been in some cases that partially landlocked corners of ancient seas became gradually turned into freshwater basins. The animal population of the freshwaters is very representative, and is diversely adapted to meet the characteristic contingencies—the ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... course led us between shores which were mere plaits and interweavings of the long stems and broad leaves of gigantic water-plants. The islands were but little inhabited, and the few denizens we saw were engaged either in fishing or in the manufacture of salt from the brackish water. Once we landed at a collection of huts where were quartered the laborers of another company which had been successfully engaged in prosecuting the same experiment of rice-culture which our friend had just undertaken. It was just at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... was a view of the water; Miss Chancellor having the good fortune to dwell on that side of Charles Street toward which, in the rear, the afternoon sun slants redly, from an horizon indented at empty intervals with wooden spires, the masts of lonely boats, the chimneys of dirty "works," over a brackish expanse of anomalous character, which is too big for a river and too small for a bay. The view seemed to him very picturesque, though in the gathered dusk little was left of it save a cold yellow streak in the west, a gleam of brown water, and the reflexion of the lights ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... a share of our meals when he does not come himself. This sounds like high living! alas, undeceive yourself. Salt junk is the mainstay; a low island, except for cocoanuts, is just the same as a ship at sea: brackish water, no supplies, and very little shelter. The king is a great character - a thorough tyrant, very much of a gentleman, a poet, a musician, a historian, or perhaps rather more a genealogist - it is strange ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sense, as implying a modification directly due to the physical conditions of life; and "variations" in this sense are supposed not to be inherited; but who can say that the dwarfed condition of shells in the brackish waters of the Baltic, or dwarfed plants on Alpine summits, or the thicker fur of an animal from far northwards, would not in some cases be inherited for at least a few generations? And in this case I presume that the form ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... receptacle of men, women, boys, girls, pigs, and fowls. In the corner a dying woman or child. No water in the island that is fresh, a few holes in the coral where water accumulates, more or less brackish; no cleanliness, no quiet, no cool fresh air, hot smoky atmosphere, no proper food, a dry bit of yam, and no knowledge of a life to come: such is the picture of the invalided or dying South Sea Islander. All ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... five hours, then put the large canoe into the water, and placed the firewood in her, with the stock of flour, frozen meat, and the bears' flesh; then with the kettle and frying-pan they baled eight or ten buckets of water into her, for Godfrey did not know how soon the river would become brackish. They spread the bear-skin over all, then having carefully repacked the canoe, they put her also into the water, stepped the mast, took their places in her, hoisted the sail, and with the boat in tow started ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... about, my hand has come in contact with a mug filled with a liquid that exhales an inviting odor. I raise it to my lips, which, are burning, for I am suffering such an agony of thirst that I would even drink brackish water. ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... circumstance, Ganymede conceived the design of secretly digging a canal, so as to turn the waters of the sea by means of it into these aqueducts. This plan he carried into effect. The consequence was, that the water in the cisterns was gradually changed. It became first brackish, then more and more salt and bitter, until, at length, it was wholly impossible to use it. For some time the army within could not understand these changes; and when, at length, they discovered the cause the soldiers were panic-stricken at the thought, ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... provincial deputies can meet to transact their business; now, so far from there being a commodious public edifice, there is not a decent house in all Vigo. Bay! yes, they have a bay, but have they water fit to drink? Have they a fountain? Yes, they have, and the water is so brackish that it would burst the stomach of a horse. I hope, my dear sir, that you have not come all this distance to take the part of such a gang of ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... entered the sea at these points; and the coral being thus prevented growing, the pear-shaped harbours were produced.) Most authors have attributed this fact to the injurious effects of the fresh water, even where it enters the sea only in small quantity, and during a part of the year. No doubt brackish water would prevent or retard the growth of coral; but I believe that the mud and sand which is deposited, even by rivulets when flooded, is a much more efficient check. The reef on each side of the channel leading into Port Louis at Mauritius, ends abruptly in a wall, at the foot of which ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... dry plains such as where we were then they give less trouble than anywhere. For though they soon go sick on good corn, which a horse must have, they thrive and grow fat on desert gleanings; and whereas sweet water will make their bellies ache oftener than not, the brackish, dirty stuff from wells by the Dead Sea shore is nectar ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... volcanic understructure is laid bare, often in the form of great lava sheets. The group of lakes have been elsewhere described in these pages. Lake Texcoco, whose shores are now distant from the city, is a dreary waste of brackish water with scarcely any fish-life, inhabited by water-fowl at certain seasons. During the period of overflow its rising waters cover many added square miles of ground, but in the dry season the water recedes, ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... half-burned stumps. Several times we had to turn aside to avoid the swampy ponds, fringed with tall saw-grass; from amid which rose snipes, plovers, and wild-ducks, and occasionally flocks of the beautiful white egret and snowy heron. The water was brackish, and covered with lilies of varied colours; from amid which, every now and then, alligators popped out their heads to look at us. Other birds, among them the great sand-hill crane, stalked about, until, uttering loud whoops, they took to flight, ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... prising it open with his clasp knife, it was found to contain some fishing-line and hooks. A small cask, or breaker, was also locked in the bow of the boat, and this was found to contain water, a trifle impregnated by the sea, and slightly brackish, but still quite drinkable. It need hardly be mentioned what a great boon this was to them, as they had begun to be afflicted with thirst as the sun's heat grew more ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... consulting it may obtain an instant answer to a given question. Now although many of the explanations may be superfluous to some seamen, still they may lead others to a right understanding of various brackish expressions and phrases, without having to put crude queries, many of which those inquired of might be unable to solve. Nor is it only those afloat who are to be thus considered; all the empire is more or less connected with its navy and its commerce, and nautical phraseology is thereby daily becoming ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... and is the anion. It has the formula OH and is called the hydroxyl ion. The remainder of the molecule, which usually consists of a single atom, is the cation. (3) The solution of a base has a soapy feel and a brackish taste. (4) It reverses the color change produced in indicators by acids, turning red litmus blue, and red methyl orange yellow. Since all bases produce hydroxyl anions, while the cations of each are different, the properties which all bases have in common ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... island of Buenavista who lead a laborious life were six or seven residents who have no water except brackish water from wells and whose employment is to kill the big goats and salt the skins and send them to Portugal in the caravels which come there for them, of which in one year they kill so many and send so many skins ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... where we were each furnished with a certain light weapon, peculiar to the