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More "Flat-bottomed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their shoulders to the bows of the old, flat-bottomed rowboat, with incredible exertions uprooting it from its ancient bed, and at length had ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... were enclosed on both sides, and cut to pieces; and some, who were made prisoners, gave information that the fleet, with their king, Cleonymus, was but three miles distant. Sending the captives into the nearest canton, to be kept under a guard, some soldiers got on board the flat-bottomed vessels, so constructed for the purpose of passing the shoals with ease; others embarked in those which had been lately taken from the enemy, and proceeding down the river, surrounded their unwieldy ships, which dreaded the unknown sands and flats more than they did the Romans, and which showed ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... over which the British Army fought. The Aisne valley runs generally east and west, and consists of a flat-bottomed depression, of width varying from half a mile to two miles, down which the river follows a winding course to the west, at some points near the southern slopes of the valley and at others near the northern. The high ground, both on the north ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... vegetables, and a great apple-tart. The things were mostly passed about from hand to hand, but the old butler kept a benignant eye upon the proceedings, and saw that I was well supplied. There was a good and simple claret in large flat-bottomed decanters, which most of the men drank. There was a good deal of talk of a lively kind. Father Payne was rather silent, though he struck in now and then, but his silence imposed no constraint on the party. He was pressed to tell a story for my benefit, which ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... second Bill passed both Houses, and the preliminary works were at once begun. The same year the Navy had taken a great harvest of prizes in the North Sea, one of which, a Prussian fishing dogger, flat-bottomed and rounded at the stem and stern, was purchased to be a floating lightship, and re-named the Pharos. By July 1807 she was overhauled, rigged for her new purpose, and turned into the lee of the Isle of May. 'It was proposed that the whole party should meet in her and pass the night; but she rolled ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... marsh was the best shooting ground I ever saw. It was my cousin's chief care, and he kept it as a preserve. Through the rushes that covered it, and made it rustling and rough, narrow passages had been cut, through which the flat-bottomed boats, impelled and steered by poles, passed along silently over dead water, brushing up against the reeds and making the swift fish take refuge in the weeds, and the wild fowl, with their pointed, ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... established, one at Riviere du Loup, one at Temisquata and one at the head of Madawaska river. The Marquis de la Jonquiere anticipated great advantages from the overland route of communication. He says in a letter to France, dated May 1, 1751: "We have made a road and are going to make some flat-bottomed conveyances so that in winter we will be able to transport by hauling over the snow the things most needed for the River St. John, and in summer we shall be able to make the transport by means of carts and flat-bottomed batteaux. These arrangements will be very useful supposing that ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... fleet awaited the party at the water's edge,—square-ended, flat-bottomed punts, sharp-bowed bateaux, long, graceful, dug-out canoes, and a commodious push-boat, with cabin and awning, whose motive power was poles. Elk River craft are as abundant as the log cabins on its banks, and their pilots are as numerous ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... tourists found absolutely novel; they could clearly or dimly recall from the past every other feature but the houseboats, which they instantly and gladly naturalized to their memories of it. The houses had in common the form of a freight-car set in a flat-bottomed boat; the car would be shorter or longer, with one, or two, or three windows in its sides, and a section of stovepipe softly smoking from its roof. The windows might be curtained or they might be bare, but apparently there was no other ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... adventures. Trelawny gives the following account of how he passed his days: he "was up at six or seven, reading Plato, Sophocles, or Spinoza, with the accompaniment of a hunch of dry bread; then he joined Williams in a sail on the Arno, in a flat-bottomed skiff, book in hand, and from thence he went to the pine-forest, or some out-of-the-way place. When the birds went to roost he returned home, and talked and read until midnight." The great wood of stone pines on the Pisan Maremma was his favourite ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... not numerous. The former often took passage on sailing vessels or batteaux, and if engaged in the lumber trade, as many of them were, they went down on board their rafts and returned in the batteaux. "These boats were flat-bottomed, and made of pine boards, narrowed at bow and stern, forty feet by six, with a crew of four men and a pilot, provided with oars, sails, and iron-shod poles for pushing. They continued to carry, in cargoes of five tons, ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... pushed with all speed. A large, flat-bottomed boat, the Willing, was fitted out with four guns and was sent down the Mississippi with forty men to ascend the Ohio and the Wabash to a place of rendezvous not far from the coveted post. By early February the depleted companies ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... head and shoulders appearing through the window, drawing her handkerchief over her bosom, which had been uncovered to give the baby its breakfast,—the said baby, or its immediate predecessor, sitting at the door, turning round to creep away on all fours;—a man building a flat-bottomed boat by the roadside: he talked with B—— about the Boundary question, and swore fervently in favor of driving the British "into hell's kitchen" by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... in winter quarters, while, with but three companions, he traversed the wilderness on foot, amidst the snows of winter, to Fort Frontenac, a distance of fifteen hundred miles. After an absence of several weeks, he returned with additional men and the means of building a large and substantial flat-bottomed boat, with which to descend the Illinois river to the Mississippi, and the ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... as a provincial work. The Cornwall Canal was also undertaken, but work was stopped when it was certain that Lower Canada would not respond to the aspirations of the West and improve that portion of the St. Lawrence within its direct control. Flat-bottomed bateaux and Durham boats were generally in use for the carriage of goods on the inland waters, and it was not until the completion of a canal system between the lakes and Montreal, after the Union, ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... their fathers and brothers had brought home with them from the other side of the world, from Africa and China. They spent nights on the sea on an open boat, and when they played truant it was always to go fishing. The cleverest of them had their own fishing-tackle and little flat-bottomed prams, that they had built themselves and caulked with oakum. They fished on their own account and caught pike, eels, and tench, which they sold to the wealthier ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... sharpie, a flat-bottomed sailing skiff, was originally developed for oyster fishing, about the middle ...
— The Migrations of an American Boat Type • Howard I. Chapelle
... school to begin, there were many closed cottages, for the happy careless freedom of the beach was gone; there is no happiness in floating across a placid lake in a flat-bottomed boat if you find yourself continually turning your head toward the shore, thinking that you hear ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... of some thirty men, women, and children recently dead. In other spaces close by were similar heaps, but these were of bleached bones on which the moonlight shone brightly—mementoes of former sacrifices. Quite close to the first pile of dead was a mooring-place where at least a dozen flat-bottomed boats had been secured, for their impress could yet be seen in the sand. Now they were gone with the exception of the canoe, which was kept there, evidently to facilitate the loading and launching ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... was heard among the rushes, and they started up as from sleep. The next moment a flat-bottomed boat appeared, heavy, hollowed out with no skill and with oars as small as sticks. A young girl, who had been picking water-lilies, rowed it. She had dark-brown hair, gathered in great braids, and big dark eyes; otherwise ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... were then to be sawn in a fore-and-aft direction so as to cut across the beams and thwarts and render the hull utterly useless. The accompanying sketch well illustrates the ingenuity which was displayed at this time by the men who were bent on running goods. What is here represented is a flat-bottomed boat, which perhaps might never have been discovered had it not been driven ashore near to Selsey Bill during the gales of the early part of 1837. The manner in which this craft was employed was to tow her for a short distance and then to cast her adrift. She was fitted with rowlocks for four ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... on Saturday morning than we either of us quite appreciated, to be in time for breakfast at La Crosse at 7 o'clock. La Crosse is a large settlement of sawmills on the banks of the Mississippi, for cutting up the wood brought down by the curiously flat-bottomed steamers worked by a paddle in stern the same width as the boat, and which push innumerable rafts of wood before them. We saw several of these steamers, and were detained for a long time on the bridge which crosses the Mississippi, said ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... issued in Louisbourg. '1st June, 1759. The Troops land no more. The flat-bottomed boats to be hoisted in, that the ships may be ready to sail at the first signal.' '2nd June, 1759. The Admiral purposes sailing the first fair wind.' On the 4th a hundred and forty-one sail weighed anchor ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... 56 B.C. the Veneti threw off the yoke and retained two of Caesar's officers as hostages. Caesar advanced upon Brittany in person, but found that he could make no headway while he was opposed by the powerful fleet of flat-bottomed boats, like floating castles, which the Veneti were so skilful in manoeuvring. Ships were hastily constructed upon the waters of the Loire, and a desperate naval engagement ensued, probably in the Gulf of Morbihan, which resulted ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... to keep rather quiet, yet she was able to move about to a certain extent and to see some of the sights of the place. She loved to sit by the Viga Canal and watch the life of the people ebb and flow along its tree-lined stretches—the queer old flat-bottomed and square-ended boats coming in on work days with vegetables and flowers from the so-called "floating gardens," and on days of fiesta transformed into pleasure craft with gay streamers and flags. ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... necessities and comforts of life. They had no Eastern market for their produce, for railways did not begin to be made till 1840, and it was many years before they crossed the Eastern mountains. An occasional cargo was taken on a flat-bottomed boat down the nearest creek, as a stream is called in America, into the Ohio and so by the innumerable windings of the Mississippi to New Orleans; but no return cargo could be brought up stream. Knives and axes were the ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... Talca we had to cross the Maule, a wide, deep river, with a swift current. The carriage was first put on board a large flat-bottomed boat, into which the horses then jumped, one by one, the last to embark tumbling down and rolling among the legs of the others. With a large oar the boat was steered across the stream, down which it drifted about 200 yards ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... year 1803, when King George had to tell his faithful subjects that the Treaty of Amiens was no better than waste-paper, and Bonaparte began to assemble his troops and flat-bottomed boats in the camp and off the coast by Boulogne with intent to invade us, public excitement in the twin towns of East and West Looe rose to a very painful pitch. Of this excitement was begotten the East and West Looe Volunteer Artillery, which the ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sounds, and a hundred and twenty forms plunge from the bathing-stage and quay into the water. The bright harbour is dotted with the heads of swimmers. Some backward boys are being taught to swim in a "swimming-tray," a thing like a flat-bottomed barge, sunk with its bottom about four feet below the surface. A capital place it is for teaching youngsters to swim. But all soon learn, and are free to join the others in sporting about and cutting capers in the water. A warning bugle of one ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... spent too much time with the good Father, and in various pottering about—making another landing at a lone cabin in search of fresh vegetables and further loading up our much-enduring craft with three flat-bottomed skiffs, for duck-shooting, marvellously lashed to the sides of the cabin deck—to do much more sailing that day. So at sunset we dropped anchor under the lee of Big Wood Cay, and, long before the moon rose, the whole ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... we saw coals, and in great quantity; the boats on which they are carried, are long, square flat-bottomed boxes. Although in a mountainous country, and with a poor soil, the houses of the peasants were here much better than any we have seen, though a good deal out of repair; they are high and comfortable, having many ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... I had seen from below hung in a flat-bottomed lantern just beyond the head of the stairs, and outside the entrance to one of two passages which appeared to lead to the back part of the house. Suspecting that M. de Bruhl's business had lain with mademoiselle, I guessed that the light had been placed for his convenience. With this ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... late Celtic race before the advent of the Romans. These lake dwellers used a canoe in order to reach the mainland, and this primitive boat has been discovered. It is evidently cut out of the stem of an oak, is flat-bottomed, and its dimensions are 17 feet long, 2 feet wide, and 1 foot deep. The prow is pointed, and has a hole, through which doubtless a rope was passed, in order to fasten it to the little harbour of ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... looked exactly like any other guide and coolie, and having much to think out, and sure thinking being anything but a rapid process with him, also because he did not wish to draw too much attention to his movements, he chose as a means of conveyance the ugly flat-bottomed public paddle-boat which floats unconcernedly down the Hoogli from Calcutta, through the bigger creeks of the Sunderbunds, and up the Pusaka River ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... ancient settlement of sea-faring men, who have foolishly changed the old Indian name of their place to Ipswich. The Mackinaw navigators have also given their name to a boat of peculiar form, sharp at both ends, swelled at the sides, and flat-bottomed, an excellent sea-boat, it is said, as it must be to live in the wild storms that surprise the ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... ahead. The dream if anything became a shade more clear. Well, if a man must dream, let him dream thus, vividly, turning the clock back to maids unbelievably quaint and winsome in old brocade. Sweet as an Irish smile, the face of this one, and as haunting. And beyond, an old flat-bottomed punt and a river, a ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... by overhauling the nets at the mouth of the river, and these were so prolific that the small flat-bottomed boat used by the fishermen was soon half filled with glittering salmon, varying from ten to fifteen pounds in weight. In order to avoid having his mocassins and nether garments soiled, Jack, who pulled the sculls, sat with bare feet and tucked-up trousers. ...
