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Californian   Listen
adjective
Californian  adj.  Of or pertaining to California.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Californian" Quotes from Famous Books



... but which promise the best results in other respects or their earliest attainment. The fuller our knowledge of the elementary species constituting the systematic groups, the easier and the more reliable will be the choice for the breeder. Many Californian wild flowers with bright colors seem to consist of large numbers of constant elementary forms, as for instance, the lilies, godetias, eschscholtias and others. They have been brought into cultivation many times, but the minutest distinction of their elementary forms is required to ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... on the north by our Oregon possessions, and if held by the United States would soon be settled by a hardy, enterprising, and intelligent portion of our population. The Bay of San Francisco and other harbors along the Californian coast would afford shelter for our Navy, for our numerous whale ships, and other merchant vessels employed in the Pacific Ocean, and would in a short period become the marts of an extensive and profitable commerce with China and ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Polk • James Polk

... trouble, but that I need not be alarmed about his safety; and then I thought he added something about "worse storms in the Sierra Nevadas," which convinced me that he was far from being used up yet. As long as he could insist upon the superiority of Californian storms, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... desirous of gaining information on any special subject, would administer to their seers narcotic drinks, so that in their dreams they might be favoured with the knowledge required. Certain of the Amazon tribes use narcotic plants for encouraging visions, and the Californian Indians, writes Mr. Tylor,[1] "would give children narcotic potions, to gain from the ensuing visions information about their enemies;" whilst, he adds, "the Darien Indians used the seeds of the Datura sanguinca ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... he sees a woman likes him, he instantly returns the compliment with interest. In point of fact, he usually falls in love with her. Of course I admit the large number of concomitant circumstances which disturb the problem; I admit on the one hand the tempting shekels of the Californian heiress, and on the other hand the glamour and halo that still surround the British coronet. Nevertheless, after making all deductions for these disturbing factors, I submit there remains a residual phenomenon thus best interpreted. If anybody denies it, I would ask him one question—how does ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... a hearty chorus of laughter at poor Miss Ringtop's expense. It harmed no one, however; for the tar-weed was already thick over her Californian grave. ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... the using of axes anyhow, and the users, and all that neighbours them, Cutters-down of wood, and haulers of it to the Penobscot or Kennebec, Dwellers in cabins among the Californian mountains, or by the little lakes, or on the Columbia, Dwellers south on the banks of the Gila or Rio Grande—friendly gatherings, the characters and fun, Dwellers up north in Minnesota and by the Yellowstone river—dwellers on ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... "literary tastes," who in pursuit of a suitable sphere, marries a rich Californian, and "shines with the diamonds her husband has bought, and makes a noise, but it is the blare of vulgar ostentation,"—William Henry Rideing, A Little ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... describe the wonders of the 'Devil's Canon,' it may be well to give some account of the Geysers of Iceland, to render this essential difference in character the more striking, especially as numerous theories, professing to account for the Californian phenomena, have been propounded by the people of that State, none of which are thoroughly satisfactory to any one who has examined ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... done when sailing "under old Fitzroy on the Pacific station," when their ship would be bowling along under this sail before a stiff nor'-easter, in the run down from Vancouver to Callao, past the inhospitable Californian coast. ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... day into harmony with the universal and permanent elements of human nature. There was certainly nothing European visible in the crude but vigorous stories of Theodore Winthrop; and Bret Harte, the most brilliant figure among our later men, is not only American, but Californian,—as is, likewise, the Poet of the Sierras. It is not necessary to go any further. Mr. Henry James, having enjoyed early and singular opportunities of studying the effects of the recent annual influx of Americans, cultured ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne

... penetrated into this, the wildest portion of the Rocky Mountains. Vague rumours existed of the abundance of game there, and of the existence of gold, but only one attempt had been made to prospect on a large scale. This had taken place three years before, when a party of twenty Californian miners penetrated into the mountains. None of them returned, but reports brought down by Indians to the settlements were to the effect that, while working a gold reef they had discovered, they were attacked and killed to a man by a war party ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty

... "The Californian gold-rush had robbed the Saints o' the seaboard to which they was hopin' to lay claim. They began to get nervous lest the southern territories, from Salt Lake to the Mexican frontier, might also be lost to 'em if they didn't do something so they organised the State of Deseret, an' sent ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... gun, with which the taffrail of the 'Daylight' was armed, echoed over the bay, and announced to the party that all was in readiness. In a very few minutes we were all mustered on the beach, looking, I must confess, remarkably like brigands, in our slouching and high-crowned Californian hats, coatless, and with shirt-sleeves either tucked up or cut off above the elbow, which, with the carbine that each man carried in his hand, and the revolvers, knives, etc., stuck into the waist-belts, ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden

... past few years, and as early as seventeen years ago, then being quite young, and flushed with geographical and historical speculations, introduced in a Literary Institution of Young Men, the subject of Mexican, Californian, and South American Emigration. He was always hooted at, and various objections raised: one on account of distance, and another that ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany

... name in England is given to a fish of the family Maltheidae. It is also applied to the Flying Gurnard of the Atlantic and to the Californian Sting-ray. In Australia, and chiefly in New South Wales, it is applied to Psettus argenteus, Linn., family Carangidae, or Horse Mackerels. Guenther says that the "Sea Bats," which belong to the closely allied genus Platax, are called so from the extraordinary ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... apparently been wide and varied. They talked—or, rather, the mate talked, and Mr. Korner listened—of the olive-tinted beauties of the Spanish Main, of the dark-eyed passionate creoles, of the blond Junos of the Californian valleys. The mate had theories concerning the care and management of women: theories that, if the mate's word could be relied upon, had stood the test of studied application. A new world opened out to Mr. Korner; a world where lovely women worshipped with doglike ...
— Mrs. Korner Sins Her Mercies • Jerome K. Jerome

... have the reader examine the Greek story and the story told by the dull and solemn Californian, and observe how exactly alike ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... freedom, calumniously called "filibustering;" others perhaps destined never to be drawn again. Using a figurative expression, not a few were converted into spades; and in this pacific fashion, carried to the far shores of the Pacific Ocean—there to delve for Californian gold—while still others were suspended in the counting-house or the studio, to rust in inglorious idleness. A three years' campaign under the sultry skies of Mexico—drawing out the war-fever that ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... to-day and the California of yesterday with its picturesque story, are set forth in this book by the one writer who could bring to it the skill united with that love for the task of a Californian-born, Gertrude Atherton. This story of California covers the varied history of the state from its earliest geological beginnings down to the California of ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... the ends of the earth. Law and order were kept on the goldfields of Mount Alexander, Bendigo, and Ballarat by means of a strong body of police, and the high licence fees for claims paid for their services, so that nothing like the scenes recorded of the Californian diggings could be permitted. But for the time ordinary industries were paralysed. Shepherds left their flocks, farmers their land, clerks their desks, and artisans their trades. Melbourne grew apace in spite of the highest wages ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence

... could not be studied in the work of other painters, led to a facility in the handling of paint which really constitutes the chief merit of these artists. In this gallery (59) two small outdoor sketches by Thomas Hill give a good suggestion of this Californian's great dexterity in handling paint. His career has been so closely identified with the Yosemite Valley, where he lived and died, that these two sketches will serve as a reminder of the very faithfully studied larger pictures he for many years produced. ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus

... to visit us next fall. We will make infinitely more of him than we did of the Prince of Wales and his retinue of lords and dukes." Certainly the people of the States gave him an enthusiastic welcome; his writings had made him known far and wide; as the manager of the Californian department at the Philadelphia Exhibition told him, the very miners of California read his books over their camp fires; and his visit was so far like a royal progress, that unless he entered a city disguised under the name of Jones or Smith, he was liable not merely to be interviewed, but ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... of the lilac hills—ah, let him console himself if he will with the belief that his lost friend enjoys it still! The narrator concluded by saying that they destroyed full $500 worth of property. "The blankets," said he with a fine Californian scorn of much absurd insensibility to such a good bargain, "the blankets that the American offered him $16 for were not worth ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow

... say concerning the origin of this Californian superstition; but with some knowledge of the puma's character, it is not difficult to imagine what it may have been. No doubt these savages had been very well acquainted from ancient times with the animal's instinct of friendliness toward man, ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... had been current that the Australian Alps and the Snowy Mountains were full of gold, but it was not till after the Californian discoveries that ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich

... who should come along but the very last man whom Dave wished to see round there—'Old Pinter' (James Poynton), Californian and Victorian digger of the old school. He'd been prospecting down the creek, carried his pick over his shoulder—threaded through the eye in the heft of his big-bladed, short-handled shovel that hung behind—and his gold-dish ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... However, I never saw your face before this morning. You see I am little like our Californians, but my mother is from the States and believes in more freedom; she could not be better or kinder though she were a real Californian. If you are able we had better go up to the hacienda now, and after breakfast we will look about to see if assistance is needed along the river, for the flood ...
— A Napa Christchild; and Benicia's Letters • Charles A. Gunnison

... with cold, and looked about him right and left as though suspecting some hidden witness of his actions. There was not so much as a bird or a butterfly in sight, and he drew a long deep breath of relief. The day was treading in the steps of dawn with the full blazonry of burning Californian sunlight, and away in the distance the ridges and peaks of distant mountains stood out sharply clear against the intense blue of the sky. There was great stillness everywhere,—a pause, as it seemed, in the mechanism of the universe. The ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli

... her Kentucky home from the ill-starred Californian trip, Mary Anderson seems to have determined to essay again the lowest steps of the ladder of fame. She took a summer engagement with a company, which was little else than a band of strolling players. The repertoire was of the usual ambitious ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar

... departed from Harvard for Stanford University last December, almost the last good-by I got was that of my old Californian friend B: "I hope they'll give you a touch of earthquake while you 're there, so that you may also become acquainted with ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... had drifted mysteriously into Macassar from the wastes of the Pacific, and, after knocking about for a time in the eddies of town life, had drifted out enigmatically into the sunny solitudes of the Indian Ocean. The memory of the Californian stranger was perpetuated in the game of poker—which became popular in the capital of Celebes from that time—and in a powerful cocktail, the recipe for which is transmitted—in the Kwang-tung dialect—from head boy to head boy of the Chinese ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad

... with expectancies for the future. As it is an open secret that the Duke of Balmoral has been compelled to sell his pictures within the last few years, and as Lord St. Simon has no property of his own save the small estate of Birchmoor, it is obvious that the Californian heiress is not the only gainer by an alliance which will enable her to make the easy and common transition from a Republican lady ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... there when I'm away from home. Oh, how COULD I be away! and why COULDN'T Willis have given us fair warning? I would have hurried from the ends of the earth to meet him. I don't believe poor Edward ever saw a Californian; and he's so quiet and preoccupied, I'm sure he'd never get on with Willis. And if Willis is the least loud, he wouldn't like Edward. Not that I suppose he IS loud; but I don't believe he knows anything about literary men. But you can see, aunty, can't you, how very anxious I must ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... injured pride, if not to his depleted purse; but his sun was setting. This voyage of Ulloa was its last expiring ray. With an artistic adjustment to the situation that seems remarkable, Ulloa, after turning the end of the peninsula and sailing up the Lower Californian coast, sent home one solitary vessel, and vanished then forever. Financially wrecked, and exasperated to the last degree by the slights and indignities of his enemies and of the Mendoza government, ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... the young man, smiling grimly, like a true Californian. "No; it is not sunstroke, it's—it's cholera," he added in dismay over ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various

... the arms of Gladys for sympathy? Then let me say, my daughter, that neither Mrs. Barrington nor any one else can do much for your improvement, and all the money we are spending will be thrown away. If you are going East to ally yourself exclusively with Californian girls, to talk California and think California and set yourself against everything that is not Californian, we might just as well take the ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... the schoolmistress sat upon the slope of a hill, one of a low range overlooking an arid Californian valley. These sunburnt slopes were traversed by many narrow footpaths, descending, ascending, winding among the tangle of poison-oak and wild-rose bushes, leading from the miners' cabins to the shaft-houses and tunnels of ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... stacked camp-chairs, seemed to indicate the presence of cabin passengers. For the barque Excelsior, from New York to San Francisco, had discharged the bulk of her cargo at Callao, and had extended her liberal cabin accommodation to swell the feverish Californian immigration, still ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... Nevada, fought hard for the cause of reclamation in Congress. He attempted to get his State to act, and when that proved hopeless to get the Nation to act; and was ably assisted by Mr. G. H. Maxwell, a Californian, who had taken a deep interest in irrigation matters. Dr. W. J. McGee was one of the leaders in all the later stages of the movement. But Gifford Pinchot is the man to whom the nation owes most for what has been accomplished as regards the preservation of the natural resources ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... world-travelled, well educated linguist, such as Siddons, and may even learn to call him Wart, but he never thoroughly understands him. A tide-water Virginian, such as Randolph Hampden, of the bluest of blue blood, may sit at mess by the side of a Californian, such as Hank Porter, but he will show no real interest in California climate and will never be able to make the westerner understand that Virginia is American history and not just a state. A nasal-voiced Vermonter, such as Nathan Rodd, brought up among stern hills and ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke

... together. Only last Sunday he had taken us out of our way, up the creek, to where we could see the flag at the Rhondda's masthead. The old man said nothing, but well we knew he was thinking of how the square of blue silk, with Californian emblem worked in white, would look at his trim little Hilda's fore-truck! This flag accompanied the Cup, and now (if only the Yankee and his hired whalemen were safely at sea) we had hopes of seeing it at our ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... churches, that she is the slave of corporations, that she knows no such thing as public opinion, that she has not yet learned to distinguish enterprise from highway robbery, nor reform from blackmail,—all these statements, and others even more unpleasant, the Californian may admit in discussion, or may say for himself, but he does not find them acceptable from others. They may be more or less true, in certain times and places, but the conditions which have permitted them will likewise mend them. ...
— California and the Californians • David Starr Jordan

... a little flourish. Their trap, which she drove herself and which was perhaps a little too English to be useful or appropriate on a Californian road, the straight, tailor lines of her suit—all displayed that kind of quiet, refined ostentation which, very possibly, shrieks as loud to God as the diamond rings on a soiled finger. Mrs. Tiffany, who had met the ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin

... Californian Plants.—Great care should be taken not to allow the sun to strike on the collar of any of the plants from California, as they readily succumb if it ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink

... old time Californian, and now in Nevada, writes the freest of any penman I know. When he is deliberate, he may be betrayed into making a deformed letter and a crooked mark attached to it, which he characterizes as a word. He puts a lot of these together and actually pays ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... chubby young lady, that first started the conversation, sang a song entitled "The Californian's Lament," ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan

... belonging to the city jail of a Californian town, named "Inspector Byrnes," because of his remarkable assistance to the police force. When, one night, a prisoner in the jail had stuffed the cracks to his cell with straw, and turned on the gas ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow

... hands, but this was no proof that it intended to devour either. On another occasion, an ostrich snatched a purse from a lady's hand and instantly dropped it; but when a gold piece fell from it, the bird immediately swallowed that, showing how easily even animals fall under the influence of Californian ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard

... The noble Californian, Jerome Davis -he of the celebrated ranch- sticks by me like a twin brother, although I fear that in my hot frenzy I more than once anathematised his kindly eyes. Nursers and watchers, Gentile and Mormon, volunteer their ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne

... Monroe—I'm going to call you Martha—" said Mabel, "I'm just about sick of California. I'm not a Californian; little old New York for mine. I first seen the light of day at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Sixteenth Street, and I wish to the good Lord I was there now. You'll never get a fair deal in Frisker, if any one should ride up on a bike and ask you, dear. We were doing very good last fall when ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris

... Philadelphia, but it is so hot there in the summer that we decided to spend a few weeks in this beautiful Californian ...
— Harper's Young People, July 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... of poi. The root is an object of the tenderest solicitude, from the day it is planted until the hour when it is lovingly eaten. The eating of poi seems a ceremony of profound meaning; it is like the eating salt with an Arab, or a Masonic sign. The kalo root is an ovate oblong, as bulky as a Californian beet, and it has large leaves, shaped like a broad arrow, of a singularly bright green. The best kinds grow entirely in water. The patch is embanked and frequently inundated, and each plant grows on a small hillock of puddled earth. The cutting from which it grows is simply ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... I own a few acres of land in Southern California and of course have planted walnuts there. A few years ago I received word that the crop from my trees was being shipped to me. They arrived. There were six nuts. If I were a Californian I ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various

... by a half-dozen or more letters that came to me from some Californian schoolchildren, who wrote to ask if I would please tell them whether or not birds have sense. One little girl said: "I would be pleased if you would write and tell me if birds have sense. I wanted to see if I couldn't ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs

... and gathered together into a common fund the small amount of cash and property which each had saved from the wreck, they went ashore, purchased the articles necessary for their expedition, and followed the great stream of Californian gold-diggers. ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne

... may be sent in flats (with tops) lent by the salesmen. But these are often lost and involve trouble and expense. Non-returnable boxes to contain half a bushel or a bushel are now in use, but such boxes are too large for the better fruits. Californian pears come to us in good condition in boxes containing each a few dozen fruits, each fruit being separately packed in tissue paper. French pears are also sent in boxes evenly graded and packed in one, two, or three layers. Small boxes bought by the gross are not dear. The ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum

... the first flush of the Californian fever, when moderate people talked of making one's fortune in a fortnight, and the more sanguine believed that golden pokers would soon become rather common, that the Betsy Jones from London to New Zealand, with myself on board as ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various

... as the wind blew sharp in their faces, "this is a stiff north-wester and no mistake. I don't believe that small Californian would enjoy ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin

... Girl was not beautiful, at least if judged by Spanish or Californian standards. Unlike most of their women, she was fair, and her type purely American. Her eyes of blue were lightly but clearly browed and abundantly fringed; her hair of burnished gold was luxuriant and wavy, and framed a face ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco

... looked like a backwoodsman—and again he looked like a Californian, too, for his clothes were an old blue flannel shirt (with a rolling collar having white stars in the corners), patched buckskin trousers and heavy boots of the regulation style. Charley chanced to be crossing the salon or main cabin when the man was paying for his passage, and there ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin

... to return, and bring Alden with him, by eight o'clock at latest. And Mr. Lyle had promised to come and bring "the Californian." ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... where he was now, it is true—but only relatively. The first report of his antics had come from a little town in the California foothills; the second from a summer resort in a Valley of the Californian Sierra. He was being reported pretty well all over the United States now, but the first news in all probability were the only valuable clew. They were desolately vague though. A man who flies covers much ground. Where did ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper

... forwarded them to Hall, in the hope that they would be disposed of and the money waiting him on his arrival; and a week later, March 22, 1893, he sailed from Genoa on the Kaiser Wilhelm II, a fine, new boat. One of the manuscripts was 'The Californian's Tale' and the other was 'Adam's Diary'.—[It seems curious that neither of these tales should have found welcome with the magazines. "The Californian's Tale" was published in the Liber Scriptorum, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... the beautiful architecture of the Exposition were forgotten, the memory of the Palace of Fine Arts would remain. It should be a source of pride to every Californian that this incomparable building is the work of a Californian, and a source of deep satisfaction to the architect himself that it so completely points the lesson which he intended it to convey. For the Palace of Fine Arts is a sermon in itself. ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... financiers of England were bombarded with arguments and prophecies of evil, but her geologists pointed out clearly that Australian and Californian products were almost entirely from the washing of alluvial sands and consequently must be very temporary. Her statesmen believed the geologists rather than the panic-stricken financiers, and so she held ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter

... between the humour even of Mr. Bret Harte and that of English writers. His fun is derived from the vagaries of huge, rough people, with the comic cruelty of the old Danes, and with the unexpected tenderness of a sentimental time. The characters of the great Texan and Californian drama are like our hackneyed friends, the Vikings, with a touch, if we may use the term, of spooniness. Their humour is often nothing more than a disdainful trifling with death; they seize the comic side of manslaughter very promptly, and enjoy all the mirth that can be got out of revolvers ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... leaking wreck. The crew mutinied—they had bitter cause to—and only after calling at Rurutu, in the Tubuai Group, and obtaining fresh food, did they permit the captain to resume command of the half-sunken old craft. They were ninety days in reaching Honolulu, and another forty in making the Californian coast. ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke

... October 1, 1876, a site for the new observatory, to the building and endowment of which he had devoted a part of his large fortune. The situation of the establishment is exceptional and splendid. Planted on one of the three peaks of Mount Hamilton, a crowning summit of the Californian Coast Range, at an elevation of 4,200 feet above the sea, in a climate scarce rivalled throughout the world, it commands views both celestial and terrestrial which the lover of nature and astronomy may alike rejoice in. Impediments to observation ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... Stories of Californian life often mention Span. reata, a tethering rope, from the verb reatar, to bind together, Lat. re-aptare. Combined with the definite article (la reata) it has given lariat, a familiar word in literature of the Buffalo Bill character. Lasso, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... windows. Other shops the wasps had entirely to themselves, and nobody cared and nobody came when I beat with a five-franc piece upon the board of custom. What I sought was no more to be found than if I had sought a nugget of Californian gold: so I went, spongeless, to pass the evening with ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... served to stimulate cupidity, and every day the Bedawin brought in specimens from half a dozen different places. But the satisfaction was at its height when the crucible produced, after cupellation, a button of "silver" weighing some twenty grammes from the hundred grammes of what the grumbling Californian miners had called, in their wrath, "dashed black dust;"[EN109] and when a second experiment yielded twenty-eight grammes (each fifteen grains and a half) and ten centigrammes from 111 grammes, or about a quarter of a pound avoirdupois. ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... Kit until she reached eight years, when he took her to St. Louis and liberally provided for all her wants. She received as good an education as St. Louis could afford and was introduced to the refining influences of polished society. She married a Californian and removed with him to ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus

... he was a benevolent Catholic priest,—then some unknown army general, or retired sea captain; at one time he was reputed to be one of the owners of the Cunard line of steamers. To be taken for a Californian was common. One recalls the composite character of the poet whom he outlines in his poems ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... was here very early, but waited until near noon before anything happened! Then I saw the squire and the rector ride forth together and take the road to Benedict. Then I made a descent upon the fort. So you have my Californian sweetheart staying with you?" he exclaimed, in ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... at me and smiled. The Californian little, thought that he was acting as second to a man whose reputation as a hunter of bushrangers was the theme of every miner's discourse, and that the newspapers of Australia had spread our ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... noticeable and helps to explain their motive for killing the divine bird. The notion of the life of a species as distinct from that of an individual, easy and obvious as it seems to us, appears to be one which the Californian savage cannot grasp. He is unable to conceive the life of the species otherwise than as an individual life, and therefore as exposed to the same dangers and calamities which menace and finally destroy the life of the individual. Apparently he imagines that a species left to itself will ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... was the land first and most persistently explored. The French Government for scores of years has been at work there. Germans and Italians have explored the ruins; two English societies have for years kept expeditions in the field; and just now a Californian university sends an American Egyptologist to uncover the tombs and read the hieroglyphs of the kings. Not only are the figured monuments of Egypt published in princely folios, but its records have been translated and its lost history recovered to the world's ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... he had been engaged in the most extraordinary, most unlikely, most extravagant, and funniest cases, and had won legal games without a trump in his hand—although he had worked out the obscure law of divorce, as if it had been a Californian gold mine, Maitre[1] Garrulier, the celebrated, the only Garrulier, could not check a movement of surprise, nor a disheartening shake of the head, nor a smile, when the Countess de Baudemont explained her affairs to him ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... Texas and the other boys, Fresno," ordered Sage-brush. The Californian threw away the butt of his cigarette and shook each man by the shoulder. With much yawning and rubbing of eyes the men crawled from their sleeping-bags. Dashing cold water into their faces from a basin beside the water-barrel, ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller

... my promise I enclose you the Californian tobacco seed. It grew from the small parcel given to me by Mr. Wm. Smith, in your office in March last. On getting home, although late, I prepared a bed, and sowed the small parcel, the first week in April, and not having seed enough ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... and stranger Bowery, was the main thoroughfare of these people. An exiled Californian, mourning over the city ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... china, furniture, and "purple and fine linen" were all conspicuous by their absence, she could feast without money and without price on the changeful loveliness of the Santa Ynez mountains, the sapphire tints of the placid Pacific, and the gorgeous splendor of the Californian wild-flowers, so that her ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... laid her scheme before us, stating candidly everything she had heard respecting the ghostly qualities of the establishment to which she wished to remove us. With the exception of two timid persons,—a sea-captain and a returned Californian, who immediately gave notice that they would leave,—all of Mrs. Moffat's guests declared that they would accompany her in her chivalric incursion into ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... grim, smileless Californian chaff was not calculated to restore his confidence. He drew away from the cabin, and repeated doggedly, "I asked you if this was the way to ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte

... this serene Pacific, once beheld, must ever after be the sea of his adoption. It rolls the midmost waters of the world, the Indian ocean and Atlantic being but its arms. The same waves wash the moles of the new-built Californian towns, but yesterday planted by the recentest race of men, and lave the faded but still gorgeous skirts of Asiatic lands, older than Abraham; while all between float milky-ways of coral isles, and low-lying, endless, unknown Archipelagoes, and impenetrable Japans. Thus ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... intrepidity that only succumbed to numbers," was highly commended, and even the passengers received their meed of praise, not forgetting the lady, "who accepted the incident with the light-hearted pleasantry characteristic of the Californian woman." There was the usual allusion to the necessity of a Vigilance Committee to cope with this "organized lawlessness" but it is to be feared that the readers of "The Red Dog Clarion," however ready ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte

... sure, this might have been less from his ignorance or indifference concerning the quality of the bush he had sent Sandy to sleep under than from his willingness to make a mock of an azalea in a very small pot, so disproportionate to uses which an azalea of Californian size ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... theft, formed, with more or less regard for the interests of scientific study, "cabinets" of collections of original documents, and of copies. But these European collectors, of whom there has been a great number since the fifteenth century, differ very noticeably from Mr. Bancroft. The Californian, in fact, only collected documents relating to a particular subject (the history of certain Pacific states), and his ambition was to make his collection complete; most European collectors have acquired ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois

... as he named his country New Albion, that Californian gold was so near. His subjects were loving and peaceable, evidently regarding the English as gods and reverencing them as such. The chronicler is eloquent in his detailed description of all ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... Nevada, Africa; but we shall not forget that Mexico and Peru were yielding up stores of gold and silver centuries before Captain Cook sailed, or before those historic nuggets were found by accident in Sutter's mill-stream, in the Californian Sierra region. Scarcely six years after the Conquest the silver of Mexico was being eagerly sought, and easily found, with that remarkable olfato possessed by the Spaniards. Shakespeare was at work, and Drake was voyaging under the Elizabethan ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... also, a reputation for reckless carrying on of sail. I overheard Henderson and another of the hunters, Standish, a Californian, talking about it. Two years ago he dismasted the Ghost in a gale on Bering Sea, whereupon the present masts were put in, which are stronger and heavier in every way. He is said to have remarked, when he put them in, that he preferred turning her ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... talking about—some poet, that fellow," Buck cried aloud to himself, for it seemed to him that the Californian had put into words his own feeling. He read on avidly, from one poem to ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine

... book aid in the general awaking of the dormant love of every Californian for his possessions and be a suggestion to the casual visitor that we are entitled ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray

... the midst of a romantic courtship. 'Gene Mallows, the Californian poet, had fallen madly in love with her, having met her during his ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... foot, wellnigh inch by inch, they snaked on, listening and peering for other patrols. Suddenly they encountered a second outpost, and crouched low, flattening themselves, scarcely daring to breathe. A Californian horseman leisurely rode by. Kit instantly squirmed forward, and they crossed ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin

... high were stretched across the principal streets, and decorated with flowers of all kinds. Some were all of roses, some of palms and pampas grass, some of wild flowers, and some of the wonderful yellow Californian poppy. From these arches hung festoons of marguerites, wistaria, orange and lemon blossoms, the streets being canopied ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 33, June 24, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... is about as famous a point as there is today on the earth's surface—as famous as were the Californian diggings in 1848, or the Australian gold mines in 1853. It is now the centre of attraction for the adventurous of all countries. The excitement throughout the Canadas and Northern States of America is universal. ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne

... were between England on one side, and Spain and France on the other. Spain was not a serious foe, or obstacle; England had no special hankering after Florida and Mexico, and she knew nothing about the great Californian region. But France harried her on the north, and pushed her back on the west, the first collisions in this direction occurring at the Alleghanies and along the Ohio River. France had discovered, claimed, and in a certain sense occupied, a huge wedge of the present United States: an area which (apart ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... canvas one, made to "unship" and fold together,—such a patent accommodation for tired "hurdies" as amateur sketchers and promiscuous lovers of the picturesque in landscape take with them on excursions. My accustomed eye took in at a glance the poor furniture of that very Californian make-shift of a shelter for fortune-seeking heads. There were chests, boxes, and trunks, the usual complement, bestowed in every corner, as they could best be got out of the way,—a small, rough table, on temporary legs, and made, like the seats, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... FOR COPERATION.—No permanent solution of the Negro's difficulties can be attained without the friendly coperation of all parties concerned. Most of our Negroes live in the South, but the Negro is no more a purely southern question than Japanese immigration is a purely Californian problem. We are one nation, and the problems of one section are the problems of the whole. The South must not be left alone, either to neglect the Negro, or to struggle with his difficulties as best she can. Generous aid must be extended her by the North, East, and ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson

... treatment by their elders, is unusually great. On most lakes rich in fish these birds have long established themselves, and they were, I remember, as familiar at Geneva and Neuchatel as along the shores of Lake Tahoe in the Californian Sierras, itself two hundred miles from the Pacific and more than a mile above sea-level. Gulls also follow the plough in hordes, not always to the complete satisfaction of the farmer, who is, not unreasonably, sceptical when told that they seek wireworms only and have ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo

... One of the most curious proofs of this was the Californian Railway time-table edition ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... notable prose features of the magazine is Walter John Held's delightful sketch of Joaquin Miller's home and haunts. This artistic picture of Californian scenery exhibits a real comprehension of the beauties of Nature, and stirs to an unusual degree the imagination of the reader. Mr. Held's prose possesses a fluency and grace that bring it close to the professional quality, and its few faults are far less considerable than ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... bacula of the Californian chipmunks supports Johnson's (op. cit.) conclusion that there are ten species, but suggests that there are three (not five) groups of species in California—as well as elsewhere within the geographic range of the subgenus Neotamias. ...
— The Baculum in the Chipmunks of Western North America • John A. White

... not believe that, on the whole, they will add much to the enjoyments, to the real satisfactions of mankind. If the Californian gold merely replaces in the world that which has been lost and destroyed, it may have its use. If it increases the amount of cash, it will depreciate it. The gold diggers will be richer than they would have been without it. But ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat

... steamer Quaker City, which had been chartered to take a select party on what is now known as the Mediterranean trip. The weekly letters, in which he set forth what befell him on this journey, were printed in the 'Alta' Sunday after Sunday, and were copied freely by the other Californian papers. These letters served as the foundation of a book published in 1869 and called the 'Innocents Abroad,' a book which instantly brought to the ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews

... gold-diggings of the Sierras, the Yukon, and the Rand. On those distant seas, however, the adventurers were beyond the reach of any law, the same lawless conditions prevailing in the Indies at the beginning of the seventeenth century which characterized Californian life in the days of '49. The Dutch warred on the natives and on the Portuguese, and, when there was no one else to offer them resistance, they fought among themselves. By 1602 conditions had become so intolerable that the government of Holland, in order to tranquillize the Indies, and to stabilize ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... remember something about that," said the other. "I think, too, you said you were interested in Californian real estate." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... relation to the coin of the realm. It attains its highest development in the hand of authority and is considered a serviceable equipment for a career in politics. The following illustrative lines were written of a Californian gentleman in high political preferment, who has passed to ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... Emma Baudouin of Luebeck, this little story of Californian life is given in token of her unmerited kindness to the writer, and in admiration of one who makes the world happier by her every word ...
— The Beautiful Eyes of Ysidria • Charles A. Gunnison