country, which we flourished continually, and with which we made many light strokes, and some desperate ones. The waters hereabouts were dark and brackish, and the snowy surface of the plain was often defaced by them. Probably, we were now on the borders of the Black Sea. These plains we travelled across and across ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... the poor wretch was sitting mournfully Near a piano, his pale fingers twined One with the other, and the ooze and wind 275 Rushed through an open casement, and did sway His hair, and starred it with the brackish spray; His head was leaning on a music book, And he was muttering, and his lean limbs shook; His lips were pressed against a folded leaf 280 In hue too beautiful for health, and grief Smiled in their motions as they lay apart— As one who wrought from ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... her husband's departure, a week whose days had run their course from morning to evening as slowly as the brackish water in one of the canals, intersecting the meadows of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... faculties, that run through the common humanity. Surely, you will not calculate any essential difference from mere appearances; for the light laughter that bubbles on the lip often mantles over brackish depths of sadness, and the serious look may be the sober veil that covers a divine peace. You know that the bosom can ache beneath diamond brooches, and how many blithe hearts dance under coarse wool. But I do not allude merely to these accidental contrasts. I mean that about equal measures ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... quarters of the town. At every corner you meet water-carriers, and little wagons loaded with tubs of water. Attempts have frequently been made to procure this indispensable element by digging; water has, indeed, in some instances gushed forth, but it always had a brackish taste. ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... the water washed over her, but there were the falls at nearly the same distance as when she embarked, and there they stayed as well. The water, too, was no more fresh and sweet, but had a salt and brackish taste. The sun was nearly overhead, and she was in an agony of apprehension before she saw the falls slide slowly back, and in one of a fresh succession of wonders, understanding nothing of it, she found herself, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... galleon, running close to the coast, went ashore on Chincoteague and drifted piecemeal through the inlet, wider then than now. This mummery, this altar toy, destined for some Papist mission-house, has lain all these years in the brackish Sound. Ha! ha! That Issachar the Jew should raise a cross, and on the Christian's Christmas eve! But it is mine! My tongs, my ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... were advertised in all the papers, and brackish bathing-places on the St. Lawrence were already crowded. The Saguenay and Marguerite rivers had carried off their fishing votaries, the black fly worked its wicked will at Tadousac, where the "property" whale of the —— hotel had already been seen spouting, according to the waiter, ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... bar. At every flood its waters overflow, and are unable to escape to the sea when left behind the bar. Sometimes, in like manner, in a gale of wind on shore, the waves are carried over the bar, and there are left as a brackish pool, unable ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... especially fine in flavour. Another eel-like fish, formerly taken in great numbers, and of the finest quality, but now almost forgotten, is also returning. This is the lampern. Lamperns, unlike eels, come into the rivers to spawn, and go back to the sea later or to the brackish waters. Men employed in scooping gravel out of the river at Hammersmith, lately noticed numbers of lamperns coming up on to the gravel-beds at low-water, and moving the gravel into little hollows, previously to dropping their spawn. Twelve years ago ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... a period he could not account for at all, and suddenly the sun was fading and it was evening. Somebody pushed a canteen into his hand, then lifted both hand and canteen for him so that he could drink some liquid which was not clear water but thick and brackish, evil-tasting, but which moistened his dry ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... the Singapore jail in Brass Basa Road was originally a piece of low ground saturated with brackish water; and the convicts themselves were, as we have elsewhere stated, employed in conveying red earth from the side of Government Hill to reclaim most of this marsh, in order to erect thereon the necessary buildings for their occupation. The site had to be raised from two to four ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... night, so they resolved to pass the night on the {22} island. In the morning they were appalled to find that the little boat, with Ribero and the three sailors, was gone. They were marooned on a desert island with practically nothing to eat and nothing but brackish swamp water to drink. The sailors they believed to have abandoned them. They gave way to transports of despair. Some in their grief threw themselves down and died forthwith. Others sought to prolong life by eating herbs, roots ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... in chanels cleare 25 To romble gently downe with murmur soft, And were by them right tunefull taught to beare A bases part amongst their consorts oft; Now forst to overflowe with brackish teares, With troublous noyse did dull their ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... does not produce a blackish sediment. Hippocrates says, "Water which is easily warmed or easily chilled is alway lighter." But that water is bad which takes a long time to boil vegetables; and so too is water full of nitre, or brackish. And in his book 'On Waters,' Hippocrates calls good water drinkable; but stagnant water he calls bad, such as that from ponds or marshes. And most spring-water ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... reach this pool; and a small crooked passage, of which only the beginning is seen, is said to convey the water out of the Valley of Siloam, and to supply the means of irrigating the little gardens still cultivated in that spot. Notwithstanding the dirty state of the water, and its harsh and brackish taste, it is still used by devout pilgrims for diseases of ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... crooked with rheumatism, was hobbling about getting the supper, which she said was all but ready. When it was all ready, without the but, they sat down, though the poor Prince, hungry as he was, found it hard work to swallow the dry red herring, the rasping oaten cakes, and the brackish water of which the meal consisted. When he had finished the meal,—which, as you may suppose, did not take long,—he set his box upon ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam
... El-Hasee is sandy, like all those of Fezzan. It is bounded on the north by the perpendicular buttresses of the Hamadah, and on the south by sandy swells. The well is not copious, but affords a regular supply of slightly brackish water. The people descend to the bottom, thirty or forty feet, and fill their gerbahs. The blacks are very troublesome, and require a good deal of patience. This morning they would not fetch water from this well, ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... she found it, some distance away, in a gully coming from a fissure in a dislocated piece of outcrop. It was beautifully clear, cold, and sparkling, with a slightly sweetish taste, yet unlike the brackish "alkali" of the plains. It refreshed and soothed her greatly, so much that, reclining against a tree, but where she would be quite visible from the trail, her eyes closed dreamily, and presently ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... miles. But their force is soon spent: soon, the lake sinks lower and lower away from the slope of the hills. Then, with the high tide, the sea reappears triumphantly, dashing and leaping, in clouds of spray, through the channel in the sand—making the waters of the Pool brackish—now, threatening to swell them anew to overflowing—and now, at the ebb, leaving them to empty themselves again, in the manner of a great tidal river. No new change takes place, until a storm from the south-west comes on; and then, fresh masses of sand and shingle are forced ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... That hindreth Locrine in his sweetest joys! And yet, for all his diligent aspect, His wrathful eyes, piercing like Linces' eyes, Well have I overmatched his subtilty. Nigh Deurolitum, by the pleasant Lee, Where brackish Thamis slides with silver streams, Making a breach