— Fort Desolation - Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land • R.M. Ballantyne
... armada was making ready in the southern ports of the Spanish dominions, the Prince of Parma, with almost incredible toil and skill, collected a squadron of war-ships at Dunkirk, and his flotilla of other ships and of flat-bottomed boats for the transport to England of the picked troops, which were designed to be the main instruments in subduing England. Thousands of workmen were employed, night and day, in the construction of these vessels, in the ports of Flanders and Brabant. One hundred of ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... solitude in which she sat immured. When Charlie came back, there was going to be a change. She repeated that to herself with determination. Between whiles she rambled about in the littered clearing, prowled along the beaches, and paddled now and then far outside the bay in a flat-bottomed skiff, restless, full of plans. So far as she saw, she would have to face some city alone, but she viewed that prospect with a total absence of the helpless feeling which harassed her so when she first took train for her brother's camp. She had passed through what she termed a culinary inferno. ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... from the district (Icolo e Bengo) which it traverses. Here was once a busy settlement much frequented by shipping, which thus escaped harbour dues. The mosquito-haunted stream, clear in the dries, and, as usual, muddy during the rains, supports wild duck, and, carried some ten miles in "dongos" or flat-bottomed boats, supplies the capital of Angola ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... rutted in places where the sluicing rains had driven hard across the hills; soft with sand in places where the fierce winds had swept the open. For awhile the thin, wobbly track of a wagon meandered along ahead of him, then turned off up a flat-bottomed draw and was lost in the sagebrush. Some prospector not so lucky as he, thought Casey, with swift, soon forgotten sympathy. A coyote ran up a slope toward him, halted with forefeet planted on a rock, and stared at him, ears perked like an inquisitive dog. Casey stopped, eased his rifle out ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... destination, which we reached. in another hour. The hills had closed in around us as we advanced; and when we reached a ruinous shed which had been erected for the accommodation of visitors, we found ourselves in a flat-bottomed valley about a quarter of a mile wide, bounded by precipitous and often overhanging limestone rocks. So far the ground had been cultivated, but it now became covered with bushes ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... no easy job, I can tell you. We worked like beavers to get the cave the way we wanted it; but when it was done, it was what you may call hunky-dory. Bill Drake's father had a flat-bottomed boat that we got into and rowed along shore. We rigged up a sail; but there was something the matter with it, and it kept flopping about, and wasn't much good, but anyhow it looked nice. We never went far from shore. We weren't afraid, ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... crooked, and bordered on both sides by dense forests, and as no steam-tug could be had, the captain did not care to attempt to carry the schooner any farther up. Mr. Elmer had therefore chartered a large, flat-bottomed lighter, or scow, to carry to Wakulla the cargo of household goods, tools, building material, etc., that they had brought ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... thousand volunteers of the most distinguished families, and eight thousand sailors. In addition there was assembled in the coast districts of the Netherlands an army of thirty-four thousand men, for whose transportation to England a great number of flat-bottomed vessels had been procured. These were to venture upon the sea as soon as the Armada was in position ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... fir trees over six inches in diameter and twenty feet in length. A twelve foot plank formed the blade which was bolted obliquely to one end and the whole balanced on a pin. They were clumsy looking enough, these flat-bottomed barges, but the only type of boat that could ride the rough water and skim the rocks so ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... Pecetti—a stout, well-built man forty years old, with keen black eyes and curling dark hair and beard, and a great fisherman with line and net. He lived near the inlet, and had the kind of boat commonly used in these shallow waters—flat-bottomed, broad in the beam, with centre-board and one mast set well forward. He had dug a peck or two of the large round clams, and two or three throws of his cast-net as we came through the creek procured a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... across the streams swollen with winter rains and melted snow. On these excursions he cut down trees that hid a view he thought she would have liked, he cut paths over which she might have walked. Or he sat idly in a flat-bottomed scow in the lake and made a pretence of fishing. The loneliness of the lake and the isolation of the boat suited his humor. He did not find it true that misery loves company. At least to human beings he preferred his companions of ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... whose joints had doubtless been duly boiled, a hundred thousand years ago, by the intelligent producer of those identical sun-dried fleshpots; and M. Joly, of Toulouse, has in his possession portions of an irregularly circular, flat-bottomed vessel, from the cave of Nabrigas, on which the finger-marks of the hand that moulded the clay are still clearly distinguishable on the baked earthenware. That is the great merit of pottery, viewed as an historical document; it retains its shape and peculiarities unaltered through countless ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... have already perfected it within the distant of six or seven miles. The work is going forward, and I believe will be completed next summer. This being perfected, there will be a good navigation for large flat-bottomed boats, within one mile of the coal-bank, to which a good road may be had on the side ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... Even Juniper, the dog, never woke up, though Yulee was strongly tempted to add him to the party of castaways. They passed through the garden gate, and crossing the road walked through the pasture, down the path that led to the shore of Clearwater. There, tied to a stake, was their father's flat-bottomed boat, with keel-boats near by. Yulee chose the flat-bottomed boat, and they proceeded to put on board their ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... vengeful, the Venetian fleet stole out to sea on the evening of December twenty-first. There were thirty-four galleys, sixty smaller armed vessels, and hundreds of flat-bottomed boats. Pisani was in the rear, towing two heavy, old hulks, laden with stones, to sink in the entrance of the harbor and bottle up the fleet, even as the Americans were to sink the Merrimac in the Harbor of ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... The air was motionless and the temperature mild, the ground covered with grass and shrubs and flowers, over which hovered clouds of bright-winged butterflies. Low down in the hollow was a still and silent pool, and though, so far as I could make out, it had no exit, two large flat-bottomed boats and a couple of canoes were made fast to the side. Hard by was a hut of sun-dried bricks, in which were slung ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... rose and in desperation drove him from their midst. Here, after some months devoted to recuperation and being joined by reinforcements from Cuba, he prepared to lay siege once more to the Aztec capital. Part of this preparation consisted in building a number of small, flat-bottomed boats in pieces, so that they could be transported over a mountainous district, and put together on the shore of Lake Texcoco, thus enabling him to complete the investment of the water-begirt city. It sounds ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... first consul appeard to intimate, preparations were resumed on the French coast for the invasion of Great Britain. Boulogne and every harbour along the coast was crowded with flat-bottomed boats, and the shores covered with camps of the men designed apparently to fill them. We need not at present dwell on the preparations for attack, or those which the English adopted in defence, as we shall have occasion to notice ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... sweet and clean, with people coming and going—men and women and children—and the crisp yard-long loaves carried away in shallow baskets on many a fine Norman head in the old seaport of Dieppe. And always the Little Trout was by his side, even when the great-uncle placed him in one of the huge flat-bottomed bread baskets and drew the two up and down in front of the shop. Then all was dim again; so dim that except for the lap and backward sucking of the waters against the sea wall, whereon he leaned, he had scarcely recalled a ship ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... father's old "slicker." Henry cut it into suitable shape and nailed and lashed it securely to the runners and to the table top. Now he had a flat-bottomed sled with a rising front to it that would serve. He smiled as he looked at the queer contrivance and said aloud: "I wish Mr. Lesher could ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Sometimes, however, they have an interest in the voyage the same as whalers, but usually, I understand, are paid from $40 to $75 for a season, which means three months unless sooner filled. The men do not fish from the deck of the vessel, but from little flat-bottomed dories, each man paddling his own boat and changing its location to suit his whim. When brought on board the vessel the fish are immediately cleaned, split open and salted right down in the hold, without the formality of putting them ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... Company. In the use of these tools they were so dexterous that everything they manufactured was done with a neatness which could not be excelled by the most expert mechanic. These northern canoes were flat-bottomed, with straight, upright sides, and sharp prow and peak. The stern part of the canoe was wider than the rest in order to receive the baggage. The average length of the canoe would be from twelve to thirteen feet, and the breadth in the widest part ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... runs generally east and west, and consists of a flat-bottomed depression of width varying from half a mile to two miles, down which the river follows a winding course to the west, at some points near the southern slopes of the valley and at others near the northern. The high ground both on the north and south of ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... your fishing-craft coming home for their Sunday, and showed them how to take the beach, partly to confirm my own suspicions. There is no other landing on all the south coast, this side of Hayling Island, fit to be compared with it for the use of flat-bottomed craft, such as most of Boney's are. And remember the set of the tide, which makes the fortunes of your fishermen. To be sure, he knows nothing of that himself; but he has sharp rogues about him. If they once ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... La Crosse on the Mississippi on Tuesday evening at eight o'clock. At La Crosse we embarked on the steamer Milwaukee for St. Paul's. These large flat-bottomed steamers are quite an institution on these western rivers. Drawing but a few inches of water, they glide over sandbars where the water is very shallow, and, swinging in against the shore, land and receive passengers and freight where wharves are unknown, or where, if they ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... hour. Mr. Plumacher says that the petroleum is of very good quality, its density being that which the British market requires in petroleum imported from the United States. The river, up to the junction of the Tara and Sardinarte, is navigable during the entire year for flat-bottomed craft of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... spend time in unavailing regrets. His quick eye instantly, detected the flaw which might soon be fatal. In the very same night of the loss of Liefkenshoek, he sent as strong a party as could be spared, with plenty of sappers and miners, in flat-bottomed boats across from Kalloo. As the morning dawned, an improvised fortress, with the Spanish flag waving above its bulwarks, stood on the broken end of the dyke. That done, he ordered one of the two captains who ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... has not altered for centuries; and the northern European nations, Danes and Dutch, still sail the salt seas in this flat-bottomed salt-cellar of a ship; although, in addition to these, they have vessels of a ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... orchard. Neither is it without a degree and kind of picturesqueness, both in its nearness and in the distance, when a blue gleam from its surface, among the green meadows and woods, seems like an open eye in Earth's countenance. Pleasant it is, too, to behold a little flat-bottomed skiff gliding over its bosom, which yields lazily to the stroke of the paddle, and allows the boat to go against its current almost as freely as with it. Pleasant, too, to watch an angler, as he strays ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... the family at the Hotel Beau Rivage, Ouchy, Lausanne, facing Lake Leman. He decided to make a floating trip down the Rhone, and he engaged Joseph Very, a courier that had served him on a former European trip, to accompany him. The courier went over to Bourget and bought for five dollars a flat-bottomed boat and engaged its owner as their pilot. It was the morning of September 20, when they began their floating-trip down the beautiful historic river that flows through the loveliest and most romantic region of France. He wrote daily to Mrs. Clemens, and his letters tell the story of that drowsy, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... aweigh, than the deck became a scene of activity. The breeze was stiff, and it enabled me to show the Wallingford off to advantage among the dull, flat-bottomed craft of that day. There were reaches in which the wind favoured us, too; and, by the time the ladies reappeared, we were up among the islands, worming our way through the narrow channels with rapidity and skill. To me, ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... chanced to be on Lake Winnipeg at the mouth of the great Saskatchewan river—which, by countless portages and interlinking lakes, is connected with all the vast water systems of the North—would have seen the fur traders sweeping down in huge flotillas of canoes and flat-bottomed Mackinaw boats—exultant after running the Grand Rapids, where the waters of the Great Plains converge to a width of some hundred rods and rush nine miles over rocks the size of a house in ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... priest, "that if the play were a great success a line of flat-bottomed steamers might ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... another fleet at Cairo, and we were informed that we were just in time to see the first essay made at testing the utility of this armada. It consisted of no less than thirty-eight mortar-boats, each of which had cost 1700l. These mortar-boats were broad, flat-bottomed rafts, each constructed with a deck raised three feet above the bottom. They were protected by high iron sides supposed to be proof against rifle-balls, and, when supplied, had been furnished each with a little boat, a rope, and four rough sweeps or oars. They had no other ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... is used for short excursions to sea, and is wall-sided and flat-bottomed; the Pahie for longer voyages, and is bow-sided and sharp-bottomed. The Ivahahs are all of the same figure, but of different sizes, and used for different purposes: Their length is from seventy-two feet to ten, but the breadth is by no means in proportion; for those of ten feet are about a foot ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... the slanting sunlight, or the refraction from the wonderfully illumined water, I cannot say, but, whatever the cause, I found it difficult to focus my sight properly upon the flying apparition. It seemed, however, to be a man standing upright in a sort of flat-bottomed boat, steering with a long oar, and being carried down the opposite shore at a tremendous pace. He apparently was looking across in our direction, but the distance was too great and the light too uncertain for us to make out very ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... three separate gorges, after duly crowning the heights above, were to converge from the centre, left, and right upon what we will call the Afghan army, then stationed towards the lower extremity of a flat-bottomed valley. Thus it will be seen that three sides of the valley practically belonged to the English, while the fourth was strictly Afghan property. In the event of defeat the Afghans had the rocky hills to fly to, where the fire from the guerrilla tribes in aid would cover their retreat. In the event ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... a flat-bottomed boat, enjoying the soft melancholy Italian evening. Not a human did I see; nor had I encountered one on my slow voyage from the Middle Seas. In meditation I pondered the ultimate wisdom of Confucius and smiled at the folly of the white barbarians who had tried to show us a new god, a new ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... stature, and capable of performing the voyage with eclat, she was ordered to attend me. She was called Sphinx, and was one of the most tremendous though magnificent figures I ever beheld. She was harnessed with superb trappings to a large flat-bottomed boat, in which was placed an edifice of wood, exactly resembling Westminster Hall. Two balloons were placed over it, tackled by a number of ropes to the boat, to keep up a proper equilibrium, and prevent it from overturning, or filling, from ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... usual, very industrious and having erected the iron magazines, they were now engaged in building a flat-bottomed barge to assist in transporting corn from the islands south of Regiaf. They had not been in the best health, but they nevertheless continued to work with an energy and spirit that were a delightful contrast to the sluggishness and apathy of ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... the River Danube, in a very pleasant and agreeable manner, in a kind of Wooden House mounted on a flat-bottomed Barge, and not unlike a Noah's Ark. 