... The "Californian" budged not, but posed, an image of dejection. The happiness of life had departed; the tale of her woe seemed pictured in every hair of her thickly coated body; she was a ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... good deal ornamented. They have no suspenders, but always wear a sash round the waist, which is generally red, and varying in quality with the means of the wearer. Add to this the never-failing poncho, or the serapa, and you have the dress of the Californian. This last garment is always a mark of the rank and wealth of the owner. The gente de razon, or better sort of people, wear cloaks of black or dark blue broadcloth, with as much velvet and trimmings as may be; and from this they go down to the blanket of the Indian, the middle classes wearing a ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... knows little variety. The menu of the Colorado banquet July 4, 1859, will revive in the minds of many an old Californian the fast-fading memories of the past; but I fear, twill be a long time before such a menu as the following will gladden the eyes of the ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... are directly descended from animals. Such a belief is often found among totemic tribes who imagine that their ancestors sprang from their totemic animals or plants; but it is by no means confined to them. Thus, to take instances, some of the Californian Indians, in whose mythology the coyote or prairie-wolf is a leading personage, think that they are descended from coyotes. At first they walked on all fours; then they began to have some members of the human body, one finger, one toe, one eye, one ear, ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... assume that it exists. Even then there will be nothing to prevent the German fleet from steaming in what waters it pleases. If our shells fall upon New York on the day when your warships are sighted off the Californian coast, do you suppose that America could resist? With her seaboard, her fleet is contemptible. For her wealth, her army is a farce. She has neglected for a great many years to pay her national insurance. She is the one country in the ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... idea of horsemanship so firmly in the country that even street-railroads cannot uproot it, and that Americans who never sat even so little as an Atlantic-State's pony, on coming here presently take to the saddle with all their hearts. In most of the smaller Californian towns, a very serviceable half- or quarter-breed saddle-horse is to be had for forty dollars,—the "breed" portion of his blood being drawn from an Eastern stallion, the remaining fraction being native or Mustang stock. This animal, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... motor boys could discuss a Californian trip in earnest, for they knew their parents would let them go, especially after Mr. Seabury's invitation, and the letter from Professor Snodgrass. In the course of a few days Jerry received another missive ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young

... the section through which we passed on our first day out of Brest appeared to be good. They gave me, a Californian with considerable farming experience, the impression that agriculture has been very carefully studied by the French. Occasionally we would see small tracts lying fallow, apparently to give the land a needed rest, ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood

... Bequest A Dog's Tale Was It Heaven? Or Hell? A Cure for the Blues The Enemy Conquered; or, Love Triumphant The Californian's Tale A Helpless Situation A Telephonic Conversation Edward Mills and George Benton: A Tale The Five Boons of Life The First Writing-machines Italian without a Master Italian with Grammar A Burlesque Biography How to Tell a Story General Washington's Negro Body-servant Wit Inspirations ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... reaching shore, proceeded to find out at what hour the first train left for New York, and learned that this was at six o'clock p.m.; he had, therefore, an entire day to spend in the Californian capital. Taking a carriage at a charge of three dollars, he and Aouda entered it, while Passepartout mounted the box beside the driver, and they set out for the ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne

... romantic, but that they are real I can vouch for by my own experience whenever I was in love, which happened several times. When I was a youth of seventeen I fell in love with a beautiful, black-eyed young woman, a Spanish-American of Californian stock. She was married, and I am afraid she was amused at my mad infatuation. Did I try to flirt with her? A smile, a glance of her eyes, was to me the seventh heaven beyond which there could be no other. I would not have dared to touch her hand, and the thought ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... convert a swan into a goose, or vice versa. Nine feet did the Rimutaka chain of New Zealand gain in height in January, 1855, and a great earthquake has occurred in New Zealand every seven years for half a century nearly. The "Washingtonia" (Californian conifer) (47/6. Washingtonia, or Wellingtonia, better known as Sequoia. Asa Gray, writing in 1872, states his belief that "no Sequoia now alive can sensibly antedate the Christian era" ("Scientific Papers," II., page 144).) lately exhibited was four thousand years old, so that ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... purples and yellows of various shades. Not even here, nor indeed anywhere in the Himalaya, do we see that mass and glow of colour we find in California, where wide sheets of meadow-land are ablaze with the purple of the lupins and the gold of the Californian poppy. But for the number of varieties of plants these upper valleys of the Teesta River can scarcely be excelled. As we ascend the mountain-sides above Tangu we find them covered with plants of numerous different kinds, and even at about 14,000 feet Hooker ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband

... flint was chipped before the glaciers. Man's mind is the most important fact with which we are yet acquainted. Let us not turn then against it and deny its existence with too many brazen instruments, but remember these are but a means, and that the vast lens of the Californian refractor is but glass—it is the infinite speck upon which the ray of light will fall that is the one great fact of the universe. By the mind, without instruments, the Greeks anticipated almost all our thoughts; by-and-by, having raised ourselves up upon ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... working in the studio, but she was working under a new tutelage. A fellow-townsman of Miss Baxter's had turned up in Paris that autumn and frequented her studio as the only place where he could be sure of a welcome, warmth, and an occasional cup of tea. This young Californian, Archie Davis by name, had found his way to Paris as the traditional home of the arts, and expected to make himself famous as a painter. A graduate of the State University, he had been engaged by his father ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick



Words linked to "Californian" :   California, American



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