into the grassy downs, A curious arch, of costly marble fraught, Hath Locrine framed underneath the ground; The walls whereof, garnished with diamonds, With ophirs, rubies, glistering emeralds, And interlast with sun-bright carbuncles, ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... the hounds or take waters at foreign baths, should protest that no maid was ever in so desolate a case as Mistress Hortense, I answer there are to-day many in the same region keeping themselves pure as pond-lilies in a brackish pool, at the forts of their fathers and husbands in the fur-trading ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... barrenness. The Guadiana creeps through lonely Estremadura, infecting the low plains with miasma. The Guadalquivir eats out its deep banks amid the sunny olive-clad regions of Andalucia, as the Ebro divides the levels of Arragon. Spain abounds with brackish streams, Salados, and with salt-mines, or saline deposits, after the evaporation of the sea-waters. The central soil is strongly impregnated with saltpetre: always arid, it every day is becoming more so, from the singular antipathy which the ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... and the whole party started down the Darling (the CALLA-WATTA of the natives) on the 8th June. During their progress they found the tree marked H. H. by Hume, at Sturt's limit, and they now noticed that in places the river water was salt or brackish. On the 11th of July, after following the course of the river for three hundred miles, and ascertaining beyond all doubt that it must be identical with the junction in the Murray, noticed by Captain Sturt, Mitchell determined to return; the unvarying sameness of ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... there been less wind; for in addition to the danger of being ingulfed by the heavy sea, their clothing, which they spread to collect the rain, was so deluged with salt spray as to make the water exceedingly brackish. Bad as it was, however, it served to maintain life until they reached a little rocky, uninhabited island in the channel ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... Chasseurs had pitched their camp where a few barren, withered trees gave a semblance of shelter, and a little thread of brackish water oozed through ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... success. A muddy bottom with occasional quickly running shallows, seem to constitute the best kind of water for dace. The largest, and by far the best conditioned dace I have seen, have come from the tidal parts of rivers, where the water is brackish at high water. Dace from such a water have also the advantage of being very good eating, as they have, as a rule, not got the unpleasant muddy taste ...
— Amateur Fish Culture • Charles Edward Walker
... Siloam, whose surplus waters flow in a little streamlet falling into the lake Kedron, is situate near the ancient walls of the city of Jerusalem. Mr. Wild tells us "that the fountain of Siloam is a mineral spring of a brackish taste, and somewhat of the smell of the Harrowgate water, but in a very slight degree." It is said to possess considerable medicinal properties, and is much frequented by pilgrims. "Continuing our course," says he, "around the probable ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... clay mask (brackish and wet With what strange tears!) it was not his, not his, The kiss that through ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... Suant and Flownder, covet chiefly to be in or near the Salt or Brackish Waters, which ebb and flow: The last, viz. the Flownder, have been taken in fresh Rivers, as coveting Sand and Gravel, deep gentle streams, near ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... bare, bleak, and black. I pulled off my stout gloves with the hope of getting my fingers to tingle by handling the snow; but it was frozen so hard I could not scrape up with my nails as much as a half-dozen of flakes would make. What I got I dissolved in my mouth and found it brackish; however, I suspected it would be sweeter and perhaps not so stonily frozen higher up, where there was less chance of the salt spray mingling with it, and I resolved when the light came to fill my empty beer-bottles as with salt ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... The brackish water that we drink Creeps with a loathsome slime, And the bitter bread they weigh in scales Is full of chalk and lime, And Sleep will not lie down, but walks Wild-eyed, ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... are following is, however, exceedingly desolate. Only at the stations is water to be found, and even that is brackish; but the worst trial is the heat, which now, at the end of April, becomes more oppressive every day. The temperature rises nearly up to 105-1/2 deg. in the shade, and to ride full in the face of the sun is like thrusting one's head into a blazing furnace. When there is ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... the banks of the many vast rivers which pour their waters into the Atlantic. Still, all this time, we were navigating merely one of the branches of the mighty Amazon; for, though we had long felt the influence of the tide, yet the water, even when it was flowing, was but slightly brackish. ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... more elaborate survey. From its upper course, one collection would be needed from Haro or Frias or Miranda; another from Saragossa, and one from its mouth, including the minnows common among the brackish waters near the mouth of large rivers. In addition to this, one or two of the tributaries of the Ebro, coming down from the Pyrenees, should be explored in the same manner; say one collection from Pampeluna, and one from Urgel, or ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... the south-west. About two miles from the town to the southward, it runs between two high mountains, apparently as high as the mountains which Adams saw in Barbary; here the river is about half a mile wide. The water of La Mar Zarah is rather brackish, but is commonly drunk by the natives, there not being, according to the report of Adams, any wells ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... which has been so ludicrously misnamed the Malayan Caviare. It needs all the violence of the fresh, strong, monsoon winds to even partially purge these villages of the rank odours which cling to them at the end of the fishing season; and when all has been done, the saltness of the sea air, the brackish water of the wells, and the faint stale smells emitted by the nets and fishing tackle still tell unmistakable tales of the one trade in which every member of these communities is more ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... parched when he would scent water. This was sometimes very easy to smell, however, for it was almost impossible to drink out of a waterhole without holding the nose and straining the liquid through my closed teeth. Chaco water at best is very brackish, and on drying off the ground a white coat of salt ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... floating wisp of reeds suddenly coiled itself around my neck, or some unknown thing, drifting deeper, coldly touched my foot, it caused that undefinable shudder which every swimmer knows, and which especially comes over one by night. Sometimes a slight sip of brackish water would enter my lips,—for I naturally tried to swim as low as possible,—and then would follow a slight gasping and contest against chocking, that seemed to me a perfect convulsion; for I suppose ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... were but scantily supplied with food, and had much trouble in obtaining water. The only spring to which they had access, and even that by no means abundant, was in the citadel of Pylos, and most of them were reduced to scraping the shingle, and thus obtaining a meagre supply of brackish water. On land their quarters were straitened and uncomfortable, and they had no proper anchorage for their ships, so that the crews had to go ashore in turns to get their meals. They were greatly disappointed to find their task thus prolonged, ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... He spoke a British whaling bark, and by her sent to Captain Kellett his epaulettes, and to his own owners news that he was coming. They had heavy gales and head winds, were driven as far down as the Bermudas; the water left in the ship's tanks was brackish, and it needed all the seasoning which the ship's chocolate would give to make it drinkable. "For sixty hours at a time," says the spirited captain, "I frequently had no sleep"; but his perseverance was crowned with ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... in of an evening, and told of the sick wife or boy at home; of the mildewed crop, and the lamed horse; of the brackish well, and of the clock bought from the pedler