'Twas most convenient, and even handsomely laid out, with Parlours, and with Drawing-Rooms, and Kitchens and Stoves, and a broad planked Promenade over all railed ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... conducting in the Netherlands. But on Philip's side at least these negotiations were simply delusive. The Spanish pride had been touched to the quick. Amidst the exchange of protocols Parma gathered seventeen thousand men for the coming invasion, collected a fleet of flat-bottomed transports at Dunkirk, and waited impatiently for the Armada to protect his crossing. The attack of Drake however, the death of its first admiral, and the winter storms delayed the fleet from sailing. What held it back ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... its branches should trail over an old, lichened and weather-stained stone wall, dropping their fruit into the highway for thirsty pedestrians. There should be a little path running athwart it, down toward the lake and the old flat-bottomed boat, whose bilge is scattered with the black and shriveled remains of angleworms used for bait. In warm August afternoons the sweet savor of ripening drifts warmly on the air, and there rises the drowsy hum of wasps exploring the windfalls that ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... one of the surviving soldiers, took out all the rotten pieces, and, by adding on the portion of another canoe, with eighteen days' hard labour they changed the Bambarra canoe into his Majesty's schooner "Joliba." Her length was forty feet, breadth six feet; and, being flat-bottomed, she drew only one foot of water when loaded. In this craft he and his surviving companions embarked on the 16th of November, on which day his journal closes. He intended next morning to commence his adventurous voyage down the Joliba. Besides Park and Lieutenant Martyn, two Europeans only ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... A flat-bottomed boat was tied to a log, and Sim Johnson was just in the act of casting it loose, when the detectives ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... conductor, who with long strides led the way along the wharf. Not a word was spoken till they reached the side of the boat. This was not a flat such as now are in general use, but a large boat some forty feet in length by fourteen wide, almost flat-bottomed, and capable of carrying a cargo of eight or ten tons of goods. In the stern was a little cabin some eight feet long for the captain and his mate. In front was a similar structure for the four negroes who formed ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... longer visible. The swelling tide had circled round through some unseen channel, and was creeping now into the land by many creeks and narrow ways. She herself was upon an island, cut off from the dry land by a smoothly flowing tidal way more than twenty yards across. Along it a man in a flat-bottomed boat was punting his way towards her. She stood and waited for him, admiring his height, and the long powerful strokes with which he propelled his clumsy craft. He was very tall, and against the flat background his height seemed ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... where the passing and repassing of ships was very great, there was a ferry instead of a bridge. In these cases there was a flat-bottomed boat to pass to and from one side to the other, with a pretty little landing of stone steps at each end. Rollo was much entertained by these ferries. He said it was crossing a street by water. And it was exactly that, and no more. The place where he first crossed one of these ferries was precisely ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... rattling sound startled him. Then he remembered. A skiff was moored there, and he had brushed against the chain that led from the bow of the boat to the stump of a willow higher up on the bank. The man had seen the skiff,—a rude, flat-bottomed little craft, known to the Ozark natives as a John-boat,—just before sunset that evening. But there had been no boat in his thoughts when he had come to answer the call of the river, and in the preoccupation of his mind, as he stood there in the ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... pairs of hands and a head of cast-iron, for, not content with blowing through a big conch-shell, he must needs stand up to it, swaying with the sway of the flat-bottomed dory, and send a grinding, thuttering shriek through the fog. How long this entertainment lasted, Harvey could not remember, for he lay back terrified at the sight of the smoking swells. He fancied he heard a gun and a horn and shouting. ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... bundled out of the rolling ship into some huge flat-bottomed boats, like coal-barges, and even so, were grated and ground several times by the churning waves on the ragged reefs beneath us: and, just as I was enjoying the see-saw, and trying to comfort two poor drenched women-kind who were terribly afraid of sharks, a huge, cream-coloured breaker came ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... milk in clean bottles or fruit cans, filling to a uniform level, closing bottles tightly with a cork or cover. If pint and quart cans are used at the same time, an inverted bowl will equalize the level. Set these in a flat-bottomed tin pail and fill with warm water to same level as milk. An inverted pie tin punched with holes will serve as a stand on which to place the bottles during the ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell
... intricate surrounding network of pools and streams—holding its communications and carrying its produce by water instead of by land—began to present themselves in closer and closer succession. Nets appeared on cottage pailings; little flat-bottomed boats lay strangely at rest among the flowers in cottage gardens; farmers' men passed to and fro clad in composite costume of the coast and the field, in sailors' hats, and fishermen's boots, and plowmen's smocks; and even yet the low-lying ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... army, and have conquered our island. All over England people got ready. All the men learnt something of how to be soldiers, and made themselves into regiments of volunteers; and careful watch was kept against the quantities of flat-bottomed boats that Bonaparte had made ready to bring his troops across the English Channel. But no one had ships and sailors like the English; and, besides, they had the greatest sea-captain who ever lived, whose name was Horatio Nelson. When the French went under Napoleon to try ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... exchanged our horse for four fat and humpy bullocks, who managed, with very great labour and difficulty, to drag us through the heavy sands of the river-bed down to the edge of the water. Here we were shipped on board a flat-bottomed boat, with a high peaked bow; and, after an immensity of hauling and grunting, we were fairly launched into the stream, and poled across to the opposite shore. The water appeared quite shallow, and the ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... peacocks. There they were in the road before me, three of them, and tailless, brown, speckled birds, with dark-blue necks and ragged crests. They stepped archly over the filigree snow, and their bodies moved with slow motion, like small, light, flat-bottomed boats. I admired them, they were curious. Then a gust of wind caught them, heeled them over as if they were three frail boats, opening their feathers like ragged sails. They hopped and skipped with discomfort, to get out of the draught ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence
... alongside cracked their whips and uttered strange cries; the carts rocked and swayed as the huge wheels churned through the mud and water. As the last light faded we reached the small patches of dry land at the landing, where the flat-bottomed side-wheel steamboat was moored to the bank. The tired horses and oxen were turned loose to graze. Water stood in the corrals, but the open shed was on dry ground. Under it the half-clad, wild-looking ox-drivers and horse- herders slung their hammocks; and close by they lit ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... quiet until yesterday about noon, when several of the ships got under way, and proceeded towards Portsmouth, which place I have no doubt they intend to attack by water or by land or by both, as they have many flat-bottomed boats with them for the purpose of landing their troops. As I too well know the weakness of that garrison, I am in great pain for the consequences, there being great quantities of merchandise, the property of French merchants and others in this State, at that place, ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... their journey by the tides: lest, finding low water in the rivers, they should have to wade to the ferry-boats waist deep in mud; and going down the steep hillside, through oak and ash and hazel copse, they entered, as many as could, a great flat-bottomed barge, and were rowed across some quarter of a mile, to land under a jutting crag, and go up again by a similar path into ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... the world has been so often painted as that of Scheveningen—ever since the painting of landscape seemed a worthy pursuit. James Maris' pictures of Scheveningen's wet sand, grey sea, and huge flat-bottomed ships must run into scores; Mesdag's too. Perhaps it was the artists that prevailed on the fishermen to wear crimson knickerbockers—the note of warm ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... lengthy operation being interrupted by a change of policy at home, it would appear that the efforts of commanders should be, to induce the tribesmen to assume the offensive. On this point I must limit my remarks to the flat-bottomed valleys of Swat and Bajaur. To coerce a tribe like the Mamunds, a mixed brigade might camp at the entrance to the valley, and as at Inayat Kila, entrench itself very strongly. The squadron of cavalry could patrol the valley daily ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... flat-bottomed bowl, 6 inches in height, 11 inches in diameter at the top, and 8 at the base. Although made without a wheel, this vessel is quite symmetrical. The thickness is from one-fourth to one-half of an inch. The material has been a dark ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of a Portion of the Collections Made During the Field Season of 1881 • William H. Holmes
... young cows with udders appallingly distended. But our attention was momentarily distracted from them by the sight of eight full-sized bronze pails, finer than those at any public well in Reate or Consentia, which hung on pegs by the door, four on each side of it. They were flat-bottomed, bulged, but narrowed at the rim so that no water would splash out in carrying. The rims were ornamented with chased or cast patterns, scallops, leaves, egg and dart and wall of Troy: four patterns, showing that they were pairs. ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... fearful snowstorm, blowing across the Channel, raged on the flat, sandy coast of a tiny village in Kent, and a small smack, laden with oranges, stranded on the sands near by. In these shallow waters only a flat-bottomed lifeboat of a simplified type can be kept, and to launch it during such a storm was to face an almost certain disaster. And yet the men went out, fought for hours against the wind, and the boat capsized twice. One man was drowned, the others were cast ashore. One of these last, a refined coastguard, ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... journey from Lyons to Marseilles in one of the many flat-bottomed steamers would be very enjoyable, and a pleasant break to the ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... The wind changed. The storm appeared to cease. A breeze sprang up from the south, which headed back the surges from the French shore. William gave orders to embark. The tents were struck. The baggage of the soldiers was sent on board the transport vessels. The men themselves, crowded into great flat-bottomed boats, passed in masses to the ships from the shore. The spectators reappeared, and covered the cliffs and promontories near, to witness the final scene. The sails were hoisted, and the vast armament moved out upon ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... this part of the coast, declared himself willing to guide us. The water in these fiord channels is generally deep and safe, and though at wide intervals rocks rise abruptly here and there, lacking only a few feet in height to enable them to take rank as islands, the flat-bottomed Cassiar drew but little more water than a duck, so that even the most timid raised no objection on this score. The cylinder-heads of our engines were the main source of anxiety; provided they could be kept on all might yet be well. But in this matter ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... were sailors and fishermen. They were ingenious and industrious, and they carried on a considerable trade in the Bay of Biscay and in the British Channel. They had ships capable of facing the heavy seas which rolled in from the Atlantic, flat-bottomed, with high bow and stern, built solidly of oak, with timbers a foot thick, fastened with large iron nails. They had iron chains for cables. Their sails—either because sailcloth was scarce, or because they thought canvas too weak for the strain of the winter storms—were manufactured ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... the S——en and the P—— is full of new boats, which are called 'baidaka.' These 'baidaka' are small, constructed to hold three or four men. The boats are flat-bottomed and steady. The scouts take the 'baidaka' on their shoulders, and as soon as they come to deep water launch their craft and row to the other side. Small oars or paddles are used, and punting operations ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... fright however, their long waiting, the blazing fire, and being unaccustomed to boats at night, the poor scared horses refused to enter the boat, The boats are flat-bottomed or broadly bulging, with a bamboo platform strewn with grass in the centre. As a rule, they have no protecting rails, and even in the daytime, when the current is strong and eddies numerous, they are very dangerous for horses. At all events, the poor brutes would ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... William Tremlett, who had not enjoyed a sound night's rest since the First Consul's menace had become known, pricked up his ears at sound of this subject, and inquired if anybody had seen the terrible flat-bottomed boats that the enemy were to ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... the present moment the negro was placing in the water a curious-looking little raft that he had brought on one shoulder from its place of concealment. It was something like a flat-bottomed scow, the sides being just high enough to prevent whatever cargo it carried, from rolling off ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... rivers in their wagon boxes and very few lost their lives in doing so. The difference between one of these prairie-schooner wagon boxes and that of a scow-shaped, flat-bottomed boat is that the wagon box has the ribs on the outside, while in a boat they are ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... discovered a grave on a little knoll some distance back from the water, with a pine board stuck up at its head bearing the name of Hook. The rapid that had apparently caused the disaster told by these objects we easily ran. The unfortunates had attempted the descent in flat-bottomed boats, that shipped much water and toppled over with the slightest provocation. They had followed Powell on his former trip, declaring that if he could go down the river so could they, but they learned their mistake and paid dearly ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... its banks, for it was yet seven months before the first showing of the June rise. Here were the frail papyrus bari, constructed like a raft and no more concave than a long bow; the huge cedar-masted cangias, flat-bottomed and slow-moving; the ancient dhow with its shapeless tent-cabin aft; the ponderous cattle barges and freight vessels built of rough-hewn logs; the light passenger skiffs; and lastly, the sumptuous pleasure-boats. These were elaborate and beautiful, painted and paneled, ornamented with garlands ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... of the Seine is always laden with queer, picturesque craft, and just below the window by which she sat was moored a flat-bottomed barge which evidently served as dwelling place for a very happy little family. One end of the barge had been turned into a kind of garden, there was even a vine-covered arbour, under which two tiny children were now ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... pretty on the lake. Phillida will like it. But I guess I'll keep a homely old flat-bottomed punt out of sight around some corner for work. The other craft goes over too prompt for jobs like mine, and don't hold enough. I'm going to fetch my rifle, now. I'd admire to blow ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... some one. Betty looked out of the window and behold a dismal prospect enough. The bank shelved gradually down to the river, which at this point was narrow, and between them and the other shore stretched a mixture of snow and ice; she could distinguish the flat-bottomed boat used for ferrying purposes stuck fast almost in the middle of ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... large ships are, first, great draught. Although draught need not be increased in the same degree as length, a stable and seaworthy model cannot be very shallow or flat-bottomed. Hence the harbors in which very large vessels can manoeuvre are few, and there must be a light-draught class of vessels to encounter enemies of light draught, although they cannot be expected to cope very successfully with fast and heavy vessels. Second, a given sum expended ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a keele of sea-coale. A keel was a flat-bottomed boat, used in the northeast of England, for loading and carrying coal. Afterwards the word was also used of the amount of coal a keel would carry, i. e. 8 chaldrons, or 21 tons 4 cwt. Sea-coal was the original term for the fossil coal borne from Newcastle to ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... Tumbuddra, and of its suburb Annegundi on the northern bank, is occupied by great bare piles and bosses of granite and granitoidal gneiss, separated by rocky defiles and narrow rugged valleys encumbered by precipitated masses of rock. Some of the larger flat-bottomed valleys are irrigated by aqueducts from the river.... The peaks, tors, and logging-stones of Bijanugger and Annegundi indent the horizon in picturesque confusion, and are scarcely to be distinguished from the more artificial ruins ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... feudal possession of his forefathers. Everything was for the Febrers which was flung upon the mole from the high-forecastled galleons, from Oriental cocas with their massive hulls, from fragile lighters, lateen-sailed settees, flat-bottomed tafureas, and other vessels of the epoch; and in the great columnar hall of La Lonja, near the Solomonic pillars which disappeared within the shadows of the vaulted ceilings, his ancestors in regal majesty used to receive voyagers from the Orient who came clad in wide breeches and red ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... little to be learned about a skiff and its management which he did not acquire. He knew how many pounds a boat ought to weigh, and every detail respecting it. In the "Autocrat" he says,—"My present fleet on the Charles River consists of three rowboats: 1. A small flat-bottomed skiff of the shape of a flat-iron, kept mainly to lend to boys. 2. A fancy 'dory' for two pairs of sculls, in which I sometimes go out with my young folks. 