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Bayou   Listen
noun
Bayou  n.  (pl. bayous)  An inlet from the Gulf of Mexico, from a lake, or from a large river, sometimes sluggish, sometimes without perceptible movement except from tide and wind. (Southern U. S.) "A dark slender thread of a bayou moves loiteringly northeastward into a swamp of huge cypresses."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bayou" Quotes from Famous Books



... the black chieftain of Hayti, was a slave on the plantation "de Libertas," belonging to M. Bayou. When the rising of the negroes took place, in 1791, Toussaint refused to join them until he had aided M. Bayou and his family to escape to Baltimore. The white man had discovered in Toussaint many noble qualities, and had instructed him in some ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... two or three smaller craft, the whole under command of Lieutenant Thomas ap Catesby Jones. As even the lighter British ships of war could not here navigate, on account of the shoalness, and the troops, to reach the place of debarkation, the Bayou des Pecheurs, at the head of Lake Borgne, must go sixty miles in open boats, the hostile gun vessels had first to be disposed of. Jones, who from an advanced position had been watching the enemy's proceedings in Mississippi Sound, decided December 12 that their numbers had ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... Englishmen are apt to call all saurians by this name. I should not have expected to see the real alligator so near the salt water, for I had heard that only crocodiles proper lived or thrived in salt water. It may have been one washed out from some bayou by the high water, which was prevailing at this time, or it may have been the real crocodile. I did not stop then to reason about this case in natural history; but as soon as I saw the mangled reptile, which was about ten feet long, on the surface ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic

... business the servant did not know, but would return at two of the clock. In the meantime I sought to amuse myself strolling about the place. I knew I could find my way along the bayou paths of Louisiana the darkest night God ever sent, for there at least I would have through the trees the glimmer of a friendly star to guide me. But here in the King's palace of Versailles, with the winding passages running hither and yonder, each ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... plans of both parties, could not be effectual unless some of the troops were introduced above the forts at the same time that they are below. Once above, he intended to cover their landing at Quarantine, five miles above, they coming to the river through the bayou there. Once above, the forts were cut off and his propellers intact for ascending the river to the city. And in passing the forts, if he found his ships able to cope with them, he should fight it out. Some of the captains ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan

... world all young and full of unmitigated sweetness; the Garden of Eden bespangled with the early dew; Adam scrabbling up a fistful of worm's and hooking them on a bent thorn and a line of twisted pampas grass; hurrying down to the branch or the creek or the bayou or whatever it may have been; sitting down on a brand-new stump that the devil had put there to tempt him; throwing out his line; sitting there in the ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... Antietam, Murfreesboro', Gettysburg, and on many fields of less note. Nor must Uncle Sam's web-feet be forgotten. At all the watery margins they have been present, not only on the deep sea, the broad bay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow muddy bayou, and wherever the ground was a little damp, they have been and made their tracks. Thanks to all. For the great Republic,—for the principle it lives by and keeps alive,—for ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse

... second), which, counting in Mexican leagues of two and three quarter miles each, gives a distance of 233 3/4 miles, or about one hundred miles above the mouth of the Gila. This stream he does not mention. He may have taken it for a mere bayou, but it appears to be certain that he passed beyond it. He says Ulloa was mistaken by two degrees as to his northernmost point, and that he sailed four degrees beyond him. The meaning of this may be that ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... Brigade (1600 strong) left Pine Island in boats to proceed to Bayou Catalan, a small creek eighty miles distant, which ran up from Lake Ponchartrain, through the middle of an extensive swamp, to within ten miles of New Orleans. Next day it landed at the mouth of the creek and advanced along an overgrown footpath on the banks of a canal, its ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis

... began to shoot ducks, herons, and other water-fowls. As fast as a bird dropped into the bayou he disappeared, and not one of them could be recovered. Captain Ringgold wondered what became of them, and the Indian gentlemen ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic

... the expedition down the Ohio and the Mississippi was without incident until January 10, when the expedition put into Bayou Pierre, in the Mississippi Territory. There Burr was put under arrest and brought before a grand jury. Luck again favored him. As in Kentucky, so here the jurors failed to find any ground for indictment. Nevertheless, the judge bound Burr ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... the still depths of Bayou Lacombe, Louisiana, they said that the reflection of the sky was the empyrean of the Under Land, whither all good souls were sure to go after death. Their chief, Opaleeta, having fallen into this bayou, was so long beneath the water that he was dead when ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... with the few steam gunboats of the flotilla, at the station occupied during the bombardment. The Sachem, commanded by Mr. Gerdes, he had sent east of Fort St. Philip, to aid Major-General Butler in landing troops by the back bayou, leading to the quarantine. This duty was successfully executed by the coast survey party. They sounded the channel, and buoyed it out with lamps, and thus facilitated the landing of about one thousand five hundred soldiers during the night in boats ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... fall is also remarkable—not in the upper, but in the lower river. The rise is tolerably uniform down to Natchez (three hundred and sixty miles above the mouth)—about fifty feet. But at Bayou La Fourche the river rises only twenty-four feet; at New Orleans only fifteen, and just above the mouth only ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... will be that of the negotiations for settling our differences with Spain nothing which had taken place at the date of the last dispatches enables us to pronounce. On the western side of the Mississippi she advanced in considerable force, and took post at the settlement of Bayou Pierre, on the Red River. This village was originally settled by France, was held by her as long as she held Louisiana, and was delivered to Spain only as a part of Louisiana. Being small, insulated, and distant, it was not observed at the moment of redelivery to France and the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson

... estuary, fiord, bayou; recess, alcove, sinus, oriel (bay window); bay-tree, sweet laurel; last resort, desperation; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... shore for some good landing, where under shelter of a tree they might repose for an hour, and spread their midday repast, they discovered an opening in the reeds, a kind of lagoon or bayou, extending into the morass between the highlands of the island and the circular mountain, but close under the base of the latter. This inlet he proposed to explore, and accordingly the sail was taken down, and the cutter was poled into the narrow creek. ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... stifles one; my eyes, besides, have grown accustomed to its gloom, and the strong sunshine pierces them like knives. A moment, Teresa, give me but a moment. All shall yet be well. I have buried the hoard under a cypress, immediately beyond the bayou, on the left-hand margin of the path; beautiful, bright things, they now lie whelmed in slime; you shall find them there, if needful. But come, let us to the house; it is time to eat against our journey ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson

... axe, or the lively scurrying of ground squirrels across his path. They forded three creeks before emerging upon a boggy, open space, covered with a mass of flattened, wind-broken reeds and swamp grass, in the centre of which lay a wide, still bayou partially fringed by willows with the first sickly signs of spring upon them in the shape of timid mole-ear leaves. Beyond the bridge over the canal-like stream which fed the bayou was a ridge of hills along whose base the road wound ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon

... women, turned pale, and their voices trembled. Yet many of them flew to their card tables, expecting every moment to be shot into, and trembling with fear so as hardly to be able to hold their cards. The captain said if pouring tar into the furnace would send us beyond a bayou near by before they could overtake us, he thought we should escape. After passing that point our colonel came to me and asked after my companion. I told him as she was not well she had retired very early, and I thought she ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... beyond, the way being well beaten, but here and there jealously crowded by an undergrowth of brambles and the prickly Spanish bayonet. I know not how far I had walked, my head bent in thought, before I felt the ground teetering under my feet, and there was the bayou. It was a narrow lane of murky, impenetrable water, shaded now by the forest wall. Imaged on its amber surface were the twisted boughs of the cypresses of the swamp beyond,—boughs funereally draped, as though ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... little ways," asserted Lopez. "I know a short cut through a bayou that'll take you there in less than half an hour. Youall better stay. I'm goin' to have mutton for supper, and my nigger shore knows how to cook mutton. He's a ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson



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