that wouldn't go, and wouldn't strike when it did go;—dwelling, in short, on all the darker incidents and accidents of life, and thus establishing a nearness and equality ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... petticoat. Then she picked her barefooted way swiftly to the creek-bed, where she drenched the cloth for bathing and bandaging the wound. It required several trips through the littered cleft, for the puddles between the rocks were stale and brackish; but these journeys she made with easy and untrammeled swiftness. When she had done what she could by way of first aid, she stood looking down at the man, and shook her ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... the harbour higher up, and found the ground softer, and the water not so deep; yet the wind continued to blow so hard that we could not venture to change our station. We had found a small spring of water about half a mile inland, upon the north side of the bay, but it had a brackish taste; I had also made another excursion of several miles into the country, which I found barren and desolate, in every direction, as far as the eye could reach. We had seen many guanicoes at a distance, but we could not get near enough to have a shot at them; we tracked beasts of several kinds ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... formerly five out of every six men imported from Europe fell speedy victims to disease. "I," he said, "on my view of Virginia, disliked Virginia, most of it being seated scatteringly ... amongst salt-marshes and creeks, whence thrice worse than Essex, ... and Kent for agues and diseases ... brackish water to drink and use, and a flat country, and standing waters in woods bred a ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... shall pleasure the Fire." Presently the damsel went down to him and beat him a grievous beating, till streams of blood flowed from his sides and he fainted; after which she set at his head a scone of bread and a cruse of brackish water and went away and left him. In the middle of the night, he revived and found himself bound and beaten and sore with beating: so he wept bitter tears; and recalling his former condition of honour and prosperity, lordship and dominion, and his separation from ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... this chain of lagoons, which skirt the coast of Brazil. M. Gay [2] has stated that he found in the neighbourhood of Rio, shells of the marine genera solen and mytilus, and fresh water ampullariae, living together in brackish water. I also frequently observed in the lagoon near the Botanic Garden, where the water is only a little less salt than in the sea, a species of hydrophilus, very similar to a water-beetle common in the ditches of England: in the same lake the only shell ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... people declare that it had a single mouth till the earthquakes of July 1862, which shook down Accra, raised a divide, and made a double embouchure. The eastern fork, known as the Pana, is the drain of a large and branchy lagoon, brackish water, bitumen-coloured or brassy-yellow, with poisonous vegetation, and bounded by mangroves abounding in tannin. These water-forests grow differently from the red and white rhizophores of Eastern Africa. We shall again be ferried ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... plaits and interweavings of the long stems and broad leaves of gigantic water-plants. The islands were but little inhabited, and the few denizens we saw were engaged either in fishing or in the manufacture of salt from the brackish water. Once we landed at a collection of huts where were quartered the laborers of another company which had been successfully engaged in prosecuting the same experiment of rice-culture which our friend ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... they saddled up, and, at first leading their horses, passed down the coulee into the more precipitous depths of the narrow canyon. This proved hardly more than a gash cut through the rolling prairie, rock strewn, holding an insignificant stream of brackish water, yet was an ideal hiding-place, having ample room for easy passage between the rock walls. The men mounted, and Hampton, with a wave of his hand, bade the old ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... said Mr. Rogers, and the Commandant, kneeling by the edge of the pool, scooped up a palmful of water to his lips. It was fresh water, undoubtedly; very cold, and not in the least brackish. ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... side, where there are some sandy bays and low land, which last is covered with thin, long grass, Trees, etc., the same as upon the Main. Here is also fresh Water in 2 places; the one is a running stream, the water a little brackish where I tasted it, which was close to the sea; the other is a standing pool, close behind the sandy beach, of good, sweet water, as I daresay the other is a little way from the Sea beach. The only land Animals we saw here were Lizards, and these seem'd to be pretty Plenty, which occasioned ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... being allowed to spread out so much, the educational stream is confined between narrow banks, it will show a deep and full current. If allowed to spread over the marshes and plains, it becomes sluggish and brackish. Our course of study for the common schools in recent years, has been largely added to and has been extended over the whole field of knowledge. History, geography, natural science lessons and drawing ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... two months, conditions changed drastically. The Indians became cautious and distrustful, and provisions, not sufficiently augmented from the country, began to run low. Spoilage destroyed some food, and, with the coming of the hot, humid weather, the brackish drinking water proved dangerous. In August, death struck often and quickly, taking among others the stabilizing hand of Captain Gosnold. Inexperience, unwillingness, or inability due to insufficient food, to do the hard work that was necessary and the lack of sufficient ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch
... (pp. 64-65): "P'u-chau fu lies on a level with the Yellow River, and on the edge of a large extent of worthless marsh land, full of pools of brackish, and in some places, positively salt water.... The great road does not pass into the town, having succeeded in maintaining its position on the high ground from which the town has backslided.... The great road keeping to the bluff, runs on, turning first south, and then a trifle ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... his life with the fear of death was bitter and sick and accursed, As brackish water to drink of which is to be ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... upon the kindred spirit that is in every one of us, and strikes upon motives, sympathies, faculties, that run through the common humanity. Surely, you will not calculate any essential difference from mere appearances; for the light laughter that bubbles on the lip often mantles over brackish depths of sadness, and the serious look may be the sober veil that covers a divine peace. You know that the bosom can ache beneath diamond brooches, and how many blithe hearts dance under coarse wool. But I do not allude merely ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... Ross tramped heavily through small pools, beating a path through tangles of marsh grass. He stole eggs from nests, sucking his nourishment eagerly with no dislike for the fishy flavor, and drinking from stagnant, brackish ponds. ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... sudden drub, Smites his scald-head, that is already sore,— Superfluous wound,—such is Misfortune's rub! Who straight makes answer with redoubled roar, And sheds salt tears twice faster than before, That still, with backward fist, he strives to dry; Washing, with brackish moisture, o'er and o'er, His muddy cheek, that grows more foul thereby, Till all his rainy face looks grim as ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... squatter coming this way. The runs about it are very extensive; the natives few and inoffensive, and the stock-yard etc., left there, renders it very complete. I must not omit, however, to mention, that the water had become slightly brackish, but not so as to be unpalatable, or even, indeed, perceptible, except to persons unused to it. The large reach had fallen two feet since the party first occupied that station. In other reaches lower down, that we passed ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... hide, Where never gale was longer known to stay Than from the smooth wave it had swept away The new divorced leaves, that from each side Left the thick boughs to dance out with the tide. At further end the creek, a stately wood Gave a kind shadow (to the brackish flood) Made up of trees, not less kenn'd by each skiff Than that sky-scaling peak of Teneriffe, Upon whose tops the hernshew bred her young, And hoary moss upon their branches hung; Whose rugged rinds ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... purchase tea in China: he arrives at Canton, stays there a few days and then returns. In less than two years he has sailed as far as the entire circumference of the globe, and he has seen land but once. It is true that during a voyage of eight or ten months he has drunk brackish water, and lived upon salt meat; that he has been in a continual contest with the sea, with disease, and with the tedium of monotony; but, upon his return, he can sell a pound of his tea for a halfpenny less ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... intended to sustain a siege, a well was made in the court, by boring the rock downwards, till water was found, which though so near to the sea, I have not heard mentioned as brackish, though it has some hardness, or other qualities, which make it less fit for use; and the family is now better supplied from a stream, which runs by the rock, ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... a winding sheep-trail, he reached the summit of the hill and looked about. The damp sea air fanned his long hair and caused him to look in the direction of the fleecy white clouds which were creeping upward from the horizon. Soon there would be fog. Then he could continue on his way to the brackish spring on the bluff-side overlooking the south shore. From there it was only a stone's throw to the beach where the mussels and abalones clung so ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... above, of very lonesome and commanding appearance in its gaunt solitude. There were no houses near it, no cattle grazed about its foot; it was a dead thing in a dead landscape. To the left, but separated from it by a wide and slimy dyke, whence in times of flood the thick, brackish water trickled to the plain, stretched an arid area of sand-dunes, clothed with sparse grass, that grew like bristles upon the back of a wild hog. Beyond these dunes the ocean roared and moaned and whispered hungrily as the wind ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... army struck the Little Colorado River, the stream was quite wide and of sufficient depth for navigation. The water was brackish and the banks were fringed with timber. Here the whole army concentrated before attempting to cross. The army was not accompanied by a pontoon train, and at that time the troops were not instructed in bridge building. To add to the embarrassment of the situation, the army was ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... and stunted; it scants them both in food and drink. Its miserliness is deep-set: artesian wells sunk a thousand feet through its dull grey sands bring up only a brackish yellow water; a precarious ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... hill country one expects to find springs, but not to depend upon them; for when found they are often brackish and unwholesome, or maddening, slow dribbles in a thirsty soil. Here you find the hot sink of Death Valley, or high rolling districts where the air has always a tang of frost. Here are the long heavy winds and breathless calms on the tilted mesas where dust devils dance, whirling up into a wide, ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... and less, until finally they were living on three dry biscuits a day each. The water, too, was getting lower and lower in the one cask that remained, and it had a warm, brackish taste. Still it was the most ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... the term "variation" in a technical sense, as implying a modification directly due to the physical conditions of life; and "variations" in this sense are supposed not to be inherited; but who can say that the dwarfed condition of shells in the brackish waters of the Baltic, or dwarfed plants on Alpine summits, or the thicker fur of an animal from far northwards, would not in some cases be inherited for at least a few generations? And in this case I presume that the form would be called ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... England, had fallen, through the silting of the estuary and the broadening of the "Sands of Dee," to the level of a hamlet in the time of Dr. Grenfell's boyhood. The broad stretch of seaward trending sand, with its interlacing rivulets of fresh and brackish water, made a tempting though treacherous playground, alluring alike in the varied forms of life it harbored and in the adventure which whetted exploration. Thither came Charles Kingsley, Canon of Chester, who married a Grenfell, and who coupled his verse with scientific study ...
— Adrift on an Ice-Pan • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... density; the same is observed in all those things which are strained through ashes. The schools of Plato, that the element of water being compacted by the rigor of the air became sweet, but that part which was expired from the earth, being enfired, became of a brackish taste. ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... "kitchen-middens" are very old, is derived from the character of their embedded shells. These consist entirely of living species; but, in the first place, the common eatable oyster is among them, attaining its full size, whereas the same Ostrea edulis cannot live at present in the brackish waters of the Baltic except near its entrance, where, whenever a north-westerly gale prevails, a current setting in from the ocean pours in a great body of salt water. Yet it seems that during the ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... foot of a high mountain range, and probably the rivulets descending from the range spread over the flat ground, and form channels by which they reach the sea. Fresh water can be obtained on either side the river very near the sea. I tasted fresh water on one side, salt in the middle, and slightly brackish on the other side, as we crossed over it. Small boats only can enter this river, on account of the sandbank at the mouth. Its course turned to the south-west about two miles up. Its banks were sandy and barren, ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... son of a gun!" exclaimed Cribbens. The dentist let the animal have his head, and in a few minutes he had brought them to the bed of a tiny canyon where a thin stream of brackish water filtered ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... utter blackness of the brackish water until his head broke surface again. Then he went on along the great conduits that were above the level of ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... leaders were browsing greedily along the banks. They had emptied the few holes that had still held a meager store of brackish water and so the mutinous bulk of the herd snuffed at the trampled, muddy spots and ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... and lay a moment, bridging the morphean chasm that lay between last night and this morning. It was 6:30 A.M. It is bad enough to open one's eyes at 6:30 on Monday morning. But to open them at 6:30 on Tuesday morning, after an indigo Monday.... The taste of yesterday lingered, brackish, in Martha's mouth. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... that this huge rock standeth so neere vnto a Sea, that many times in stormes (the winde comming outwardly from the sea) the waues thereof are beaten into the said fresh streame, so that the fresh water for a certaine space, groweth salt and brackish: I tooke a resolution with my selfe, hauing dismissed Menatonon vpon a ransome agreed for, and sent his sonne into the Pinnesse to Roanoak, to enter presently so farre into that Riuer with two double whirries, and fourtie persons ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... manor-house on four acres of perfectly flat and barren land. He had built a house, offices, and farm buildings, laid out a garden, dug a pond, and sunk two wells; but the young trees had not done well, very little water had collected in the pond, and that in the wells tasted brackish. Only one arbour of lilac and acacia had grown fairly well; they sometimes had tea and dinner in it. In a few minutes Bazarov had traversed all the little paths of the garden; he went into the cattle-yard and the stable, routed out two farm-boys, with whom he made friends at once, and set off ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... strangle. Beyond this we cannot complain of our situation; fowls are extremely abundant, but I have not seen any, the inhabitants having carried them up the country along with their cattle and provisions of every description. The water here is so brackish that it is almost impossible to drink it; there are, however some wells of delicious water in the neighbourhood, which would be a real treasure to