3. My own particular water-sulky, a 'skeleton' or 'shell' race-boat, twenty-two ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... made its living by collecting nickels for the slide. Indeed, one might think that a part of the city had come bouncing down the slope, for now it lay resting at the bottom, sprawled somewhat for its ease. Or it might appear—if your belief runs on discarded lines—that the whole flat-bottomed earth had been fouled in its celestial course and now lay aslant upon its beam with its cargo shifted ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... going to be a change. She repeated that to herself with determination. Between whiles she rambled about in the littered clearing, prowled along the beaches, and paddled now and then far outside the bay in a flat-bottomed skiff, restless, full of plans. So far as she saw, she would have to face some city alone, but she viewed that prospect with a total absence of the helpless feeling which harassed her so when she first took train ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... circled round through some unseen channel, and was creeping now into the land by many creeks and narrow ways. She herself was upon an island, cut off from the dry land by a smoothly flowing tidal way more than twenty yards across. Along it a man in a flat-bottomed boat was punting his way towards her. She stood and waited for him, admiring his height, and the long powerful strokes with which he propelled his clumsy craft. He was very tall, and against the flat background his height seemed almost abnormal. As soon ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hatchee-matchees, came to announce the Prince's approach, and in about half an hour afterwards he was brought in a closed sedan-chair to the boat, through a concourse of people, to whom he seemed as much a show as to us. The state boat was a large flat-bottomed barge, covered with an awning of dark blue, with white stars on it, the whole having much the appearance of a hearse. It was preceded by two boats bearing flags with an inscription upon them, having in the bow an officer of justice carrying a lackered bamboo, and in the ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... boats expressly constructed for the navigation of these perilous channels. The largest of these, called, it is not known why, the Durham boat, is used both here and in the rapids of the Mohawk. It is long, shallow, and nearly flat-bottomed. The chief instrument of steerage is a pole ten feet long, shod with iron, and crossed at short intervals with small bars of wood like the feet of a ladder. The men place themselves at the bow, two on ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... their whips and uttered strange cries; the carts rocked and swayed as the huge wheels churned through the mud and water. As the last light faded we reached the small patches of dry land at the landing, where the flat-bottomed side-wheel steamboat was moored to the bank. The tired horses and oxen were turned loose to graze. Water stood in the corrals, but the open shed was on dry ground. Under it the half-clad, wild-looking ox-drivers and horse- herders slung their hammocks; and close by they lit a fire and ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... last long enough to serve our turn as we hoped. The Governor trusted it would have destroyed the whole fleet; but from what I can learn, nothing was really lost except a few of the flat-bottomed landing boats used in the disembarkation of the troops. The English are certainly notable sailors; but it is with her soldiers that we shall have more directly to deal. Still, I wish we could have sunk her ships; it would have placed her on the ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... streets. The Yaque del Sur, or Neiba River, receives several copious affluents, the largest one being the San Juan River. Much of the lumber exported at Barahona is floated down the Yaque and the river is navigable about 20 miles for flat-bottomed boats, though rapids and ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... plan to make a carefully concerted attack upon this stronghold as soon as summer weather conditions permitted. For this purpose he had strengthened his squadron at Syracuse by purchasing a number of flat-bottomed gunboats with which he hoped to engage the enemy in the shallow waters about Tripoli while his larger vessels shelled the town and batteries. He arrived off the African coast about the middle of July but encountered adverse weather, so that for several weeks he could ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... stalk; these are placed upright in the tubs, side by side, so that the sap may flow out of the wound. Sometimes a longitudinal incision is made from top to bottom of the leaf, to facilitate the discharge. The crude juice thus obtained is placed in shallow flat-bottomed receivers, and exposed to the sun until it has acquired sufficient consistency to be packed in gourds for exportation. In preparing the coarser kind, or horse aloes, the leaves are cut into junks and thrown into the tubs, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... bank of the Shenandoah. The negro had told him that he was about thirty miles from Harper's Ferry, which he knew was in possession of General Patterson's forces. Attached to a tree on the shore was a small flat-bottomed boat, which attracted the attention of the soldier boy. Tom was accustomed to boats, and the sight of this one suggested a change of programme, for it would be much easier to float down the stream, than to walk the thirty miles. This was a point which needed no argument; and unfastening the ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... awful noise and perspiring confusion. I have travelled, in so-called comfort, as a first-class passenger to Africa. I know all about it. Generally, the ship cannot get within quarter of a mile of the shore. On one side of it lies a fleet of flat-bottomed lighters manned by glistening and excited negroes. On board is a donkey-engine working a derrick with a Tophetical clatter. Vast bales and packing cases are lifted from the holds. A dingily white-suited officer stands by with greasy invoice sheets, while another at ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... jars on their heads mounted the steep river bank. Here and there were irregular groups of mud huts, intersected by crooked alleys and surrounded by date palms, little villages where doves were flying overhead and from which came the sound of barking dogs to mingle with the puffs of the steamer. Flat-bottomed boats freighted with sugar cane lay with drooping sails in a noonday calm, or, later in the day, sped before the evening breeze. Near the pottery towns the river banks were dotted with yellow water jars in scattered piles ready for shipment to the city market. Immense ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... boys, he was fond of fishing. He used to go out in an old scow, or flat-bottomed boat, on a river near his home. He and another boy would push the scow along with poles. But Robert said, There is an easier way to make this boat go. I can put a pair of paddle-wheels on her, and then we can sit comfortably on the seat and turn the wheels by a crank. He tried ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... was motionless and the temperature mild, the ground covered with grass and shrubs and flowers, over which hovered clouds of bright-winged butterflies. Low down in the hollow was a still and silent pool, and though, so far as I could make out, it had no exit, two large flat-bottomed boats and a couple of canoes were made fast to the side. Hard by was a hut of sun-dried bricks, in which were slung three ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... sea. Bands of English rovers, outdriven by stress of fight, had long found a home there, and lived as they could by sack of vessel or coast. Chance has preserved for us in a Sleswick peat-bog one of the war-keels of these early pirates. The boat is flat-bottomed, seventy feet long and eight or nine feet wide, its sides of oak boards fastened with bark ropes and iron bolts. Fifty oars drove it over the waves with a freight of warriors whose arms, axes, swords, lances, and knives, were ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... dogs, cats, and rats, down to the bamboo wharf where the force was to embark. Several barges, equipped with large, square sails made of matting, could be dimly made out by the starlight riding in mid-stream, and in these the cargo had been placed, while two large flat-bottomed boats were moored alongside the landing, ready for the conveyance of ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... said; "but I am particularly desirous of a good night's rest, and I never can sleep with anything on my mind. So I came over here to talk business. By-the-by, I should have come over here long ago, if any one had had the sense to give me a hint that I had only to cross a muddy stream, in a flat-bottomed boat, in order to see a face like that—" She nodded towards ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... miles farther up the river. As the river above St. Mark's is quite crooked, and bordered on both sides by dense forests, and as no steam-tug could be had, the captain did not care to attempt to carry the schooner any farther up. Mr. Elmer had therefore chartered a large, flat-bottomed lighter, or scow, to carry to Wakulla the cargo of household goods, tools, building material, etc., that they had ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... the breach of her light gun with a couple of No. 8 cartridges, and warily skirted the brink. In places the pools were so shallow that a man might have waded knee deep from island to island; but the soft mud was treacherous, and flat-bottomed canoes were generally hired at Panipara by sportsmen who went duck-shooting. As Honor was after snipe, she kept to the banks and picked her way fearlessly along the tangled paths, her high boots a protection from thorns ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... St. Louis and St. Paul, except in the very dry seasons. The small steamers, so called, are really large and commodious; but so constructed—as are in fact all of the steamers plying on our western rivers—that they draw but little water, being large and nearly flat-bottomed, sitting on the surface like a duck, and moving along, when lightly loaded, with apparent ease and at a comparatively high rate ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... never woke up, though Yulee was strongly tempted to add him to the party of castaways. They passed through the garden gate, and crossing the road walked through the pasture, down the path that led to the shore of Clearwater. There, tied to a stake, was their father's flat-bottomed boat, with keel-boats near by. Yulee chose the flat-bottomed boat, and they proceeded to put on ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... fought along beside him, each determined that it must be all or none; and presently the terror-stricken fisherman who had roused the village, still shrieking deliriously, came upon them in a flat-bottomed boat manned by four stalwart fellaheen, and the tragedy of the bridge was over. But not the tragedy of Achmet ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... whole plantation of lily-pads and spatterdocks,—or things like them,—and she would scrape over a sunken log as easily as a wagon-wheel rolls over a stone. She drew only two feet of water, and was flat-bottomed. When she made a very short turn, the men had to push her stern around with poles. Indeed, there was a man with a pole at the bow a good deal of the time, and sometimes he had more pushing off to do than ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... report with them at New Orleans. He found no difficulty in collecting about sixteen hundred men, and in January, 1813, took them down the Cumberland, the Ohio, and Mississippi to Natchez, in such flat-bottomed boats as he could collect; another body of mounted men crossed the country five hundred miles to the rendezvous, and went into camp at Natchez, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... the finest little hospitals that you could desire. They are the ordinary flat-bottomed square-ended Dutch barges, roofed in, and when the interior has been cleared out they form elongated covered floating boxes. Skylights in the roof give a splendid light, and the barges are wide enough to allow of two rows of beds with an aisle ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... of thirteen days, we came to anchor a mile or so off Port Isabel, at the mouth of the Colorado River. A narrow but deep slue runs up into the desert land, on the east side of the river's mouth, and provides a harbor of refuge for the flat-bottomed stern-wheelers which meet the ocean steamers at this point. Hurricanes are prevalent at this season in the Gulf of California, but we had been fortunate in not meeting with any on the voyage. The wind now freshened, however, and beat the waves into angry foam, and there we lay for ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... the voyage with eclat, she was ordered to attend me. She was called Sphinx, and was one of the most tremendous though magnificent figures I ever beheld. She was harnessed with superb trappings to a large flat-bottomed boat, in which was placed an edifice of wood, exactly resembling Westminster Hall. Two balloons were placed over it, tackled by a number of ropes to the boat, to keep up a proper equilibrium, and prevent it from overturning, or filling, from the ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... pull across the rough lake against the wind (a dangerous sheet of water for flat-bottomed rowboats, I was told afterward), but the boy was equal to it, protesting that he didn't feel tired a bit, now we had got the "purples;" and if he did not catch the fever from drinking some quarts ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... put their shoulders to the bows of the old, flat-bottomed rowboat, with incredible exertions uprooting it from its ancient bed, and ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... possess, and either build or buy a boat to carry themselves and their goods down the Euphrates to Babylon[121], under the care of a master and mariners hired to conduct the boat. These boats are almost flat-bottomed and very strong, yet serve only for one voyage, as it is impossible to navigate them upwards. They are fitted for the shallowness of the river, which in many places is full of great stones which greatly obstruct the navigation. At Feluchia a small city ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... this inland waterway the conflict raged bitterly. The Italians had a "lagoon fleet" ranging from the swiftest of motor boats, armed with machine guns, small cannon, and torpedo tubes, to huge, cumbersome, flat-bottomed British monitors, mounting the ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... craft, unpainted, flat-bottomed, but light enough, and not badly formed for speed. Susannah stepped into it without much hope, scarcely caring what she did, but still provoking the young boatman to attempt ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... some continental troops, who might reach Bristol in a day. There are militia at Tivertown, who might also be mustered. Greenwich having also a body of troops, must have flat-bottomed boats; those at Sledge Ferry would be sent down. All these we should find on the spot. To escape the inconveniences experienced the last year, the naval commander should send, without a moment's delay, two frigates, to occupy ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... Spain, with two thousand volunteers of the most distinguished families, and eight thousand sailors. In addition there was assembled in the coast districts of the Netherlands an army of thirty-four thousand men, for whose transportation to England a great number of flat-bottomed vessels had been procured. These were to venture upon the sea as soon as the Armada was in position ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... and coolie, and having much to think out, and sure thinking being anything but a rapid process with him, also because he did not wish to draw too much attention to his movements, he chose as a means of conveyance the ugly flat-bottomed public paddle-boat which floats unconcernedly down the Hoogli from Calcutta, through the bigger creeks of the Sunderbunds, and up the ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... morning to the harbour, and seeing some flat-bottomed boats constructing, asked a French gentleman who accompanied me, perhaps a little triumphantly, if they were intended for a descent on the English coast. He replied, with great composure, that government might deem it expedient (though without any views of succeeding) ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... sound startled him. Then he remembered. A skiff was moored there, and he had brushed against the chain that led from the bow of the boat to the stump of a willow higher up on the bank. The man had seen the skiff,—a rude, flat-bottomed little craft, known to the Ozark natives as a John-boat,—just before sunset that evening. But there had been no boat in his thoughts when he had come to answer the call of the river, and in the preoccupation of his mind, as he ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... other spaces close by were similar heaps, but these were of bleached bones on which the moonlight shone brightly—mementoes of former sacrifices. Quite close to the first pile of dead was a mooring-place where at least a dozen flat-bottomed boats had been secured, for their impress could yet be seen in the sand. Now they were gone with the exception of the canoe, which was kept there, evidently to facilitate the loading and launching ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... government. On account of its enormous size, great difficulty was experienced in removing it to Paris. A road was constructed from the obelisk to the Nile, and eight hundred men were occupied three months in removing it to the banks of the river, where was a flat-bottomed vessel built expressly for it. A part of the vessel had to be sawed off to receive it, so great was its size. It descended the Nile, passed the Rosetta bar, and with great care was towed to Cherbourg. It must be remembered that the obelisk ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... shore anywhere in the world has been so often painted as that of Scheveningen—ever since the painting of landscape seemed a worthy pursuit. James Maris' pictures of Scheveningen's wet sand, grey sea, and huge flat-bottomed ships must run into scores; Mesdag's too. Perhaps it was the artists that prevailed on the fishermen to wear crimson knickerbockers—the note of warm colour that ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... provinces, from which we should draw immense resources; and we should be compelled to realize that empire of the Gauls which is ceaselessly held up as a terror to Europe. And what would happen if the First Consul, quitting Paris for Lille or St. Omer, collecting all the flat-bottomed vessels of Flanders and Holland, and preparing the means of transport for 100,000 men, should plunge England into the agonies of an invasion—always possible, almost certain? Would England stir up a continental war? But where would she find her allies? In any case, if the war on the continent ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... into the harbour, as there are twenty-one feet on the barr. Ships that draw twenty feet must be towed in. By this we see, that ships of sixty guns may go into this harbour: and even seventy gun ships, the largest requisite in that country in time of war, if they were built flat-bottomed, like the Dutch ships, might pass every where in ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... away, with his wife and children at his side, on an old flat-bottomed boat moored to a willow branch alongside of a green islet, where the wagtails were chirping themselves hoarse. The boats drew quickly up beside him, any novelty being a break to the everlasting tedium of fashionable society: and while ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... drove him from their midst. Here, after some months devoted to recuperation and being joined by reinforcements from Cuba, he prepared to lay siege once more to the Aztec capital. Part of this preparation consisted in building a number of small, flat-bottomed boats in pieces, so that they could be transported over a mountainous district, and put together on the shore of Lake Texcoco, thus enabling him to complete the investment of the water-begirt city. It sounds ludicrous in our times to read of the ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... term is vuissiers, and denotes a kind of vessel, flat-bottomed, with large ports, specially constructed for the transport of horses. T. Smith translates "palanders," but I don't know that " palander" conveys any very clear idea ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin
... rather extensive establishment, with a store, warehouse, hotel, blacksmith shop, carpenter shop and several dwelling houses. Possibly notable was the launching at that time of the barge "Arizona," fifty feet long and ten feet wide, sharp at both ends and flat-bottomed. ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... so rich as to be owners of fifty ships. These ships are made without nails, their planks being sewed together with ropes of cayro, made of the fibres of the cocoa-nut husk, pitched all over, and are flat-bottomed, without keels. Every winter there are at least six hundred ships in this harbour, and the shore is such, that their ships can be ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... Looking up the Canal the fatigue party, already late for their dinners, perceive a P. & O. liner about four miles away majestically crawling south. Their only hope is now the horse-ferry, an aged flat-bottomed contrivance wound across by a squad of natives and a chain. With the assistance of a friendly military policeman, the headman of this gang is discovered some hundred of yards away lying asleep with his feet in the Sweet-Water Canal, Bilharziosis doubtless entering at every pore. When aroused ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... reindeer, cave-bears, and mammoths, whose joints had doubtless been duly boiled, a hundred thousand years ago, by the intelligent producer of those identical sun-dried fleshpots; and M. Joly, of Toulouse, has in his possession portions of an irregularly circular, flat-bottomed vessel, from the cave of Nabrigas, on which the finger-marks of the hand that moulded the clay are still clearly distinguishable on the baked earthenware. That is the great merit of pottery, viewed as an historical document; it retains its shape and peculiarities ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... says that the petroleum is of very good quality, its density being that which the British market requires in petroleum imported from the United States. The river, up to the junction of the Tara and Sardinarte, is navigable during the entire year for flat-bottomed craft of forty ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... PROCEDURE.—Weigh a 50 cc., flat-bottomed flask (preferably a light-weight flask), which must be dry on the outside, to the nearest centigram. Record the weight in the notebook. (See Appendix for suggestions as to records.) Place the flask under the burette and draw out into it about 10 cc. of water, removing any drop on the tip by ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... provincial work. The Cornwall Canal was also undertaken, but work was stopped when it was certain that Lower Canada would not respond to the aspirations of the West and improve that portion of the St. Lawrence within its direct control. Flat-bottomed bateaux and Durham boats were generally in use for the carriage of goods on the inland waters, and it was not until the completion of a canal system between the lakes and Montreal, after the Union, that ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... The stream was to have a breathing spell of air and sunlight before its great plunge into sixty miles of twilight canon. With a quick turn of his rudder oar the boatman in the stern brought the flat-bottomed craft round, and in a jiffy she lay beached on the shingle at Tokimata. It was now ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... through the winding streams of the Delta, (the course of which, as in the Mississippi, changes with every inundation,) they usually discharged their cargoes at Kurrachee, whence they were transported sixty miles overland to Tatta, and there embarked in flat-bottomed boats on the main stream. The port of Kurrachee, fourteen miles N.W. from the Pittee, or western mouth of the Indus, and Sonmeani, lying in a deep bay in the territory of Lus, between forty and fifty miles further in the same direction, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... once, curious to see this "rubbish," had the doors opened, went in, and looked about. In one corner, bottom upward, lay a boat, very different in build from the flat-bottomed, square-sterned boats which were in use on the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... an invasion, you would chide, or be disposed to chide me, if I were quite silent-and yet, what can I tell you more than that an invasion is threatened? that sixteen thousand men are about Dunkirk, and that they are assembling great quantities of flat-bottomed boats! Perhaps they will attempt some landing; they are certainly full of resentment; they broke the peace, took our forts and built others on our boundaries; we did not bear it patiently; we retook two forts, attacked or ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... termed it, was turned down the coast, and on we went, steaming, smoking, and splashing, after the most orthodox fashion of fire-boats in general. I had now time and opportunity to look around me. Every available spot of the deck and paddle-boxes of the small, flat-bottomed iron steamer, was crowded with as motley a set of passengers as ever sailed since the days of Captain Noah. Sepoys returning from furlough to join their regiments; lascars, or enlisted workmen belonging to the different civil branches ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... the sea that is lacking," interrupted the Jew; "Memphis trades only with Egypt, and we with the whole world. The merchant who sends his goods here only load camels, and wretched asses, and flat-bottomed Nile-boats, while we in our harbors freight fine seagoing vessels. When the winter-storms are past our house alone sends twenty triremes with Egyptian wheat to Ostia and to Pontus; and your Indian and Arabian goods, your imports from the newly opened Ethiopian provinces, take up less room, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Cuba; its greatest length E. and W. 144 m.; is traversed by the Blue Mountains (7400 ft.), whose slopes are clad with luxuriant forests of mahogany, cedar, satin-wood, palm, and other trees; of the numerous rivers, only one, the Black River, is navigable and that for only flat-bottomed boats and canoes; there are many harbours (Kingston finest), while good roads intersect the island; the climate is oppressively warm and somewhat unhealthy on the coast, but delightful in the interior highlands; for administrative ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Central Pennsylvania brought loads of wheat and of corn, taking back dry goods, groceries, salt, and, during the fishing season, fresh shad and herring. Another source of trade was the Potomac River, which was navigable above Georgetown as far as Cumberland in long, flat-bottomed boats, sharp at both ends, called "gondolas." These boats were poled down the Potomac to the Great Falls, twelve miles above Georgetown, where a canal with locks was constructed, running around the falls and back to ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... suggested that each particular stone should be floated to the rock, with a cork buoy attached to it; while others proposed an air-tank, instead of the cork buoy. Others, again, proposed to sail over the rock at high water in a flat-bottomed vessel, and drop the stones one after another when over the spot they were intended to occupy. A few, still more eccentric and daring in their views, suggested that a huge cofferdam or vessel should be built on shore, and as much of the lighthouse built in this as would suffice to ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... the cables, carrying tow ropes to which flat-bottomed boats were attached. When the flood became so fierce that the boats no longer were able to make way against it, men and women crept along the cables to safety. Others, less daring, saw darkness fall and gave up hope ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... in the blockade. But there was another purpose to be served by the inundation of the country beside that of washing away the Spaniards, and the Prince of Orange made preparations for effecting it. He had caused two hundred flat-bottomed boats to be built, and loaded with provisions; these now began to row toward the famished city. The inhabitants saw them coming; they watched them eagerly advancing across the waters, fighting their way past the Spanish forts, and bringing bread to them. But it seemed as if ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... about eight feet of the ground. In general, pedestals of this kind are supported on some projecting portion of the basement; but at Lyons, owing to other arrangements of the architecture into which I have no time to enter, they are merely projecting tablets, or flat-bottomed brackets of stone, projecting from the wall. Each bracket is about a foot and a half square, and is shaped thus (fig. 13), showing to the spectator, as he walks beneath, the flat bottom of each bracket, quite ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... party reached the banks of one of the canals which connected the rivers of France, and which was to convey them to the Loire and thence to the Rhone, in a huge flat-bottomed barge, called a coche d'eau, a sort of ark, with cabins, where travellers could be fairly comfortable, space where the berlin could be stowed away in the rear, and a deck with an awning where the passengers could disport ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for the reappearance of Jed Sanborn, Snap and Shep going to Firefly Lake for that purpose. Two days later they saw the old hunter coming to the shore with a big flat-bottomed boat, containing four men. The men were from the circus and said they had ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... a wide, flat-bottomed coulee with high ragged bluffs shutting it in upon every side. The Kid dimly remembered that coulee, because that was where Andy got down to tighten the cinch on Miss Allen's horse, and looked up at her the way Daddy ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... day proceeded to Hampton Road, where they anchored and remained quiet until yesterday about noon, when several of the ships got under way, and proceeded towards Portsmouth, which place I have no doubt they intend to attack by water or by land or by both, as they have many flat-bottomed boats with them for the purpose of landing their troops. As I too well know the weakness of that garrison, I am in great pain for the consequences, there being great quantities of merchandise, the property of French merchants and others in this ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... first time, we saw coals, and in great quantity; the boats on which they are carried, are long, square flat-bottomed boxes. Although in a mountainous country, and with a poor soil, the houses of the peasants were here much better than any we have seen, though a good deal out of repair; they are high and comfortable, having many of them two flats, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... and exchanged our horse for four fat and humpy bullocks, who managed, with very great labour and difficulty, to drag us through the heavy sands of the river-bed down to the edge of the water. Here we were shipped on board a flat-bottomed boat, with a high peaked bow; and, after an immensity of hauling and grunting, we were fairly launched into the stream, and poled across to the opposite shore. The water appeared quite shallow, and the coolies were most of the time in the water; but its width, ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... with a great fleet and army, and have conquered our island. All over England people got ready. All the men learnt something of how to be soldiers, and made themselves into regiments of volunteers; and careful watch was kept against the quantities of flat-bottomed boats that Bonaparte had made ready to bring his troops across the English Channel. But no one had ships and sailors like the English; and, besides, they had the greatest sea-captain who ever lived, whose name was Horatio Nelson. When the French went under Napoleon to try to conquer Egypt ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... out fishing in the fjord with some friends; of course they all enjoyed themselves—and I pretended that I did. No, I did not enjoy myself! We sat in a flat-bottomed, broad, ugly boat, that they called a "pram," a contrivance resembling a washtub, and fished the whole afternoon in muddy water a few feet deep, with a fine line, catching altogether seven whiting—and ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... said Leo. "I make 'um." And he led the way to an open spot in the bushes where there stood two newly completed boats, flat-bottomed and double-ended, with high sides, the material all made of whip-sawed lumber gotten out by Leo and ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... plainly perceive something that had motion in it; and, after firing on and destroying the chasse-maree, I stood towards the object which had engaged my attention, and found it to be a small punt, about eight feet long, flat-bottomed, and shaped more like a butcher's tray than a boat. In it were a young man about eighteen years of age, and a boy about twelve, who had got into the punt to amuse themselves, and, happening to lose one of their oars, were ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... was soup, a joint with vegetables, and a great apple-tart. The things were mostly passed about from hand to hand, but the old butler kept a benignant eye upon the proceedings, and saw that I was well supplied. There was a good and simple claret in large flat-bottomed decanters, which most of the men drank. There was a good deal of talk of a lively kind. Father Payne was rather silent, though he struck in now and then, but his silence imposed no constraint on the party. He was pressed to tell a story for my benefit, which he did with much relish, but briefly. ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... innumerable, all good for meat or skin. Fish of the infinite sea breaking their bark-fibre nets; fowl innumerable, migrant in the skies, for their flint-headed arrows; bred horses for their own riding; ships of no mean size, and of all sorts, flat-bottomed for the oozy puddles, keeled and decked for strong Elbe stream and furious Baltic on the one side, for mountain-cleaving Danube and the black lake of Colchos on ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... I've gone away, and there's no one who really knows how to make you behave. Aren't these apples bully though? Do you suppose they'll mind very much if we stay just a few minutes? Don't you love this old pond, Billie? Remember your flat-bottomed boat that always leaked when we used to go fishing in it. How I hated to take ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... Lafayette, Tuscumbia, Indianola, Choctaw, and Chillicothe. Of these the Tuscumbia, of 565 tons, the Indianola, of 442, and the Chillicothe, of 303, were specially built for the Government at Cincinnati. They were side-wheel, flat-bottomed boats, without keels; the wheels being carried well aft, three-fourths of the entire length from the bow, and acting independently of each other to facilitate turning in close quarters. The Indianola and Tuscumbia had also two screw ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... knew better. "Yes," said he, "when I was a young man I used to go to Battersea on holidays, I and some others, and nothing would suit us but outrigged gigs, randans, and such like; but now I'm growing old, and a flat-bottomed tub suits us better, my missus and me. Shall we get in, do you ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... pause in the movements of the British, which gave Washington an opportunity to strengthen both his camp and army. The respite was not of long duration for on October 12th, General Howe embarked his army in flat-bottomed boats, and on the evening of the same day landed at Frogsneck, near Westchester; but on the next day he re-embarked his troops and landed at Pell's Point, at the mouth of the Hudson. On the 14th he reached the White Plains in front of Washington's position. ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... family at the Hotel Beau Rivage, Ouchy, Lausanne, facing Lake Leman. He decided to make a floating trip down the Rhone, and he engaged Joseph Very, a courier that had served him on a former European trip, to accompany him. The courier went over to Bourget and bought for five dollars a flat-bottomed boat and engaged its owner as their pilot. It was the morning of September 20, when they began their floating-trip down the beautiful historic river that flows through the loveliest and most romantic region of France. He wrote daily to Mrs. Clemens, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... another face, and on other shoulders too. The sea-gulls and the loons, and I, had now all one trade; we skimmed the crested waves and sought our prey beneath them, the man with as keen enjoyment as the birds. Always, when the east grew purple, I launched my dory, my little flat-bottomed skiff, and rowed cross-handed to Point Ledge, the Middle Ledge, or, perhaps, beyond Egg Rock; often, too, did I anchor off Dread Ledge, a spot of peril to ships unpiloted; and sometimes spread an adventurous sail and tracked across the bay to South Shore, casting my lines in sight of Scituate. ...
— The Village Uncle (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... crossed over to Morocco from Gibraltar in a flat-bottomed cattle-tug, only fit for a river; and as the sea was exceedingly heavy, and the machinery had stopped, the sailors said for want of oil, the seas washed right over the boat, and the passage was prolonged from two hours to five. They made many excursions ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... turn this principle to account, it was decided to depart entirely from the usual flat-bottomed frame-section, and to adopt a form that would offer no vulnerable point on the ship's side, but would cause the increasing horizontal pressure of the ice to effect a raising of the ship, as described above. In the construction ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... thirty-five leagues in circumference, that washes the shores of three fertile provinces, Manila, Laguna and Cavite. Formerly large vessels full of cargo used to be able to sail right up to the borders of the lake; now they are prevented by sandbanks. Even flat-bottomed boats frequently run aground on the Napindan and Taguig banks. [63] Were the banks removed, and the stone bridge joining Manila to Binondo replaced by a swing bridge, or a canal made round it, the coasting ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... beneath the impenetrable shade of flowering osiers and willows, which, as they bent down their green heads, dipped the extremities of their branches in the blue waters, a long and flat-bottomed boat, with ladders covered with long blue curtains, served as a refuge for the bathing Dianas, who, as they left the water, were watched by twenty plumed Acteons, who, eagerly, and full of admiration, galloped up and down the flowery banks of ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the pioneers crossed rivers in their wagon boxes and very few lost their lives in doing so. The difference between one of these prairie-schooner wagon boxes and that of a scow-shaped, flat-bottomed boat is that the wagon box has the ribs on the outside, while in a boat they are ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... native manufacture I may mention large baked earthen pots* used in cooking, also very neatly made round flat-bottomed baskets in sets of four, partially fitting into each other, with a woven belt to suspend them from the shoulders by—in these various small articles are carried, among them the spatula and calabash, with lime to be used in betel chewing—and ...
— 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
... with neighbouring tribes and with the town in which they sell the product of their rice-fields, is carried on by boats. The brakes are more impenetrable than the thickest underwood, but the natives have cut alleys through them, along which they impel their large flat-bottomed teradas with poles.[23] Sometimes a sudden rise of the river will raise the level of these generally stagnant waters by a yard or two, and during the night the huts and their inhabitants, men and animals ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... Don Christoval—that was his name—as soon as he'd bought all the slaves he wanted, we was all chained together, and started on a march to the south'ard. We travelled the whole width of that cursed island, taking two days over the trip, and was then shipped across in a little flat-bottomed sailin'-boat to the Isle de Pinos, where this here Christoval had a big 'baccy plantation. It took us a whole day, after we'd landed on the Isle of Pines, to reach the place, and on the following morning we were set ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... as to the novel qualities of Sam Redding's speed craft. She was about twenty-five feet long, narrow and painted black. She was perfectly flat-bottomed, her underside being deeply notched at frequent intervals. On the edge of those notches she was supposed to glide over the water when ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... forced marching brought us to the river, a real one, with three pontoon bridges, newly built and held firm on flat-bottomed boats moored in mid-stream. We took our way across, and bent to the hill on the other side. Half-way up, in a narrow lane, a wagon got stuck in the front of our battalion, and we were forced to come to a halt for ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... either of us quite appreciated, to be in time for breakfast at La Crosse at 7 o'clock. La Crosse is a large settlement of sawmills on the banks of the Mississippi, for cutting up the wood brought down by the curiously flat-bottomed steamers worked by a paddle in stern the same width as the boat, and which push innumerable rafts of wood before them. We saw several of these steamers, and were detained for a long time on the bridge which crosses the Mississippi, said ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... beauties—these two boats of ours—graceful, yet strong in line, floating easily, well up in the water, in spite of their five hundred pounds' weight. They were flat-bottomed, with a ten-inch rake or raise at either end; built of white cedar, with unusually high sides; with arched decks in bow and stern, for the safe storing of supplies. Sealed air chambers were placed in each end, large enough to keep the boats afloat even if filled ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... he dealt, and he expected to be cheated in making his bargain for a boat and a supply of provisions. As it was, he was skilfully skinned by the rascal with whom he finally ventured to open negotiations, and Constans thought himself lucky to exchange it for a leaky, flat-bottomed tub and fifty pounds weight of absolute necessaries, chiefly sun-dried strips of beef and ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... shade more clear. Well, if a man must dream, let him dream thus, vividly, turning the clock back to maids unbelievably quaint and winsome in old brocade. Sweet as an Irish smile, the face of this one, and as haunting. And beyond, an old flat-bottomed punt and a river, ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... two large flat-bottomed boats of light enough draft to run the rapids in the flood-tide of spring. Carpenters worked hidden in an attic; but when the timbers were mortised together, the boats had to be brought downstairs, where ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... big hand. "What, crying, Mae?" "No, dear—that is, yes. I believe I am a little bit homesick. I wish I could go back behind my teens again. Do you remember the summer that I was twelve—that summer up by the lake? I wish you and I could paddle around in one of the old flat-bottomed tubs once more, don't you, Eric? We'd go for lilies and fish for minnows—that is, we'd fish for perch and catch the minnows—and talk about when you should go to college and pull in the race, and I should ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... to taste. Mix well and spread on the slices of beef. Make a roll of each slice, folding in the edges to retain the dressing, and tie up securely with cord. Have beef suet on the fire; after rendering and straining, add a little water to prevent scorching and bring to a boil in a flat-bottomed pot or kettle. Drop in the roulards, rolled and tied; stir with a spoon until well browned; then set back on the stove and let simmer gently for two hours with pot tightly covered. Drain well on napkin or sieve, and ...
— Favorite Dishes • Carrie V. Shuman
... pattern of her baskets. Not that she does not make all kinds, carriers, water-bottles, and cradles,—these are kitchen ware,—but her works of art are all of the same piece. Seyavi made flaring, flat-bottomed bowls, cooking pots really, when cooking was done by dropping hot stones into water-tight food baskets, and for decoration a design in colored bark of the procession of plumed crests of the valley quail. In this pattern ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... gondolas and galleys, for the force he was to command as well as to build. The precise difference between the two kinds of rowing vessels thus distinguished by name, the writer has not been able to ascertain. The gondola was a flat-bottomed boat, and inferior in nautical qualities—speed, handiness, and seaworthiness—to the galleys, which probably were keeled. The latter certainly carried sails, and may have been capable of beating to windward. Arnold preferred ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... sluggish river to the seaboard in the flat-bottomed, stern-wheel steamer lasted all day and most of the night. During the first half-day, the boat grounded now and then upon a sand-bank, and the half-naked negro deck-hands toiled with ropes and poles to release it. Several times ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... disembarking had commenced. Da Souza and Trent took their places side by side on the broad, flat-bottomed boat, and soon they were off shorewards and the familiar song of the Kru boys as they bent over their oars greeted their ears. The excitement of the last few strokes was barely over before they sprang upon the ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Seneca made their way across the island to the side facing the American shore. Creeping cautiously along, they found a large number of flat-bottomed boats, in which the Americans had crossed from the mainland, and which were, Peter thought, capable of carrying 2000 men. They now made their way toward the spot where the forces were encamped. The fires had burned low, but round a ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... part of April, 1784, one Mr. Rowan, with his own and five other families, set out from Louisville, in two flat-bottomed boats, for the Long Falls of Green River. Their intention was to descend the Ohio to the mouth of Green River, then ascend that stream to their place of destination. At that time there were no settlements in Kentucky within one hundred miles of Long ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... town is an extensive basin surrounded by quays, the heaps of fresh soil around showing it to be a recent excavation from the banks of the Liane. The basin is crowded with the flotilla, consisting of hundreds of vessels of sundry kinds: flat-bottomed brigs with guns and two masts; boats of one mast, carrying each an artillery waggon, two guns, and a two-stalled horse-box; transports with three low masts; and long narrow pinnaces ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... gondola is to be turned to the left, the forward impulse is given without the return stroke; if it is to be turned to the right, the plunged oar is brought forcibly up to the surface; in either case a single strong stroke being enough to turn the light and flat-bottomed boat. But as it has no keel, when the turn is made sharply, as out of one canal into another very narrow one, the impetus of the boat in its former direction gives it an enormous lee-way, and it drifts ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... man who had already made the journey to Illinois with his master, he started them in wagons on their long journey in April, 1819, over the Alleghany Mountains to a point on the Monongahela River. There he bought two large flat-bottomed boats, upon which he embarked his whole company, with their horses, wagons, baggage, and implements. His pilot proving a drunkard, he was obliged to take the command himself, upon ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... in Tennessee and to report with them at New Orleans. He found no difficulty in collecting about sixteen hundred men, and in January, 1813, took them down the Cumberland, the Ohio, and Mississippi to Natchez, in such flat-bottomed boats as he could collect; another body of mounted men crossed the country five hundred miles to the rendezvous, and went into camp at Natchez, Feb. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... along beside him, each determined that it must be all or none; and presently the terror-stricken fisherman who had roused the village, still shrieking deliriously, came upon them in a flat-bottomed boat manned by four stalwart fellaheen, and the tragedy of the bridge was over. But not the tragedy of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... river "Sutlej," and exchanged our horse for four fat and humpy bullocks, who managed, with very great labour and difficulty, to drag us through the heavy sands of the river-bed down to the edge of the water. Here we were shipped on board a flat-bottomed boat, with a high peaked bow; and, after an immensity of hauling and grunting, we were fairly launched into the stream, and poled across to the opposite shore. The water appeared quite shallow, and the coolies were most of the time in the water; but ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... we need is a flat-bottomed boat; and it ought not to be hard to put one together. Uncle Gerald promised to give me some boards for my chicken-coops; perhaps he would add a few more if he knew what we wanted them for. Let's go over and see if he ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... shoulders to the bows of the old, flat-bottomed rowboat, with incredible exertions uprooting it from its ancient bed, and at length ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... villain's game; it is all clear now," he shouted, as he slammed his spy-glass. "He means to run in where we dare not follow: and he knows that Carroway is out of hail. The hull may go smash for the sake of the cargo; and his flat-bottomed tub can run where we can not. I dare not carry after him—court-martial if I do: that is where those fellows beat us always. But, by the Lord Harry, he shall not prevail! Guns are no good—the rogue knows that. We will land round the point, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... livid with rage—"latitude and season! Why, you junk-rigged, flat-bottomed, meadow lugger, don't you know any better than that? Didn't yer little baby brother ever tell ye that southern latitudes is colder than northern, and that July is the middle o' winter here? Go below, you son of a scullion, or ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... that he ever led to victory, which, even after it had been transferred to another scene of action, he still saw fit to call the "army of England," was encamped near Boulogne. It was constantly exercised in the process of embarking on board flat-bottomed boats or rafts, which were to be convoyed by Villeneuve, admiral of the Toulon fleet, and Gantheaume, admiral of the Brest fleet, for whose appearance the French signalmen vainly scanned the horizon. In the meantime, Nelson had been engaged ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... pleasant afternoon that fall, a man came down Crooked Creek in a small flat-bottomed boat. He rowed leisurely, as if he had been rowing a long distance and felt a little tired. In one end of the ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... scroll-works and quaint signs at the doors of all its traders; with monks' cowls and golden croziers and white-robed acolytes in its streets; with the subtle smoke of incense coming out from the cathedral door to mingle with the odours of the fruits and flowers in the market-place; with great flat-bottomed boats drifting down the river under the leaning eaves of its dwellings; and with the galleries of its opposing houses touching so nearly that a girl leaning in one could stretch a Provence rose or toss an Easter egg across to ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... is vuissiers, and denotes a kind of vessel, flat-bottomed, with large ports, specially constructed for the transport of horses. T. Smith translates "palanders," but I don't know that " palander" conveys any very clear ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin
... add him to the party of castaways. They passed through the garden gate, and crossing the road walked through the pasture, down the path that led to the shore of Clearwater. There, tied to a stake, was their father's flat-bottomed boat, with keel-boats near by. Yulee chose the flat-bottomed boat, and they proceeded to put on ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... gain. Sometimes, however, they have an interest in the voyage the same as whalers, but usually, I understand, are paid from $40 to $75 for a season, which means three months unless sooner filled. The men do not fish from the deck of the vessel, but from little flat-bottomed dories, each man paddling his own boat and changing its location to suit his whim. When brought on board the vessel the fish are immediately cleaned, split open and salted right down in the hold, without the formality of putting them in barrels or casks. After they ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... some little grassy islands on which there were many herds of cattle feeding. I was puzzling myself to know how they got there, when the captain told me it was usual for farmers to convey their stock to these island pastures in flat-bottomed boats, or to swim them, if the place was fordable, and leave them to graze as long as the food continued good. If cows are put on an island within a reasonable distance of the farm, some person goes daily in a canoe to milk them. While he was telling me this, a log-canoe with ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... had got under way evening closed in, and brought with it very dirty weather. A keen breeze sprung up off land, and a kind of aggravated Scotch mist soon drove everybody from the deck. As for the Dunkeld, she is a flat-bottomed punt, and going up light as she was, she rolled very heavily. It almost seemed as though she would go right over, but she never did. It was quite impossible to walk about, so I stood near the engines where ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... is very poor, being little more than an open roadstead. Into this harbor empties a small stream called the Arecibo. Goods are transported on this river, to and from the town, in flat-bottomed boats, with the aid of long poles and by much ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... life from the enemy was so great that I could not hire a crew. I pled therefore with Nowar and Manuman, and a few leading men, to take one of their best canoes, and themselves to accompany me. I had a large flat-bottomed pot with a close fitting lid, and that I pressed full of flour; and, tying the lid firmly down, I fastened it right in the center of the canoe, and as far above water-mark as possible. All else that was required we tied around our own persons. Sea and land being as they were, it was ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... on the eve of Plassey, Desmond knew what that meant. He hastily embarked his men, and the boat started: but it had scarcely covered a third of the distance across the river when the wind struck it. Fortunately the sail was not up: as it was, the flat-bottomed boat was nearly swamped. Drenching rain began to fall. The river was lashed to fury: for three crowded minutes it seemed to Desmond a miracle that the boat was still afloat. The waves dashed over its sides; the men, blinded by the rain, ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... hundred and twenty forms plunge from the bathing-stage and quay into the water. The bright harbour is dotted with the heads of swimmers. Some backward boys are being taught to swim in a "swimming-tray," a thing like a flat-bottomed barge, sunk with its bottom about four feet below the surface. A capital place it is for teaching youngsters to swim. But all soon learn, and are free to join the others in sporting about and cutting capers in the water. A warning bugle of one note says "it will soon be time to get out," and by the ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... overhauling the nets at the mouth of the river, and these were so prolific that the small flat-bottomed boat used by the fishermen was soon half filled with glittering salmon, varying from ten to fifteen pounds in weight. In order to avoid having his mocassins and nether garments soiled, Jack, who pulled the sculls, sat with bare feet and tucked-up trousers. In less than an hour he rowed back ...