us if the Chinese had not poisoned them. Notwithstanding these unavoidable privations, the courage of our troops is indomitable; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... by some tribe attacking in superior numbers. The fossils which have been brought from the Mauvaises Terres belong to a species that became extinct before the period when the Mastodon inhabited this country. The strata in which these animals are imbedded indicate that the water was fresh or brackish. It is the most desolate and barren prospect one could lay his eyes on; and if the place for bad people is like this, when they come to die, may no boy have to go there and be frightened all his life-long for his wicked and cruel ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... pass. No ingratitude, injustice, or unworthiness in those to whom we try to do good, should ever be allowed to turn love's sweetness into bitterness in us. Like fresh-water springs beside the sea, over which the brackish tide flows, but which when the bitter waters have receded are found sweet as ever, so should our hearts remain amid all experiences of love's unrequiting, ever ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... Bits of it were broken off and put in the bumper, and held over the fire. The water thus obtained and cooled with ice was not salt exactly. Still it was not, as has sometimes been affirmed, pure fresh water, by any means: it had a brackish taste. ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... to reach a very old age, specimens having been known to have lived several hundred years. The box tortoise of our woods, the musk turtles, the snapping turtles are familiar examples of this order, while the terrapin, which lives in brackish ponds and swamps along our sea-coasts, is ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... ought never to be washed with soda; the washing of napkins with soda is apt to produce excoriations and breakings-out. "As washerwomen often deny that they use soda, it can be easily detected by simply soaking a clean white napkin in fresh water and then tasting the water; if it be brackish and salt, soda has been employed." [Footnote: Communicated by Sir Charles Locock to ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... has a whole lake's contents bottled in her ample hold. She is ballasted with utilities; not altogether with unusable pig-lead and kentledge. She carries years' water in her. Clear old prime Nantucket water; which, when three years afloat, the Nantucketer, in the Pacific, prefers to drink before the brackish fluid, but yesterday rafted off in casks, from the Peruvian or Indian streams. Hence it is, that, while other ships may have gone to China from New York, and back again, touching at a score of ports, the whale-ship, in all that interval, may not have sighted ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... salt. Further inland, they saw a dry bed, where the water seemed to have lodged in rainy seasons; and, about a cable's length below, another run, supplied from an extensive pool, the bottom of which, as well, as the surface, was covered with dead leaves. This, though a little brackish, being much preferable to the other, we began watering here early the next morning, and finished the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... in the autumn of that year, at the season when the days and nights are of one length, that the great inroad of the sea befell. The day had been stormy, with a brackish wind clamouring out of the sea, and as the darkness closed in it was with us as it is with blind men who hear and feel the more keenly because of their blindness and all that we heard was the boom of billows breaking on the long ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... it ebbs and flows every six hours, with a strong current. The tide comes up for about thirty miles so full, that there is nothing but salt water in the river, the fresh water being driven back with its force; and above that, for some miles, the water is brackish; but a little higher, as it runs by the town, it is quite fresh; and when the tide ebbs, it continues fresh all along to the sea. There is a bridge cast over the river, not of timber, but of fair stone, consisting of many stately arches; ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... guide me! And bid the deep hide me, For he grasps me now by the hair! The loud ocean heard, To its blue depth stirred, And divided at her prayer[,] And under the water The Earth's white daughter Fled like a sunny beam, Behind her descended Her billows unblended With the brackish Dorian stream:— Like a gloomy stain On the Emerald main Alpheus rushed behind, As an eagle pursueing A dove to its ruin, Down the ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... of the other islands, a few hundred yards away—for the rest of the party slept late this first morning, and we took to the canoe—we discovered a spring of fresh water untainted by the brackish flavour of the Baltic, and having thus solved the most important problem of the Camp, we next proceeded to deal with the second—fish. And in half an hour we reeled in and turned homewards, for we had no means of storage, and to clean more fish than ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... the deer kind. The fish in the bay are scarce; those we caught were mostly sharks, dog-fish, and a fish called by the seamen nurses, like the dog-fish, only full of small white spots; and some small fish not unlike sprats. The lagoons (which are brackish) abound with trout, and several other sorts of fish, of which we caught a few with lines, but being much encumbered with stumps of trees, we could ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... week Turk was able to walk with the caravan; a fortnight later it could gallop by Frank's side. They were now entering the Alkali Plains, a wide and desolate region, where water is extremely scarce, and, when found, brackish and bitter to the taste, and where the very shrubs are impregnated with salt, and uneatable by most animals. In anticipation of the hardships to be endured in crossing this region, the bullocks had been allowed for some time a daily ration of grain in addition to the grass ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... probability, would soon prove fatal alone. On the few cocoa-trees upon the island, the number of which did not exceed thirty, very little fruit was found; and, in general, what was found, was either not fully grown, or had the juice salt, or brackish. So that a ship touching here, must expect nothing but fish and turtles, and of these an abundant supply may be ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... years and more, gives a sort of reality and substance to such traditions. The custode dipped an iron ladle into the miraculous water, and we each of us drank a sip; and, what is very, remarkable, to me it seemed hard water and almost brackish, while many persons think it the sweetest in Rome. I suspect that St. Peter still dabbles in this water, and tempers its qualities according to the faith of those ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... not to imagine that all Cape carts are as easy as this one. Away we go at a fine pace through the delicious sparkling morning sunshine and crisp air, soon turning off the red high-road into a sandy, marshy flat with a sort of brackish back-water standing in pools here and there. We are going to call on Langalibalele, and his son, Malambuli, who are located at Uitvlugt on the Cape downs, about four miles from the town. It is a sort of farm-residence; and considering that the chief has hitherto lived in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... floor of beaten earth. The old woman went out. Through the gaps in the walls Lewis saw her build a fire and put a pot of the brackish water on to boil. Then he saw her drag the setting hen from her nest and wring its neck. He jumped ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... are apt to flare, And Christians, in a tempest, to despair. The flame also with smoke attended is, And in our holy lives there's much amiss. Sometimes a thief will candle-light annoy, And lusts do seek our graces to destroy. What brackish is will make a candle sputter; 'Twixt sin and grace there's oft' a heavy clutter. Sometimes the light burns dim, 'cause of the snuff, Sometimes it is blown quite out with a puff; But watchfulness preventeth both these evils, Keeps ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... leaves at a little distance suggest the form of many plants of brackish marsh and creek edges, and even the glasswort itself. When the day is gray, the flowers furl close and disappear, as it were, but when the sun beats full upon the sand, a myriad upraised fleshy little arms stretch out, each holding a coloured bowl to catch ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... to