— Fort Desolation - Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land • R.M. Ballantyne
... prospect of wood and hill, the winding Neckar, and the blue, distant valley of the Rhine. Then, presently, they came to Switzerland, to Ouchy-Lausanne, by lovely Lake Geneva, and here Clemens left the family and, with a guide and a boatman, went drifting down the Rhone in a curious, flat-bottomed craft, thinking to find material for one or more articles, possibly for a book. But drifting down that fair river through still September days, past ancient, drowsy villages, among sloping vineyards, where grapes were ripening ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... for peace which she was still conducting in the Netherlands. But on Philip's side at least these negotiations were simply delusive. The Spanish pride had been touched to the quick. Amidst the exchange of protocols Parma gathered seventeen thousand men for the coming invasion, collected a fleet of flat-bottomed transports at Dunkirk, and waited impatiently for the Armada to protect his crossing. The attack of Drake however, the death of its first admiral, and the winter storms delayed the fleet from sailing. What held it back even more effectually was the ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... same time, was to cross, with part of his brigade, in boats from Point Levi. The ship Centurion, stationed in the channel, was to check the fire of a battery which commanded the ford; a train of artillery, planted on an eminence, was to enfilade the enemy's intrenchments; and two armed, flat-bottomed boats, were to be run on shore, near the redoubt, and favor ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... to the harbour, and seeing some flat-bottomed boats constructing, asked a French gentleman who accompanied me, perhaps a little triumphantly, if they were intended for a descent on the English coast. He replied, with great composure, that government might deem it expedient (though without any views of succeeding) to ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... generally east and west, and consists of a flat-bottomed depression of width varying from half a mile to two miles, down which the river follows a winding course to the west, at some points near the southern slopes of the valley and at others near the northern. The high ground both on the north and south ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... brought us to the river, a real one, with three pontoon bridges, newly built and held firm on flat-bottomed boats moored in mid-stream. We took our way across, and bent to the hill on the other side. Half-way up, in a narrow lane, a wagon got stuck in the front of our battalion, and we were forced to come to a halt for a moment. Looking back, I could see immediately behind three lines of ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... vessel with enemies who required to be guarded, he resolved to release them immediately. He therefore informed the Turkish commandant that he would send him to Missolonghi in a monoxylon, or canoe used in the lagoons, in order to procure two large flat-bottomed boats to take away the prisoners. The Turk, who considered this was only a polite way of letting him know that he was to be drowned or suffocated in the mud, showed, nevertheless, no signs of fear or anger. He ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... the theft of the boat and he ran to saddle Manitou. But Sewall restrained him, pointing out that if the country was impassable for the horses of the thieves, it was no less impassable for the horses of the pursuers. He declared that he and Dow could build a flat-bottomed boat in three days. Roosevelt told him to go ahead. With the saddle band—his forty or fifty cow-ponies—on the farther side of the river, he could not afford to lose the boat. But the determining motive in his mind was neither ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... dealt, and he expected to be cheated in making his bargain for a boat and a supply of provisions. As it was, he was skilfully skinned by the rascal with whom he finally ventured to open negotiations, and Constans thought himself lucky to exchange it for a leaky, flat-bottomed tub and fifty pounds weight of absolute necessaries, chiefly sun-dried strips of ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... woman gets nearly the same personal note in the pattern of her baskets. Not that she doe's not make all kinds, carriers, water-bottles, and cradles,—these are kitchen ware,—but her works of art are all of the same piece. Seyavi made flaring, flat-bottomed bowls, cooking pots really, when cooking was done by dropping hot stones into water-tight food baskets, and for decoration a design in colored bark of the procession of plumed crests of the valley quail. In this pattern she had made ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... the flat-bottomed boat in which he went fishing some distance down the shore, and in the neighborhood of the old wreck that had been sunk on the Shoals. This was the usual fishing ground of the settlers, and here old Matt's boat generally lay ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... into slavery. In 56 B.C. the Veneti threw off the yoke and retained two of Caesar's officers as hostages. Caesar advanced upon Brittany in person, but found that he could make no headway while he was opposed by the powerful fleet of flat-bottomed boats, like floating castles, which the Veneti were so skilful in manoeuvring. Ships were hastily constructed upon the waters of the Loire, and a desperate naval engagement ensued, probably in the Gulf ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... had circled round through some unseen channel, and was creeping now into the land by many creeks and narrow ways. She herself was upon an island, cut off from the dry land by a smoothly flowing tidal way more than twenty yards across. Along it a man in a flat-bottomed boat was punting his way towards her. She stood and waited for him, admiring his height, and the long powerful strokes with which he propelled his clumsy craft. He was very tall, and against the flat background his height seemed almost abnormal. ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... their answer is something on the following lines. A fearful snowstorm, blowing across the Channel, raged on the flat, sandy coast of a tiny village in Kent, and a small smack, laden with oranges, stranded on the sands near by. In these shallow waters only a flat-bottomed lifeboat of a simplified type can be kept, and to launch it during such a storm was to face an almost certain disaster. And yet the men went out, fought for hours against the wind, and the boat capsized twice. One man was drowned, the others were cast ashore. ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... not last long enough to serve our turn as we hoped. The Governor trusted it would have destroyed the whole fleet; but from what I can learn, nothing was really lost except a few of the flat-bottomed landing boats used in the disembarkation of the troops. The English are certainly notable sailors; but it is with her soldiers that we shall have more directly to deal. Still, I wish we could have sunk her ships; it would have placed her on ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... moyela, now covered with pink plums as large as cherries. The rapids, having comparatively little water in them, rendered our passage difficult. The canoes must never be allowed to come broadside on to the stream, for, being flat-bottomed, they would, in that case, be at once capsized, and every thing in them be lost. The men work admirably, and are always in good humor; they leap into the water without the least hesitation, to save the canoe ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... followed his conductor, who with long strides led the way along the wharf. Not a word was spoken till they reached the side of the boat. This was not a flat such as now are in general use, but a large boat some forty feet in length by fourteen wide, almost flat-bottomed, and capable of carrying a cargo of eight or ten tons of goods. In the stern was a little cabin some eight feet long for the captain and his mate. In front was a similar structure for the four negroes who formed ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... active and hardy races in the world, and they have boats expressly constructed for the navigation of these perilous channels. The largest of these, called, it is not known why, the Durham boat, is used both here and in the rapids of the Mohawk. It is long, shallow, and nearly flat-bottomed. The chief instrument of steerage is a pole ten feet long, shod with iron, and crossed at short intervals with small bars of wood like the feet of a ladder. The men place themselves at the bow, two on each side, thrust their poles into ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... storm at Nome the day before Ted arrived, and landing was more difficult than usual, but, impatient as the boys were, at last it seemed safe to venture, and the party left the steamer to be put on a rough barge, flat-bottomed and stout, which was hauled by cable to shore until it grounded on the sands. They were then put in a sort of wooden cage, let down by chains from a huge wooden beam, and swung round in the air ...
— Kalitan, Our Little Alaskan Cousin • Mary F. Nixon-Roulet
... and officials, and they were not numerous. The former often took passage on sailing vessels or batteaux, and if engaged in the lumber trade, as many of them were, they went down on board their rafts and returned in the batteaux. "These boats were flat-bottomed, and made of pine boards, narrowed at bow and stern, forty feet by six, with a crew of four men and a pilot, provided with oars, sails, and iron-shod poles for pushing. They continued to carry, in cargoes of five tons, all the merchandise that passed to Upper ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... linemen crept along the cables, carrying tow ropes to which flat-bottomed boats were attached. When the flood became so fierce that the boats no longer were able to make way against it, men and women crept along the cables to safety. Others, less daring, saw darkness fall and ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... Mr. Dooley. "Whin I was a yachtsman, all a man needed to race was a flat-bottomed boat, an umbrella, an' a long dhrink. In thim days 'twas 'Up with th' mainsail an' out with th' jib, an' Cap'n Jawn first to th' Lake View pumpin' station f'r th' see-gars.' Now 'tis 'Ho, f'r a yacht race. Lave us go an' see our lawyers.' 'Tis 'Haul away on th' writ iv ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... on both sides, and cut to pieces; and some, who were made prisoners, gave information that the fleet, with their king, Cleonymus, was but three miles distant. Sending the captives into the nearest canton, to be kept under a guard, some soldiers got on board the flat-bottomed vessels, so constructed for the purpose of passing the shoals with ease; others embarked in those which had been lately taken from the enemy, and proceeding down the river, surrounded their unwieldy ships, which dreaded the unknown sands and flats more than they did the Romans, and which showed ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... outposts stretched as far as Aix-la-Chapelle, and the beautifullest plan for pouncing on Holland, by stratagem, flat-bottomed boats and rapid intrepidity; wherein too he had prospered so far; but unhappily could prosper no further. Aix-la-Chapelle is lost; Maestricht will not surrender to mere smoke and noise: the flat-bottomed boats must ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... were at the Umbagog chain of lakes, and while it rained the damster had purveyed us a boat and crew. At sunrise he despatched us on our voyage. We launched upon the Androscoggin, in a bateau of the old Canadian type. Such light, clincher-built, high-nosed, flat-bottomed boats are in use wherever the fur-traders are or have been. Just such boats navigate the Saskatchawan of the North, or Frazer's River of the Northwest; and in a larger counterpart of our Androscoggin bark I had three years before floated down the magnificent Columbia to Vancouver, bedded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... and W. 144 m.; is traversed by the Blue Mountains (7400 ft.), whose slopes are clad with luxuriant forests of mahogany, cedar, satin-wood, palm, and other trees; of the numerous rivers, only one, the Black River, is navigable and that for only flat-bottomed boats and canoes; there are many harbours (Kingston finest), while good roads intersect the island; the climate is oppressively warm and somewhat unhealthy on the coast, but delightful in the interior highlands; for administrative purposes the land area is divided into three counties, Surrey, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... persistently ahead. The dream if anything became a shade more clear. Well, if a man must dream, let him dream thus, vividly, turning the clock back to maids unbelievably quaint and winsome in old brocade. Sweet as an Irish smile, the face of this one, and as haunting. And beyond, an old flat-bottomed punt and a river, ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... coming operations were the Lafayette, Tuscumbia, Indianola, Choctaw, and Chillicothe. Of these the Tuscumbia, of 565 tons, the Indianola, of 442, and the Chillicothe, of 303, were specially built for the Government at Cincinnati. They were side-wheel, flat-bottomed boats, without keels; the wheels being carried well aft, three-fourths of the entire length from the bow, and acting independently of each other to facilitate turning in close quarters. The Indianola and Tuscumbia had also two screw propellers. On the forward deck there was a rectangular ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... mammoths, whose joints had doubtless been duly boiled, a hundred thousand years ago, by the intelligent producer of those identical sun-dried fleshpots; and M. Joly, of Toulouse, has in his possession portions of an irregularly circular, flat-bottomed vessel, from the cave of Nabrigas, on which the finger-marks of the hand that moulded the clay are still clearly distinguishable on the baked earthenware. That is the great merit of pottery, viewed as an historical ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... flight of steps to the beach, and stumbled across the soft sand towards the sea. One or two boats were lying out in the surf—heavy Dutch fishing-boats, known technically as "pinks," flat-bottomed, round-prowed, keel less, heavy and ungainly vessels, but strong as wood and iron and workmanship could make them. Some seemed to be afloat, others bumped heavily and continuously; while a few lay stolidly on the ground with ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... slaves he wanted, we was all chained together, and started on a march to the south'ard. We travelled the whole width of that cursed island, taking two days over the trip, and was then shipped across in a little flat-bottomed sailin'-boat to the Isle de Pinos, where this here Christoval had a big 'baccy plantation. It took us a whole day, after we'd landed on the Isle of Pines, to reach the place, and on the following morning we were set ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... of the rivers of Ceylon are navigable, and these only by canoes and flat-bottomed paddy boats, which ascend some of the largest for short distances, till impeded by the rapids, occasioned by rocks in the lowest range of the hills. In this way the Niwalle at Matura can be ascended ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... interruption. "It was during a boat race on Point Judith Pond in Rhode Island. My pal, who was a surfman, had been assigned to duty there. Naturally, he was watching the races. On the other side of the pond a small flat-bottomed skiff, carrying one sail, capsized. There were three men in her. Streeter, that's the fellow I know, saw the boat capsize, but he knew that the water was shallow and noted that it was near shore. Just the same, he kept an eye on the boat. As ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... volley of cautionary objurgations to his ten brothers and sisters, strode angrily forth into the raw November weather. She went down the hill to the edge of the broad, dark Ottawa, where thin slices of ice were swashing together. There sat a hopeless-looking little man at the clumsy oars of a flat-bottomed boat. ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... Landing, 337 miles above Yuma. Hardy had a rather extensive establishment, with a store, warehouse, hotel, blacksmith shop, carpenter shop and several dwelling houses. Possibly notable was the launching at that time of the barge "Arizona," fifty feet long and ten feet wide, sharp at both ends and flat-bottomed. ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... the trees. The boatmen then pushed their way up the river. The progress was slow, and eleven toilsome days passed before they reached their destination. Crockett had now discharged his debt, and prepared to return to his cabin. There was a light skiff attached to the large flat-bottomed boat in which they had ascended the river. This skiff Crockett took, and, accompanied by a young man by the name of Flavius Harris, who had decided to go back with him, speedily paddled their way down ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... other catching at garden palings and the edges of door-steps to save themselves from pitching headlong, while beside them little boys and girls with the agility of long practice, went down merrily almost at a run, their heavy, flat-bottomed shoes making a clap-clap-clapping noise as they descended, like the strokes of ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... pointed at both ends, flat-bottomed, and covered in the fore part. They are made of the bark of the birch-tree, and of fir-wood; but are so light, that the man whom one of these vessels bears on the water, is able to carry it overland, ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... walk. The only way to follow the windings of the stream would have been to wade or swim. Once more I had to own myself beaten by natural obstacles. The Dordogne is a river that cannot be followed throughout its savage wildernesses, except perhaps in a light flat-bottomed boat, and then not without serious difficulties. Anglers might have splendid sport here until they broke their necks, for the trout abound where the shadow of a man seldom or never falls. In the neighbourhood ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... once purchased the equipment needed for a week's river journey—tent, buffalo-skins, cooking utensils, meat and drink—and secured passage on board one of the bateaux which went up the river at irregular intervals in brigades of half a dozen. The bateau was a large flat-bottomed boat, built sharp both at bow and stern, with movable mast, square sail, and cross benches for the crew of five or six. Sometimes an awning or small cabin provided shelter. In still water or light current the French-Canadian ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... planks, etc. along the rivers, as well as the passage of chariots, horses, and persons across them. Rafts and round boats were most commonly used for this purpose. When a mass of unusual size, as a huge paving-stone, or a colossal bull or lion, had to be moved, a long, flat-bottomed boat was employed, which the mass sometimes more than covered. In this case, as there was no room for rower's, trackers were engaged, who dragged the vessel along by means of ropes, which were fastened either to the boat itself or ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... She was sitting upon her horse; for though a number of animals had been taken across in the night, no horse of hers had been so conducted, and we had led the creature with its rider into the great flat-bottomed boat; so that she was on a higher level than the rest of us, and could better see what was passing, though it was plain to all that our soldiers were ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... guide and a coolie, both of whom looked exactly like any other guide and coolie, and having much to think out, and sure thinking being anything but a rapid process with him, also because he did not wish to draw too much attention to his movements, he chose as a means of conveyance the ugly flat-bottomed public paddle-boat which floats unconcernedly down the Hoogli from Calcutta, through the bigger creeks of the Sunderbunds, and up the Pusaka River ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... first rush of '58 in the month of April, I sat on the banks of the Fraser at Yale and punted across the rapids in a flat-bottomed boat and swirled in and out among the eddies of the famous bars. A Siwash family lived there by fishing with clumsy wicker baskets. Higher up could be seen some Chinamen, but whether they were fishing or washing we could ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... "this morning we made a descent upon the north shore, about half a mile to the eastward of Sillery; and the light troops were fortunately, by the rapidity of the current, carried lower down, between us and Cape Diamond. We had in this detachment thirty flat-bottomed boats, containing about 1600 men. This was a great surprise on the enemy, who, from the natural strength of the place, did not suspect, and consequently were not prepared against, so bold an attempt. The chain of sentries which they had posted along the summit of the heights, galled us a little ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... a man of expedients. One evening, when on the shore with Miss Lafitte at a little distance from a party of gay companions, he spied one of