the southward and eastward, we could work only slowly to the southward, against wind and current. At times we suffered greatly for want of water; our usual resource was to dig for it, but often it was so brackish and warm that when extreme thirst forced its use the consequences were violent pains and retchings. One morning we saw a few wigwams ashore, and pulled in at once and landed. It was a party of Seminoles who had come out of the everglades like the bears to gather eggs. They received ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... ancient coral-reef, or an accumulation of social shells, like Oysters. Lastly, if we find the deposit to contain the remains of marine shells, but that these are dwarfed of their fair proportions and distorted in figure, we may conclude that it was laid down in a brackish sea, such as the Baltic, in which the proper saltness was wanting, owing to its receiving an excessive ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... whose banks the fertile mountains stood In ages passed bravely crowned with wood, Which lending cold-sweet shadows gave it grace To be accounted Cynthia's bathing-place; And from her father Neptune's brackish court, Fair Thetis thither often would resort, Attended by the fishes of the sea, Which in those sweeter waters came to plea. There would the daughter of the Sea God dive, And thither came the Land Nymphs every eve To wait upon her: bringing for her brows Rich garlands of sweet ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... the main admirably well supplied, but there was a deficiency of drink. The water as they advanced became brackish and intolerably bad, and there was great difficulty in procuring any substitute. At Male three cows were given for a pot of beer, and more of that refreshment might have been sold at the same price, had there ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... experiences had taught him to expect only injury and wrong. The Ragnor home and its love and truth had been the miracle that had for nine months turned his brackish water of life into wine. Was it going to fail him, as everything else had done? He laughed inwardly at the cruel thought and whispered to himself: "This, too, can be borne, but oh, Thora, Thora!" and the two words ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... and from thirty to forty in width. With such an expanse of water, I am correct in stating its medium depth at four feet. There is a large bight in it to the S.E. and a beautiful and extensive bay to the N.W. At about seven miles from the mouth of the river, its waters are brackish, and at twenty-one miles they are quite salt, whilst seals frequent the lower parts. Considering this lake to be of sufficient importance, and in anticipation that its shores will, during her reign, if not at an earlier period, be peopled ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... numerous shoals and islands. It is properly an estuary, immense volumes of fresh water flowing into it from the south. The tides are felt through its entire length of one hundred and sixty miles, but the water is only slightly brackish. It has a dingy orange-brown color. A narrow blue line on our left, miles away, was all that was visible, at times, of the island of Marajo; and as we passed the broad mouth of the Tocantins, we were struck with the magnificent sea-like expanse, for there ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... the desert lake and steered clear of another lesser lake, formed entirely of petroleum from the great gusher. By day its greasy blackness glared in hideous contrast to the blue though brackish water; but now night lent its ugliness a strange disguise. All the faint twilight that remained glimmered on the gloss of its surface like phosphorus in the palm of a negro's hand; and as Nick passed on toward the town, stars shone out in its dark mirror. He could hear ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... I was roused by the beat of rain, and I crawled from hole to hole, lapping up the rain or licking it from the rocks. Brackish it was, but drinkable. It was what saved me, for, toward morning, I awoke to find myself in a profuse perspiration and quite free of ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... the sea at these points; and the coral being thus prevented growing, the pear-shaped harbours were produced.) Most authors have attributed this fact to the injurious effects of the fresh water, even where it enters the sea only in small quantity, and during a part of the year. No doubt brackish water would prevent or retard the growth of coral; but I believe that the mud and sand which is deposited, even by rivulets when flooded, is a much more efficient check. The reef on each side of the channel leading into Port Louis at Mauritius, ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... This brackish well I will not taste; Ere long thou may'st give thanks that even this Is left for thee in such a ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... no overtures to the enemy. For five years, we are told,[14145] they were content to drink such water only as could be obtained in their own island from wells sunk in the soil, which must have been brackish, unwholesome, and disagreeable. At the end of that time a revolution occurred at Nineveh. Shalmaneser lost his throne (B.C. 722), and a new dynasty succeeding, amid troubles of various kinds, attention was drawn away from Tyre to other quarters; and Elulaeus was left ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... not been there long, however, when a big wave almost washed him away. He was not yet safe. Still he lacked the rest and refreshment which he so sorely needed. For the raindrops were soon turned brackish by the waves which dashed upon the reef from all sides, and the Bluebird had to keep hopping up and down to avoid being drowned in the tossing spray. He was more tired than ever, and this continuous ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... currents of cold water from the icy regions which surround the South Pole set northward, and it appears to be due to their cooling influence that the sea in these regions is free from the reef builders. Again, the coral polypes cannot live in water which is rendered brackish by floods from the land, or which is perturbed by mud from the same source, and hence it is that they cease to exist opposite the mouths of rivers, which damage ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... feeding grounds just at dusk. Fog bewilders them, and no bird likes to fly in rain, because it makes the feathers heavy; so on foggy or rainy afternoons they come in early, or not at all. The favorite feeding ground is a salt marsh, with springs and creeks of brackish water. Seeds, roots, tender grasses, and snails and insects in the mud left by the low tide are their usual winter food. When these grow scarce they betake themselves to the mussel beds with the coots; their flesh in ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... Harry on the opposite? And was it sawn asunder merely by the age-long gnawing of the waves? You must ask—Where did the great river which ran from the west, where Poole Harbour is now, and probably through what is now the Solent, depositing brackish water- beds right and left—where, I say, did it run into the sea? Where the Straits of Dover are now? Or, if not there, where? What, too, is become of the land to the Westward, composed of ancient metamorphic rocks, out of which it ran, ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... meet with great numbers of them more than an hundred leagues up the river. In the lake St. Louis, about two leagues from New Orleans, the waters of which, having a communication with the sea, are somewhat brackish, are found several sorts both of sea fish, and fresh water fish. As the bottom of the lake is very level, they fish in it with large nets ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... many works, and rather disposed to make light of the ingenious theories launched by biological speculators who have never set foot in Mexico, especially Weismann's picture of the dismal condition of the salt-incrusted surroundings which were supposed to have hemmed in the axolotl—the brackish Lago de Texcoco, the largest of the lakes near Mexico, being evidently in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... branches above. Stem: 4 to 7 ft. tall, stout, from perennial root. Leaves: 3 to 7 in. long, tapering, pointed, egg-shaped, densely white, downy beneath lower leaves, or sometimes all, lobed at middle. Preferred Habitat - Brackish marshes, riversides, lake shores, saline situations. Flowering Season - August-September. Distribution - Massachusetts to the Gulf of Mexico, westward to Louisiana; found locally in the interior, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... thermometer at 90 degrees in the shade, afforded a sample of what we had afterwards so often to experience during our rambles in tropical Australia. Towards the northern end of the island we found several creeks and lagoons of salt and brackish water, occasionally communicating with the sea, probably under the conjoined influences of spring tides and a strong easterly wind. Towards evening, finding among the contents of our game-bags several ducks, of two species—Anas superciliosa, the black duck of the colonists, the richest and best ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... affair?' 'You must go and kill a man named Hatim-Thai, who lives on the confines of Syria.' To this I replied: 'O my lord, king of the world, I am only a Bedouin, a poor robber, wandering in the forests and the plains. For drink I have but the brackish water of the marshes. For food I have only rats and locusts.' On account of my wretchedness, I obeyed the wishes of the King, and promised to execute this affair. But here I am, in a very embarrassing situation, for I do not know ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... drawback in that it contains no running water, but I draw my supply from wells or rather fountains, for they are situated at a high level. Indeed, it is one of the curious characteristics of the shore here that wherever you dig you find moisture ready to hand, and the water is quite fresh and not even brackish in the slightest degree, though the sea is so close by. The neighbouring woods furnish us with abundance of fuel, and other supplies we get from a colony of Ostia. The village, which is separated only by one residence from my own, supplies my modest wants; it boasts of three public baths, ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... dangerous, inasmuch as they had but two feet water, and the bottom full of stones, the coast appearing a flat sand for about a mile. As soon as they got on shore they fell to digging in the sand, but the water that came into their wells was so brackish that they could not drink it, though they were on the very point of choking for thirst. At last, in the hollows of the rocks, they met with considerable quantities of rainwater, which was a great relief to them, since they had been for ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... set out, and reached Salt River at three, but did not cross there. It is a magnificent stream, 200 feet wide, with hard banks and fine timber on each side; but its waters are brackish. ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... family of Acanthopterygian fishes, related to the perches and wrasses, and confined to the fresh and brackish waters of Central and South America, Africa, Syria, and India and Ceylon. It has recently assumed special importance through the large number of genera and species, many of them showing extraordinary modifications of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... of the Bay of Fonseca. Here they are found in vast beds, in all the subordinate bays where the streams deposit their sediment, and where, with the rise and fall of the tide, they obtain that alternation of salt and brackish water which seems to be necessary to their perfection. They are the same rough-coated, delicious mollusks as those of our own coasts, and by no means to be degraded by a comparison with the muddy, long-bearded, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... slow to respond. He was lying face down, he knew that. And he ought to get up. If he didn't get up he would drown. Something hot and heavy, like a huge hand, was pressing him deeper into the brackish mire. He pondered. Perhaps it were better to drown. For a moment he allowed himself the luxury of the thought, then decided against it. Plenty of time later for drowning. First there was something he had ...
— One Purple Hope! • Henry Hasse
... extremity of a long flat. One of the officers, who happened to be very thirsty, placed such confidence in their friendly manner, that he allowed them to conduct him alone to a small well near the beach, but the water was too salt to be drunk. The force of habit is astonishing: natives drink this brackish fluid and find it very refreshing. The small quantity that suffices them is also surprising, though they will drink enormously when ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... inclines it to sink. During the first part of its journey, as we know, its great heat prevails over the other influence, and it flows as a surface-current. But, at a certain point in its northward route, it meets with the cold, brackish, ice-bearing currents that flow out of the arctic basin. Having lost much of its heat (though still possessing a great deal more than the arctic currents), the saltness of the Gulf Stream prevails; it dips below the polar ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... animal, like the ancient satyr. The road traversed a low swampy country, from which the rank moisture arose in a hot palpable mist, and crossed several shallow lagoons, from two to six feet deep of tepid, muddy, brackish water, some of them half a mile broad, and swarming with wild waterfowl. On these occasions, our friend the Satyr was signalled to make sail ahead on his donkey to pilot us; and as the water deepened, he would betake himself to ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... to find sweet water or alkali. Sweet, likely, since it was in the hills; Midnight was sure he hoped so. The best of these wells in the plains were salt and brackish. Privately, Midnight preferred the Forest Reserve. It was a pleasant, soft life in these pinewood pastures. Even if it was pretty dull for a good cow-horse after the Free Range, it was easier on old bones. And though Midnight was not insensible to the compliment ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... cucumbers and pomegranates, both of which we carried with us on the long desert stretches. Melons, too, the finest we have ever seen in any land, frequently obviated the necessity of drinking the strongly brackish water. ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... nitrous swarms are risen towards the Surface of the Sea in a dark Night, they cause such a shining light upon the Waves, as if the Sea was on fire. And being delivered from the brackish Water, and received into the open Air, those fiery and shining Meteors which fix upon the Masts and Sides of the Ships, and are only nitrous particles condensed by the circumambient Cold, and like that which ...
— The Shepherd of Banbury's Rules to Judge of the Changes of the Weather, Grounded on Forty Years' Experience • John Claridge
... no wonder, seeing what clean breaches the sea had been making over us all night—so that our bread was just reduced to pulp, and no more fit to eat than if it was so much putty. And our water was pretty nearly as bad; the sea had got at it, too, and made it that brackish that it tasted more like physic than water. However, we took a drink all round, and tried to persuade one another that it wouldn't be so very long before something would come ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Elisha, is the symbolical one. The new cruse and the salt are emblems of the divine gift which cleanses the human heart. Salt is an emblem of purification, and its emblematic meaning prevails here over its natural properties; for the last thing to cure a brackish spring was to put salt into it. The very inadequacy, as well as inappropriateness, of the remedy, points the miraculous and symbolical character of the whole. A jar full of salt could do little to a gushing fountain. But it figured ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... occupying the valley which lay to the west of us." ... "At the end of a mile in a south by east direction, we found ourselves on the banks of a river, the Hutt, from forty to fifty yards wide, which was running strong, and was brackish at its mouth," etc. Such was the appearance of the estuary and of the Hutt River in the ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... to light upon water. In this respect, however, my destiny was propitious. I quickly perceived water in the ruts. It trickled hither from the thicket on one side, and, pursuing it among the bushes, I reached the bubbling source. Though scanty and brackish, ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... non-professional, persons, who by consulting it may obtain an instant answer to a given question. Now although many of the explanations may be superfluous to some seamen, still they may lead others to a right understanding of various brackish expressions and phrases, without having to put crude queries, many of which those inquired of might be unable to solve. Nor is it only those afloat who are to be thus considered; all the empire is more or less connected ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
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