those flat-bottomed boats which are a feature of the place, and invited her to enter. Without a word he sent the tiny craft far over the water, out of hearing, almost out of sight, when, resting on his oars, he began: "I am glad to see you have entirely given up your ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... fleet and army, and have conquered our island. All over England people got ready. All the men learnt something of how to be soldiers, and made themselves into regiments of volunteers; and careful watch was kept against the quantities of flat-bottomed boats that Bonaparte had made ready to bring his troops across the English Channel. But no one had ships and sailors like the English; and, besides, they had the greatest sea-captain who ever lived, whose name was Horatio Nelson. When the French went under Napoleon to ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... down the sluggish river to the seaboard in the flat-bottomed, stern-wheel steamer lasted all day and most of the night. During the first half-day, the boat grounded now and then upon a sand-bank, and the half-naked negro deck-hands toiled with ropes and poles to release it. Several ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... the Annales de l'Electricite, we learn that Count de Moulins experimented on the lake in the Bois de Boulogne, in the year 1866, with an iron flat-bottomed boat, carrying twelve persons. Twenty Bunsen cells furnished the current to a motor on Froment's principle turning ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... Sydney the tower of the second wind-mill was begun; and on the 31st, the building being completed for its reception, the public clock was set up, and, for the first time, announced the hour to the inhabitants at Sydney. The shipwrights were employed in constructing a flat-bottomed vessel for the carriage of ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... build the ship. He gathers his material, and on the fifth day is ready to construct the hull. The ship resembles the ordinary craft still used on the Euphrates. It is a flat-bottomed skiff with upturned edges. On this shell the real 'house'[952] of Parnapishtim is placed. The structure is accurately described. Its height is one hundred and twenty cubits, and its breadth is the same, in accordance with the express orders given by Ea. No less than six floors are ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... water. It was of a glistening, yellowish brown, with its fins all spread, and looking very strange and startling, darting out so lifelike from the black water, throwing itself fully into the bright sunshine, and then lost to sight and to pursuit. I saw also a long, flat-bottomed boat go up the river, with a brisk wind, and against a strong stream. Its sails were of curious construction: a long mast, with two sails below, one on each side of the boat, and a broader one surmounting them. The sails were colored brown, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the Englishmen pushed faster over the sea. Bands of English rovers, outdriven by stress of fight, had long found a home there, and lived as they could by sack of vessel or coast. Chance has preserved for us in a Sleswick peat-bog one of the war-keels of these early pirates. The boat is flat-bottomed, seventy feet long and eight or nine feet wide, its sides of oak boards fastened with bark ropes and iron bolts. Fifty oars drove it over the waves with a freight of warriors whose arms, axes, swords, ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... the hotel each day, to get to the various places. But I find that distances are longer than I calculated on, and it might be inconvenient, at times, to come back to the hotel. So I have engaged a good-sized, flat-bottomed stern-wheeler, and we can spend several days at a time on her ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... network of pools and streams—holding its communications and carrying its produce by water instead of by land—began to present themselves in closer and closer succession. Nets appeared on cottage pailings; little flat-bottomed boats lay strangely at rest among the flowers in cottage gardens; farmers' men passed to and fro clad in composite costume of the coast and the field, in sailors' hats, and fishermen's boots, and plowmen's smocks; ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... boat was a narrow, long, flat-bottomed craft, capable of carrying two persons if they were sober and careful. I took my place in the bow of the boat, behind and rather under the jack. I rested upon my knees, holding my gun in such a ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... of boats, and the ordinary river-craft found in the vicinity of the intended passage. Flat-bottomed boats are the most suitable for this purpose, but if these cannot be obtained, keel boats will serve as a substitute. When these water-craft are of very unequal sizes, (as is frequently the case,) two smaller ones may be ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... a hard pull across the rough lake against the wind (a dangerous sheet of water for flat-bottomed rowboats, I was told afterward), but the boy was equal to it, protesting that he didn't feel tired a bit, now we had got the "purples;" and if he did not catch the fever from drinking some quarts of river ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... to make a carefully concerted attack upon this stronghold as soon as summer weather conditions permitted. For this purpose he had strengthened his squadron at Syracuse by purchasing a number of flat-bottomed gunboats with which he hoped to engage the enemy in the shallow waters about Tripoli while his larger vessels shelled the town and batteries. He arrived off the African coast about the middle of July but encountered adverse ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... cc., flat-bottomed flask (preferably a light-weight flask), which must be dry on the outside, to the nearest centigram. Record the weight in the notebook. (See Appendix for suggestions as to records.) Place the flask under the ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... behold a dismal prospect enough. The bank shelved gradually down to the river, which at this point was narrow, and between them and the other shore stretched a mixture of snow and ice; she could distinguish the flat-bottomed boat used for ferrying purposes stuck fast almost in the middle of ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... and investigate," said one of the officers, presently, and a large flat-bottomed boat was brought around and a dozen soldiers leaped ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... the Nile might be caught. It rippled passively between its banks, for it was yet seven months before the first showing of the June rise. Here were the frail papyrus bari, constructed like a raft and no more concave than a long bow; the huge cedar-masted cangias, flat-bottomed and slow-moving; the ancient dhow with its shapeless tent-cabin aft; the ponderous cattle barges and freight vessels built of rough-hewn logs; the light passenger skiffs; and lastly, the sumptuous pleasure-boats. These were elaborate and beautiful, painted and paneled, ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... other side of the world, from Africa and China. They spent nights on the sea on an open boat, and when they played truant it was always to go fishing. The cleverest of them had their own fishing-tackle and little flat-bottomed prams, that they had built themselves and caulked with oakum. They fished on their own account and caught pike, eels, and tench, which they sold to the wealthier people ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... slept, but their sister called them, and after the accustomed cup of coffee and rusks they went out to fish on the Gudenaa. Of late Hardy had hired a flat-bottomed boat, and a man called Nils Nilsen rowed or punted it with a pole, as on the Thames, or he went ashore on the towing-path and pulled it up the river with a towing rope, while a minnow was cast from ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... Dieffenbach, in his German translation of the first edition of this Journal.), the reckless destruction of which has caused here, as at St. Helena, and at some of the Canary islands, almost entire sterility. The broad, flat-bottomed valleys, many of which serve during a few days only in the season as watercourses, are clothed with thickets of leafless bushes. Few living creatures inhabit these valleys. The commonest bird is a kingfisher (Dacelo Iagoensis), which tamely sits on the branches ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... regiments debouching from three separate gorges, after duly crowning the heights above, were to converge from the centre, left, and right upon what we will call the Afghan army, then stationed towards the lower extremity of a flat-bottomed valley. Thus it will be seen that three sides of the valley practically belonged to the English, while the fourth was strictly Afghan property. In the event of defeat the Afghans had the rocky hills to fly to, where the fire from the guerrilla tribes in aid ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... disposed to chide me, if I were quite silent-and yet, what can I tell you more than that an invasion is threatened? that sixteen thousand men are about Dunkirk, and that they are assembling great quantities of flat-bottomed boats! Perhaps they will attempt some landing; they are certainly full of resentment; they broke the peace, took our forts and built others on our boundaries; we did not bear it patiently; we retook two forts, attacked or have been going to attack ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... expanded into a vast marsh. That marsh was the best shooting ground I ever saw. It was my cousin's chief care, and he kept it as a preserve. Through the rushes that covered it, and made it rustling and rough, narrow passages had been cut, through which the flat-bottomed boats, impelled and steered by poles, passed along silently over dead water, brushing up against the reeds and making the swift fish take refuge in the weeds, and the wild fowl, with their ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... sea-coale. A keel was a flat-bottomed boat, used in the northeast of England, for loading and carrying coal. Afterwards the word was also used of the amount of coal a keel would carry, i. e. 8 chaldrons, or 21 tons 4 cwt. Sea-coal was the original term for the fossil coal borne from Newcastle to London by sea, to distinguish ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... his boats through the rapids; and Captain Lenfant, in 1901, carried 500,000 pounds of supplies up the river and through the rapids to the French stations between Bussa and Timbuktu. He had a small, flat-bottomed steamboat and a number of little boats propelled by fifty black paddlers. He says that by the land route he would have required 12,000 porters, and they would have been one hundred and thirty days on ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... bidding good-bye: sometimes it climbs high up above the stream, which just there is very still, sleeping in the shadow under the trees; sometimes it dips quite down to the river bank, a great stretch of dusty shingle across which the stream passes like a road of silver. Slowly in front of me a great flat-bottomed boat crossed the river with two great white oxen. And then at a turning of the way a flock of sheep were coming on in a cloud of dust, when suddenly, at a word from the shepherd who led them, they crossed the wide beach to drink ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... short excursions to sea, and is wall-sided and flat-bottomed; the Pahie for longer voyages, and is bow-sided and sharp-bottomed. The Ivahahs are all of the same figure, but of different sizes, and used for different purposes: Their length is from seventy-two feet to ten, but the breadth is by no means in proportion; for those ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... where there is a Hudson Bay Company's trading post, a billiard saloon, hotel, general store, and post-office all in one, and a few smaller houses, the ferry is a large flat-bottomed sort of platform, railed on either side and fastened to a long thick rope stretched across the river. When there is a load to ferry over, this platform is let loose from the shore, and the current carries it across, ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... Oil Creek, Pennsylvania, where a well had been bored and natural-oil struck the year before. This proved a very profitable investment. When I first visited this famous well, the oil was running into the creek where a few flat-bottomed scows lay filled with it, ready to be floated down the Allegheny River on an agreed upon day each week, when the creek was flooded by means of a temporary dam. This was the beginning of the natural-oil business. We purchased the ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... suppose he'll fetch the land one of these days, and then, if he can't sail over it, like the Yankee flat-bottomed crafts, which draw so little water that they can go across the country, when the dew is on the grass in the morning, we shall come up with him," replied Togle, with ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... the banks of one of the canals which connected the rivers of France, and which was to convey them to the Loire and thence to the Rhone, in a huge flat-bottomed barge, called a coche d'eau, a sort of ark, with cabins, where travellers could be fairly comfortable, space where the berlin could be stowed away in the rear, and a deck with an awning where the passengers could disport themselves. ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... associations, according to the quantities of merchandise they possess, and either build or buy a boat to carry themselves and their goods down the Euphrates to Babylon[121], under the care of a master and mariners hired to conduct the boat. These boats are almost flat-bottomed and very strong, yet serve only for one voyage, as it is impossible to navigate them upwards. They are fitted for the shallowness of the river, which in many places is full of great stones which greatly obstruct the navigation. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... boat, a heavy flat-bottomed thing, was already half launched upon the beach, furnished with stout boat-hooks for pushing among the ice, as well as her oars and sailing gear. He was glad to find that such speedy departure was to be his. He had no thought of ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... he found the boat quite unmanageable. The long oar crowded him nearly off the seat, as he tried to hold her straight out into mid-water. She was flat-bottomed, and as she got into the region of whitecaps, she began to be blown bodily ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... people played in the sand or paddled in the sea. Several were splashing about, and one German governess was scolding violently because while she was in the bath-house her charge, a little girl of six, had rashly ventured out in a flat-bottomed tub, as they called the small boats used by the gentlemen to reach the ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... "Talk!" he shouted. "There's more underhand, sneakin' lies about you goin' around this flat-bottomed, leaky, gurry-and-bilgewater tub of a town than there is fiddlers in Tophet. I've denied 'em and contradicted 'em till I'm hoarse from hollerin'. I've offered to fight anybody who dast to say they was ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... which it traverses. Here was once a busy settlement much frequented by shipping, which thus escaped harbour dues. The mosquito-haunted stream, clear in the dries, and, as usual, muddy during the rains, supports wild duck, and, carried some ten miles in "dongos" or flat-bottomed boats, supplies the capital of Angola with drinking water ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Ouchy, Lausanne, facing Lake Leman. He decided to make a floating trip down the Rhone, and he engaged Joseph Very, a courier that had served him on a former European trip, to accompany him. The courier went over to Bourget and bought for five dollars a flat-bottomed boat and engaged its owner as their pilot. It was the morning of September 20, when they began their floating-trip down the beautiful historic river that flows through the loveliest and most romantic region of France. He wrote daily to Mrs. Clemens, and his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... harbour, as there are twenty-one feet on the barr. Ships that draw twenty feet must be towed in. By this we see, that ships of sixty guns may go into this harbour: and even seventy gun ships, the largest requisite in that country in time of war, if they were built flat-bottomed, like the Dutch ships, might pass every ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... broad channel of the Euphrates was crowded by a fleet of eleven hundred ships, destined to attend the motions, and to satisfy the wants, of the Roman army. The military strength of the fleet was composed of fifty armed galleys; and these were accompanied by an equal number of flat-bottomed boats, which might occasionally be connected into the form of temporary bridges. The rest of the ships, partly constructed of timber, and partly covered with raw hides, were laden with an almost inexhaustible supply of arms and engines, of utensils and provisions. The vigilant humanity ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... with gondolas and galleys, for the force he was to command as well as to build. The precise difference between the two kinds of rowing vessels thus distinguished by name, the writer has not been able to ascertain. The gondola was a flat-bottomed boat, and inferior in nautical qualities—speed, handiness, and seaworthiness—to the galleys, which probably were keeled. The latter certainly carried sails, and may have been capable of beating to windward. ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... Flat-bottomed, and using lee-boards, they draw very little water, while a single mast and sail of the light and convenient Chinese pattern render them extremely handy. Hand-lines are looped round the sides in the customary manner, but there is ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... would turn around a corner and make a short cut through a whole plantation of lily-pads and spatterdocks,—or things like them,—and she would scrape over a sunken log as easily as a wagon-wheel rolls over a stone. She drew only two feet of water, and was flat-bottomed. When she made a very short turn, the men had to push her stern around with poles. Indeed, there was a man with a pole at the bow a good deal of the time, and sometimes he had more pushing off to do than he ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... the blue. And then I saw the peacocks. There they were in the road before me, three of them, and tailless, brown, speckled birds, with dark-blue necks and ragged crests. They stepped archly over the filigree snow, and their bodies moved with slow motion, like small, light, flat-bottomed boats. I admired them, they were curious. Then a gust of wind caught them, heeled them over as if they were three frail boats opening their feathers like ragged sails. They hopped and skipped with discomfort, to get ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... oars was heard among the rushes, and they started up as from sleep. The next moment a flat-bottomed boat appeared, heavy, hollowed out with no skill and with oars as small as sticks. A young girl, who had been picking water-lilies, rowed it. She had dark-brown hair, gathered in great braids, and big dark eyes; otherwise she was strangely pale. But her ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... same morning, the ships' boats were lowered, and, assisted by flat-bottomed craft from the shore, began the work of embarking the remainder of the troops. It continued during the whole morning, and by mid-day the balance of the military contingent was distributed among the ships, which then ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... been in the country where the tree producing the gum-Arabic grows, and can assist the English in that trade. He further says, that he has been up in the country, as far as the mountains from whence the gold-dust is wafted down; and that if the English would build flat-bottomed boats to go up the river, and send persons well skilled in separating the gold from the ore, they might gain vastly more than at present they do by the dust trade; and that he should be always ready and willing to use the utmost of his power, (which ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... broad river, with the water broken into foaming wavelets by rocks which were everywhere showing their vicious heads above the surface; a string of nuggars, or half-decked boats, fifteen feet broad, forty-five feet long, flat-bottomed, each with a thick rope attached to the bows, and a string of men on the bank towing ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... been expended in the pool beneath the fall. Sure enough, Ralph had been right. Moored to the bank by two stout ropes attached to iron bars driven into the rock, was a boat—if such a name can be given to the flat-bottomed, floating appliance, upon which ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... along the canal which connected Vehnemoor with Oldenburg. Peat sheds, where the peat was put to dry after it was cut, were scattered along the canal, and we passed several flat-bottomed canal-boats carrying the peat into Oldenburg. They were drawn by man-power, ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
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