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Flat-topped   Listen
adjective
flat-topped, flat-top  adj.  
1.
Having a flat or flattened upper surface.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Flat-topped" Quotes from Famous Books



... and Katy's—(Bel had Aunt Blin's great flat-topped one now, with its cushion and flounce of Turkey red; and Kate had speedily stitched up a cover for hers to match, of cloth that Mrs. Scherman gave her) stood one each side the chimney,—in the recesses. ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... as Sime and Tolto slowly walked about in widening circles, and when they were sufficiently far away Murray and Tuman closed in. They had no expectation of finding the ship unlocked, and wasted no time trying to get it. Instead they climbed a flat-topped block of stone about ten feet high. From this position they could command, with Murray's neuro, anyone who might seek ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl

... narrow, but well trodden, and the light struck down upon it in a straight white line. I crept along it cautiously for some two hundred yards, when it opened suddenly into a most beautiful glade some hundred yards or more in width, wherein tall grass grew and flat-topped trees stood singly. With the caution born of long experience I watched for a few moments before I entered the glade, and then I saw why the elephant had trumpeted. There in the middle of the glade stood a large maned lion. He stood quite still, making a soft ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard

... beside a flat-topped desk at one of his office windows. Warden was big, though not massive. He seemed to have the frame of a tall, slender man, and had he stayed slender he might have carried his flesh gracefully. But Warden ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer

... other time. After each meal, it was his custom to take what he called "four draws" in his study. Kit found at these times that he was in his best humor. Relaxed and thoughtful, he would lean back in the deep Morris chair between the flat-topped desk and the fireplace, and smoke leisurely. Even his pipe had come from Persia, its amber stem very slender and beautifully curved, its bowl ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester

... and the showy problems, including the rapid moving of a ray of light and the long years of its travel between star and star, and smiled incredulously. Why, the stars were just above our heads, were not much higher than the flat-topped hills that barred the horizons. Venus was a yellow lamp hung in a tree; Mars a red lantern ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris

... some genius invented the "A" frame, a really wonderful labour saving device. Hitherto floorboards had been supported on piles and crossbars, while further and longer stakes were driven in to carry the rivetment. The new frame shaped like a flat-topped letter "A," was put in the floor of the trench upside down. The legs held the revetment against the sides, the floorboards rested on the cross-piece, and the space between the cross-piece and the flat top formed a ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills

... last speech, for they were now entering the classroom. At the first flat-topped desk in one corner of the room sat a small, fair woman with a sweet, sunshiny face that quite won Marjorie ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester

... day, though it had assumed more prominent proportions, they were still at some distance, and it was not until the third morning that the little party stood on the reedy shores of a long narrow winding lake, one end of which they had to skirt before they could ride up to the foot of the flat-topped mountain which looked as if it had been suddenly thrust by some wondrous volcanic action right from the plain to form what appeared to be a huge castle, some seven or eight hundred feet high, and with no ravine or rift in the wall by ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn

... higher the spruce-trees grew smaller, no longer forming a green aisle before him, and at length they became dwarfed and stunted, and at last failed altogether. Soon he was above timber-line and out upon a flat-topped mountain range, where in both directions the land rolled and dipped, free of tree or shrub, colorful with grass and flowers. The elevation exceeded eleven thousand feet. A whipping wind swept across the plain-land. ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey

... or so they came upon the former campsites of the castaway, each marked by a flat-topped cairn of small stones three or four feet in height. DeCastros was at a loss to explain this. Mr. Wordsley supposed that it was one of the marks ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns

... this frontier section, are Olivier's Hoek, Bezuidenhout, and Tintwa Passes at the head-stream of the Tugela river; Van Reenen's, a steep tortuous gap over which the railway from Ladysmith to Harrismith, and a broad highway, wind upwards through a strange profusion of sudden peaks and flat-topped heights; De Beers, Cundycleugh, and Sunday's River Passes giving access by rough bridle paths from the Free State into Natal, abreast of the Dundee coalfields; Mueller's and Botha's Passes debouching on Newcastle ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... crashing of several of our batteries. It was Britain's morning salutation to the Boer. I hurried up to a spot on the kopje where a regiment of Worcesters lay amongst the broken ground, and saw that the battle was just about to commence in deadly earnest. It was a huge, flat-topped kopje where I located myself. The outer edges of the hill rose higher than the centre, a little rivulet ran across tiny indentations on the crown of that rampart, and there was ample space for an army to lie concealed from the eyes of enemies. If the Boers were strongly posted, so ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales

... fat fingers in the lad's forelock to make sure that it was still fast. Schonholz had passed a year at Heidelberg and carried his diploma on his cheek—two crisscross slashes that had never healed—spoke battered English, wore a green flat-topped cap, and gray bobtailed coat with two rows of horn buttons ("Come to shoot chamois, have you?" Marny had asked when he presented his credentials.)—laughed three-quarters of the time he was awake, and never opened ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith

... breezes, and to render them more easily defended, the Assyrians, as well as the Babylonians and the Persians, built their palaces upon lofty artificial terraces, or platforms. These eminences, which appear like natural, flat-topped hills, were constructed with an almost incredible expenditure of human labor. The great palace-mound at Nineveh, called by the natives Koyunjik, covers an area of one hundred acres, and is from seventy ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... burning gold as the rays of the yet unrisen sun smote upon them. Presently, in the midst of the rich orange light that was now flashing up on the eastern and north-eastern horizon, there emerged a shape of indigo, practically flat-topped, but with two small protuberances, one at each end, which, by a stretch of the imagination, might be termed hills, rising to a height of perhaps sixty or seventy feet. This was the island of West Caycos, ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... the river which was spating from the recent rains, but great flat-topped rocks made it always possible to ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... having bathed me in the pool and breakfasted with my companion on what remained of our goat's-flesh, I set to work to build me a fireplace in a fissure of the rock over against the little valley and close beside a great stone, smooth and flat-topped, that should make me an anvil, what time my companion collected a pile of kindling-wood. Soon we had the fire going merrily, and whilst my iron was heating, I chose a likely piece of wood, and splitting it with the hatchet, fell to carving it ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... correction for the lifting power of the gas, this, according to Pole, is a deduction of h(1 - d)/828 where d is the specific gravity of the gas and h the height (in inches) of the top of the gasholder above the water level. This strictly applies only to a flat-topped bell, and hence if the bell has a crown with a rise equal to about 1/20 of the diameter of the bell, the value of h here must be taken as equal to the height of the top of the sides above the water-level ( h'), plus the height of a cylinder ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... and Saltonstone. Immediately on the right there was an open railed enclosure of desks in the center of which a group of clerks watched him with mingled respect and curiosity as he continued to the inner shut space. It was a large light room with windows on Charter Street. William's expansive flat-topped desk with its inked green baize was on the left, and, under a number of framed sere ships' letters and privateersmen's Bonds of the War of 1812, Gerrit saw the heavy body extended on a broad wooden bench, a familiar orange Bombay ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... disturbed, the colonel did not interrupt them for a while. But when the lady at length rose, holding Phil by the hand, the colonel, fearing that the boy, who was a child of strong impulses, prone to sudden friendships, might be proving troublesome, left his seat on the flat-topped tomb of his Revolutionary ancestor and ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... the garden hose. Grocery and delivery wagons came and went, rattling over the cobbles and car-tracks, while occasionally a whistle blew very far off. At the corner of the street by a livery-stable a little boy in a flat-topped leather cap was calling incessantly for some unseen dog, whistling and slapping his knees. An ex press-wagon stopped a few doors below the white house and the driver pulled down the back-board with a strident rattle ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... looked, both of them, and there painted in the air they saw the picture of a great mountain, standing by itself upon a plain, but with other mountains visible to the north and south of it. This mountain was flat-topped, with precipices of red rock, and down its eastern slope ran five ridges shaped like the thumb and fingers of a mighty hand, while between the thumb and the first finger, as it were, a stream gushed out, upon ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard

... acres and acres of agatized chips and trunks of great trees all turned to eternal stone, called by the Indians "Yeitso's bones," after the great giant of that name whom an ancient Indian hero killed. He described the coloring of the brilliant days in Arizona, where you stand on the edge of some flat-topped mesa and look off through the clear air to mountains that seem quite near by, but are in reality more than two hundred miles away. He pictured the strange colors and lights of the place; ledges of rock, yellow, white and green, drab and maroon, and tumbled piles of red boulders, shadowy ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

... were that, and Johnnie had an ingrained self-assurance which might have been mistaken for impudence, but for the winning smile that went with it. Yet all the way from Havana he had seen in his mind's eye old Sam Carter intrenched behind his flat-topped desk, and that picture had more than once caused him to forget the carefully rehearsed speech in which he intended to resign his position as an employee and ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach

... all placed and the ditch was finished, it was covered up so that it made a broad flat-topped wall, encircling ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... remember. On the British side of the river, a plain sloped gradually down to the southern bank from a distance of two or three miles. It was divided north and south by a slight swell in the ground, flat-topped, of height just sufficient to conceal men on one side of it from those {p.225} on the other. On the eastern edge of this rise, the railroad track ran north to the bridge. On the western side, and between 3000 and 4000 yards ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan

... belonging to the chase. A travelling table, with maps and a few books, stood against the wall, and one more article completed our furniture,—an exceedingly neat toilet table, the base of which was a flat-topped portmanteau, concealed by a cunning device of chintz and muslin; this, covered with the usual arrangement of brushes, mirror, scent-bottles, &c. threw an air of civilization over the establishment, which was increased by the presence of an immense sponging-bath, ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... come to a very steep hillside, up which the half-obliterated trail zigzagged toward the crest of a flat-topped hill. Barney went ahead, taking the girl's hand in his to help her, and thus they came to the top, to stand hand in hand, breathing heavily ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... of a deep, broad ravine that had caused us much delay and difficulty, we caught sight of an attractive town situated on a steep, flat-topped hill. Upon drawing near, a fine-looking, white-bearded Arab rode up on a small gray mare. He said that he was the head man of the town; that he hated the Turks, and would like to be of any assistance ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt

... flat tops. A single ridge may double back and forth so often that the region well deserves the old Indian name of the "Endless Mountains." Southwestward the valley grows narrower, and the ridges which break its surface become straighter. Everywhere they are flat-topped, steep-sided, and narrow, while between them lie parts of the main valley floor, flat and fertile. Here in the south, even more clearly than in the north, the valley is bordered on the east by the sharply upstanding range of the crystalline Appalachians, while on the west with ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington

... whither we were bound, now only twenty-five miles away. It seemed clear that the western or truncated peak, which gives its name to the mass (koro "cut off at the top"; puna "a cold, snowy height"), was the highest point of the range, and higher than all the eastern peaks. Yet behind the flat-topped dome we could just make out a northerly peak. Tucker wondered whether or not that might prove to be higher than the western peak which we decided to climb. No one knew anything about the mountain. There were no native guides to ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... on the flat-topped division of the seat, a pistol lay; but the fingers of the small white hand which held it were nerveless. In his bearing was no menace—only the ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann

... line. Then for four days he travelled across the scorching plains of India, shut up in stuffy carriages with violet-hued glass windows and Venetian wooden shutters meant to exclude the heat and glare. Over bare plains broken by sudden flat-topped rocky hills, through closely-cultivated fields and stretches of scrub-jungle, by mud-walled villages, he journeyed day and night. The train crossed countless wide river-beds in which the streams had shrunk to mean rivulets; but when it clattered over the Ganges at Allahabad the sacred flood rolled ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly

... women, wrapped up in the dark blue calico cloth which forms their ordinary costume, are working as hard as the men. Villages are scattered about, generally close to groves of trees. The huts are built of mud; most of them are flat-topped, but some are thatched with rushes. Rising above the villages is the mosque, where the population are Mohammedan, built of mud like the houses, but whitewashed and bright. The Hindoo villages generally, but not always, have their temples. The vegetation ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty

... they come to the river—where there was a break in the bluff, and a flat place going on down into the water that looked like it was the beginning of a ford. For a fact, it was where the Mexican women come to do their clothes-washing, and just back from the river was a little 'dobe house—flat-topped, and the size and shape of a twelve-foot-square dry-goods box—the women kept their washing things in. But them was particulars the Hen didn't happen to mention to ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier

... its grim and forbidding exterior gave little promise of the comfort within. A passage led to a square centre hall from which opened various rooms—a library, with a wood fire, the latest possible London and Paris papers, a flat-topped desk and a large map; a very large drawing-room, which is Sir John French's private office, with white walls panelled with rose brocade, a marble mantel, and a great centre table, covered, like the ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... 26 deg. 46' S. I immediately set out, with a man carrying my theodolite, for Mount Red Cap, distant from our camp about six miles. This little red cone had a very singular appearance, as we approached it from the east. A dark tinted scrub of flat-topped trees enveloped its base, on the outside of which the light and graceful Acacia pendula also grew on the grassy plain. I found the red rock to be the common one of the country, in a state of decomposition. It was hollowed out by some burrowing animal, whose tracks had opened ways through ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell

... road led them across a valley and up a gradual slope to another pass through the mountains. This time, as they emerged, Rick pointed to a flat-topped mountain directly ahead. "That's a mesa," he declared. ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... sun-baked gully, he climbed upward and onto a flat-topped, miniature butte. Here he saw a spectacle that literally froze ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens

... hall with an imitation groined ceiling, and into a large room at the back of the house, which by virtue of a case of morocco bound books, clearly not often disturbed, was the library. The young man flung himself into a chair behind an immense flat-topped desk and waved his hand to Evan with an air that seemed to say: "Now tell me the worst!" Between the two, Evan's sympathies were ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner

... shoal to the southward, which became dry at low water. Our latitude here was 10 deg. 30' from bearings, and longitude by time-keeper 142(? illegible in book) 181/2' east; but I was altogether at a loss to know what islands these were, under which we had anchored. Supposing the flat-topped island to have been the easternmost York Isle, the land we had in sight to the southward should have been Cape York; but no such isles as those around us were laid down by captain Cook, to the north of that cape. On consulting ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders

... by flat-topped hills and rugged mountains; dissected upland desert plains in center slope into the desert interior of ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... conveyer room was crowded, as it had been every minute of every day for the past ten thousand years. At the great circular desk in the center, departing or returning police officers were checking in or out with the flat-topped cylindrical robot clerks, or talking to human attendants. Some were in the regulation green uniform; others, like himself, were in civilian clothes; more were in outtime costumes from all over paratime. Fringed robes and cloth-of-gold sashes and conical caps from the Second Level Khiftan Sector; ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper

... sometimes repulsive, always mobile. She wandered down South Clark street, flaring with purple-white arc-lights, and looked in at its windows that displayed a pawnbroker's glittering wares, or, just next door, a flat-topped stove over which a white-capped magician whose face smacked of the galley, performed deft tricks with a pancake turner. "Southern chicken dinner," a lying sign read, "with waffles and real maple syrup, 35 cents each." Past these windows promenaded the Clark street women, hard-eyed, high-heeled, ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber

... Dawn lighted the flat-topped kopjes that lay in a huge semicircle in the distance, and men clambered up the sides of the spruit to ascertain the camp of the enemy. The white smoke-stack of the Bloemfontein waterworks appeared against the black background of the hills in the east, ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas

... the long black cigars from the open box on the flat-topped desk, and passed the box to his ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... wish to visit it. I have, however, no doubt of its being salt, from the nature of the country, and the fact of finding the water very salt in one of the creeks draining into it from the hills. Beyond this lake (which I distinguished with the name of Colonel Torrens), to the westward, was a low, flat-topped range, extending northwesterly as far as I ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... presented a very different appearance. Before they left the hut they had taken off their own great coats, the bearskin shako of the grenadier, and the high, flat-topped, bell-crowned cap of the line regiment of the officer. In place of these they wore the flat Russian caps and the long Russian overcoats. Bal-Arret might serve for a passable Russian, but no one could mistake Marteau for ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... salutem' in the course of the evening was astonishing. The old priest appeared more accustomed to these copious libations than his younger assistant, who before he left the table showed unmistakable signs of being 'well on.' Both vicar and curate wore moustachios, and the flat-topped red fez, which distinguishes their profession. The curate had received a certain amount of education at one of the Bosnian convents, whence he had been sent to Rome, where he had, at any rate, attained a tolerable proficiency in Italian, and a few words of French. Another ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... emerald patches gleam, vivid and fierce as serpents' eyes, ringed round with silver. Far away to the east floats the mirage of a lake, calm as a blue lagoon. Westward, where desert merges into sky, are high tablelands, and flat-topped mountains with carved sides, desert architecture, such as might have suggested Egyptian temples ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... and faded garb, the three had a comprehensive view of the town, chiefly trees and churches sufficient to house the entire populace several times over. Nine immense structures, each with a great dome and a tower or two—steeples are unknown in Mexico—stand out against the bare, brown, flat-topped range beyond that barely rises above the highest tower. The last scene he looked on must have struck the refuted emperor as typical of a country he was sorry then ever to have seen, in spite of his regal control of facial expression,—a hard, stony plateau, the fertility and riches of which ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... pink waves. The tall grass, tall as that of an English hay-field, seemed touched with fire; far on every side stretched the open plain, absolutely level, bounded at last in the far distance by that deep purple wall of mountains, flat-topped, level-lined also, against the sky, the great mesas or ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross

... old trees, lindens, acacias, chestnuts, a flat-topped Lombardy pine, a darkling ilex, besides the willow that overhung the river, and the poplars that stiffly stood along its border. Then there was the peacock-blue river itself, dancing and singing as it sped away, with a thousand ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... wildernesses—dark, bleak, and almost soundless, save where the wind harped his wild anthem upon the heathery waste, and where roaring streams filled the lonely cloughs with drowsy uproar. It was a striking scene, and it was an impressive hour. The bold, round, flat-topped height of Musbury Tor stood gloomily proud, on the opposite side, girdled off from the rest of the hills by a green vale. The lofty outlines of Aviside and Holcombe were glowing with the gorgeous hues of a cloudless ...
— Th' Barrel Organ • Edwin Waugh

... spend it lazily, re-reading and answering letters, or wandering about the town, absorbing its streets and shops. The season is fairly afloat, and all sail is set. At the angle of two thoroughfares, a stretch of ground has been brushed together for a park or promenade, and this, sprinkled with low, flat-topped trees and a band-stand, naturally attracts us first. Booths and cafes and nicknack stalls reach around its sides, and across from us stands a fine official-looking structure of marble, which we learn is the Thermal ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... few weeks after Sir John's fierce ultimatum, a young baker, carrying a large flat-topped basket, called at his house, from which he soon emerged, touching his cap to the merchant as he passed him in the garden, and giving him a respectful "good day." "A civil young man," Sir John said to himself, as he continued his promenade; "his ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... West Coast at Rottnest Island. Another remarkable effect of mirage. Anchor under, and land upon Rottnest Island. Break an anchor. Examine the coast to the northward. Cape Leschenault. Lancelin Island. Jurien Bay. Houtman's Abrolhos. Moresby's Flat-topped Range. Red Point. Anchor in Dirk Hartog's Road, at the entrance of Shark's Bay. Occurrences there. Examination of the coast to the North-west Cape. Barrow Island. Heavy gale off the Montebello Isles. Rowley's Shoals. Cape Leveque. Dangerous situation of the brig among the islands of Buccaneer's ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... a raceme except that the lower flowers have longer stems, making the cluster somewhat flat-topped; the ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar

... Play-play clearly. At Right in the Real-play is a window opening on a fire-escape, and in front of the window a cot where the child sleeps. At Left in the Real-play is a window, an entrance door, a flat-topped desk and two chairs. This setting of the Real-play remains unchanged throughout the ...
— The Pot Boiler • Upton Sinclair

... bare of carpet but spotlessly clean; shades, but no curtains, were over the windows; in the center stood a large flat-topped reading table; at one end of the table was a Morris chair upholstered in brown Spanish leather; a wolf-skin rug was thrown on the floor before an old-fashioned Mexican fire-place built into one corner of the room; in another corner was a smaller ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman

... hedged in by a little patch of green earth, about which a few camels or goats are quenching their thirst or cropping the scanty herbage. Some Arabs, in picturesque costumes, linger hard by. The tents pitched in the background are of the same low, flat-topped, camel's-hair construction as have been used by these desert tribes for many thousands ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... springing into a tree, ran lightly above the tangled and impenetrable mass of undergrowth for a couple of hundred yards, to emerge suddenly upon a circular clearing about which the giants of the jungle forest towered like a guardian host. In the center of this natural amphitheater, was a little flat-topped mound of ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Planche, and every detail of the representation receiving most attentive study. Great success attended this experiment, although, in the first instance, there had prevailed a strong inclination to deride as "stewpans" the flat-topped helmets worn by King John and his barons. After this, accuracy of costume, especially in relation to the plays of Shakespeare, became the favourite pursuit of managers. Mr. Macready ventured upon various revivals, archaic and decorative, at Covent Garden and Drury Lane; Mr. Phelps followed ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... him and they presently stopped beneath the alder branches by a sparkling shallow. Tall brush grew up the shady bank and briars trailed in the stream. A row of flat-topped stones ran across, but there were gaps where the current foamed over some that were lower than the rest. Grace's foot was getting worse, and sitting down on a slab of the slate stile, ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss

... hundred yards from the river it raised its great square bulk against the background of black, star-flecked sky. From the facade before me down to the spot where I stood by the water, came a flight of half a dozen terraces, each balustraded in white marble, ending in square, flat-topped pillars of Florentine design. What moon there was revealed the quaint architecture of that stately edifice and glittered upon the mullioned windows. But within nothing stirred; no yellow glimmer came to clash with the white purity ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini

... hundred yards apart, and fall almost vertically thousands of feet, representing an erosion of hard rock of many millions of cubic feet. One result of the action of the water has been the formation of numerous isolated flat-topped hills or small plateaus, known as ambas, with nearly perpendicular sides. The highest peaks are found in the Simen (or Semien) and Gojam ranges. The Simen Mountains he N.E. of Lake Tsana and culminate in the snow-covered peak of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... those twain into the midst of the Mote, and there bade them go up on to a wide, flat-topped stone, six feet above the ground, just over against the ancient chieftain; and they mounted it by a rough stair, and stood there before that folk; Walter in his array of the outward world, which had been fair enough, of crimson cloth and silk, and white linen, but was now travel-stained ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris

... slope she saw Denis O'Meara's scarlet uniform gleaming martially against a background of dark broom and hoary rock. Its wearer was, however, very peacefully employed in pulling the silky floss off the heads of the bog-cotton, which lay in a great heap before him on a flat-topped boulder, with a big bunch of many-hued wild flowers beside it. Theresa Joyce, who sat opposite to him, was pulling bog-cotton too, though less diligently, for it might have been noticed that she often looked off her work, and ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane

... watershed, that sends so many rivers into the sea on the west coast. The hills forming these watersheds are almost uniformly composed of granite, and generally lie in almost parallel lines, nearly east and west. They are mostly flat-topped, and at various points present straight, rounded, precipitous, and corrugated fronts, to the astonished eyes that first behold them. A few small water-channels rise among them, and these, joining others of a similar kind, gather strength ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... warts appear to result from some contagion, the nature of which is unknown; they sometimes occur in an epidemic form among school-children, and show a remarkable tendency to disappear spontaneously. The solitary flat-topped wart which occurs on the face of old people may, if irritated, become the seat of epithelioma. A warty growth of the epidermis is a frequent accompaniment of moles and of that variety of lupus ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... lay, a wilderness of little hills and valleys, flat-topped benches and sandy gulches threaded minutely with winding trails and cow paths, green with the illusion of drought-proof giant cactus and vivid desert bushes, one vast preserve of browse and grass from the Peaks to the gorge of the Salagua. Here was the last battle-ground, ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... Unfortunately the weather was squally but, by awaiting the intervals between clouds on the horizon, I obtained angles at length on nearly all the distant hills, the waters of Portland Bay just appearing in the south over an intervening woody ridge. From this hill I recognised a very conspicuous flat-topped hill to the northward which had been previously included in a series of angles observed on the 12th instant from the valley of the Wannon and which I now named Mount Napier. Portland Bay was distant about fifteen miles but the intervening country ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... back deep in thought, and made up his mind to see the wise woman again. So he passed down into the valley, crossed the river to the new village built on a small flat-topped hill, and found the chief's mother sitting ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... that no object could be distinguished within. The negro servant hung back, trembling from some indefinable dread. The captain, his hand on the door-knob, stepped quickly into the gloomy apartment, Pierce close at his heels. A broad, flat-topped desk stood in the centre of the room. Some shelves and books were dimly visible against the wall. Some of the drawers of the desk were open, and there was a litter of papers on the desk, and others were strown in the big rattan chair, some on ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King

... Blenker's Germans, were sent forward to the attack. Their onslaught was directed against the Confederate right; and here, within the woods, Trimble had posted his brigade in a most advantageous position. A flat-topped ridge, covered with great oaks, looked down upon a wide meadow, crossed by a stout fence; and beyond the hollow lay the woods through which the Federals, already in contact with the Confederate outposts, were rapidly advancing. The pickets soon gave ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... view of the heights of Magdala. By the night of the 9th all preparations were completed for storming the fortress. Theodore had posted his army, consisting of 3000 soldiers armed with percussion guns, a host of spearmen, and several pieces of ordnance, on the flat-topped hill of Fala. Here he had come to conquer, as he thought it possible, with his cherished guns, or to die should he meet with defeat. Between the armies was the plain of Arogye. In front rose, more than 1000 feet above it, the lofty stronghold ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... stepped out into the office. It was a changed place. Over there was his long flat-topped desk with the opened ledger upon it. A sheet of paper had blown to the floor and was sliding over toward him, its edges curling lazily. These seemed live, vibrant features. One of the clerks across the way had thought of something ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... from the land, and is transported seaward through the breaches, which occur in front of almost every valley. If the atolls of the larger archipelagoes were upraised, the bed of the ocean being converted into land, they would form flat-topped mountains, varying in diameter from a few miles (the smallest atolls being worn away) to sixty miles; and from being horizontally stratified and of similar composition, they would, as Mr. Lyell has remarked, falsely appear as if they had originally been united into one vast continuous mass. ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin

... he presently chanced a leap. It was error. As the meager light disclosed the path a chasm of fifteen feet intervened between the edge of the upturned pan upon which he stood and a flat-topped hummock of Arctic ice to which he was bound. There was footing for the tip of his gaff midway below. He felt for this footing to entertain himself while the moon delayed. It was there. He was tempted. The chasm was critically deep for the length of the gaff. Worse than ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... cliff-top, formed but a relatively narrow strip between the sea and the more open forest and meadow of the interior. Farther back there was a range of low but apparently very rocky hills, and here and there all about were visible flat-topped masses of rock—small mountains, in fact—which reminded me of pictures I had seen of landscapes in New Mexico. Altogether, the country was very much broken and very beautiful. From where I stood I counted no less than a dozen streams winding down from among the table-buttes and emptying ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... the room the teacher, Miss Scattergood, sat at her flat-topped desk. "That old maid," as Marty had called her, was not at all the sort of a person—in appearance, at least—that Janice expected her to be. Somehow, a spinster lady who had taught school—and such a school as Poketown's—for twenty years, should have fitted the well-known ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long

... let's have a little talk about this business," the Cross-Triangle man said in a matter-of-fact tone, as he seated himself on a large, flat-topped stone near the little fire. "You know you can't get away, ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright

... rode away to the big fence mentioned, which consisted of a broad flat-topped bank between two wide dry ditches; while the horses went the round of the course over four or ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... by a large, flat-topped desk in the centre of the room, his back was to the light, which was generously given in all its effulgence to his visitors. He was a small man and slight of build, intensely nervous, with well-cut features, gray hair—what there was of it—and a tiny black moustache ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott

... this obstacle, led up the eastern acclivity of the glen, and the summit commanded the Campidano, now clear of fog, spread out before us, far as the eye could reach, in a broad level, broken only by some singular flat-topped ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... which I afterwards named for Hugh Miller. We rowed up its fiord and landed to make a slight examination of its grand frontal wall. The berg-producing portion we found to be about a mile and a half wide, and broken into an imposing array of jagged spires and pyramids, and flat-topped towers and battlements, of many shades of blue, from pale, shimmering, limpid tones in the crevasses and hollows, to the most startling, chilling, almost shrieking vitriol blue on the plain mural spaces from which ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir

... brilliant but delicate translucent green of purer quality, contrasting finely with the scarlet flush in the east which heralded the rising, but still hidden, sun. On our right, as we entered the wide, spacious harbor, were two or three flat-topped, table-like islands, or "keys," which, in general outline and appearance, suggested dark mesas of foliage floating in a tropical ocean of pale chrysolite-green. Directly ahead was the city of Key West—a long, ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan

... a big, flat-topped tent was pitched, which bore over the low door a signboard on which was painted, Triage No. 1. Malades et Blesses Assis. This meant that those assis, able to travel in the ambulances as "sitters," were to ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte

... Rainey standing before him. She was a small athletic looking woman with black hair, square shoulders, cheeks browned by the sun and wind, and quiet grey eyes. She stood facing Sam's desk and pulled off a glove while she looked down at him with amused, quizzical eyes. Sam rose, and leaning over the flat-topped desk, took her hand, wondering ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... strait bore several dhows speeding in and out of the bay of Zanzibar with bellying sails. Towards the south, above the sea line of the horizon, there appeared the naked masts of several large ships, and to the east of these a dense mass of white, flat-topped houses. This was Zanzibar, the capital of the island;—which soon resolved itself into a pretty large and compact city, with all the characteristics of Arab architecture. Above some of the largest houses lining ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... his head. Free and in the open, if only for twenty-four hours. And with a horse, a real horse, between his knees. He looked off to the left to Barlow's three peaks; the sun was gilding the top of the tallest and it was unquestionable that it was flat-topped. But he did not dwell long upon buried gold nor yet on the query which suggested itself: "Where were Barlow and Zoraida riding so early?" The immediate present and the immediate surroundings were all that he cared to interest himself in ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory

... through and through her recessed ways the length of this bright and breezy October week; and have marked where I walked the sun's great hand laid upon palace and cloister and bell-tower. He has summoned up these flat-topped houses, these precipitous walls beneath which winds the darkened causeway. One seems to be travelling in a mountain gorge with, above, a thin ribbon of sky, fluid blue, flawless of cloud, like the sea. He, that so masterful sun, has given Florence the apathetic, beaten aspect ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... windows, stood a flat-topped desk. A little pile of white and brown lay upon it close to the opposite edge. After a moment of rest I crossed the room to investigate. The white was the bleached human bones—the skull, collar bones, arms, and a few of the upper ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... trees were the flat-topped roofs of the village, at the entrance to which in the most commanding position stood the ruins of an old castle. Only the grey weather-beaten walls remained, but the odour of antiquity was on the place, for it was built by Saladin, Prince of Saracen ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett

... foot of a vast flat-topped mass of granite unique among the natural elevations of the world. She is another melting pot. Here mingle Kaffir and Boer, Basuto and Britisher, East Indian and Zulu. The hardy rancher and fortune-hunter from the North Country rub shoulders with the globe-trotter. In the bustling ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... reef, and hauled into a very considerable opening about six or seven miles wide, and at least five or six leagues deep. At the bottom of this inlet was some higher land than usual, and among it two flat-topped hills were very conspicuous. The eastern shore of the port, for such it proved to be, is formed by a succession of rocky points, between which were ranges of red cliffs, much higher than any we had yet ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King

... had taken the lead, cast anchor in Suez bay just as the sun was rising over the desert; and Mac gazed appreciatively at the sweeping bay, the palms, the flat-topped houses, and the open desert, clear cut in the early light. Suez was not adapted for the disembarkation of large numbers of men and horses, and Alexandria was the only harbour with sufficient accommodation. In the early afternoon the Tahiti entered ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... most remarkable feature in the scene was an isolated flat-topped hill, having all the appearance of a bastion or fortress, rising abruptly from the surrounding plain, to an elevation of 650 feet, the upper part being a line of cliffs, greatly adds to the appearance it ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... Marion's shoulder. She had been beginning to feel the reaction. For one moment the three women looked intently into each other's faces. Then up they started and trooped away into Gerald's den. The doctor followed. The upper drawer of a big, flat-topped desk stood wide open, and pretty Mrs. Blake opened her eyes and mouth in emulation ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... sailed up the Thames, beyond Westminster? And does he remember a little spot of garden-ground, walled in by dingy houses, that lies upon the right bank of the river near to Chelsea Hospital? If he can recall two gaunt, flat-topped cedars which sentinel the walk leading to the river-gate, he will have the spot in his mind, where, nearly two hundred years ago, and a full century before the Kew parterres were laid down, the Chelsea Garden of the Apothecaries Company was established. It was in the open country then; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... the aisle they reached a small, railed-in space, strongly resembling what might be seen in any office on the earth. In the middle of it stood a low, flat-topped desk, for all the world like that of a prosperous real-estate agent, except that it was about half a foot lower. There was no chair. For lack of a visible gate in the railing, the explorers stepped over, being careful not to ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint

... you get into the house, go straight through the vestibule and hall to the door at the end. On the big, flat-topped desk in the middle of the room you'll find a telephone. Do you know how ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter

... mangroves. This creek carried them by the south west near the head of it, where the stream, passing through a rocky swamp, permitted them to wade over it. Thence they steered between N 50 degrees and 60 degrees West, getting a sight of the flat-topped peak at times, which, appearing to be considerably nearer than the highest Glass-House, was that which he first meant to visit; but observing that one of the round mounts with sloping sides was still nearer, he altered his course ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins

... variable in relative length, often becoming almost equal, while sometimes the upper radials are very much reduced. The figure referred to in Cact. Mex. Bound. is not satisfactory as to the general habit of the plant, which is flat-topped ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter

... and brushwood. These formed a pleasing contrast with the mainland we had passed which was full of sandhills. The country continued hilly and the northernmost land, the same we had seen from the lagoon island, appeared like downs, sloping towards the sea. Nearly abreast of us was a flat-topped hill which on account of its shape I called Pudding-pan hill; and a little to the northward were two other hills which we called the Paps; and here was a small tract of country without sand, the eastern part of which forms ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh

... the waistcoat, or those trouser-pockets. The paper turned-down collar, and the black necktie (of which only one square inch was ever visible), and the paper cuffs, which finished the tailor-made portion of Mr. Ollerenshaw, still linger in sporadic profusion. His low, flat-topped hat was faintly green, as though a delicate fungoid growth were just budding on its black. His small feet were cloistered in small, thick boots of glittering brilliance. The colour of his face matched that of his ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett

... forming the "rise" of a submarine "tread" in the form of fringing reef which surrounds the island and is never uncovered, even at low water, except in Flying Fish Cove, where the only landing-place exists. The central plateau is a plain whose surface presents "rounded, flat-topped hills and low ridges and reefs of limestone," with narrow intervening valleys. On its northern aspect this plateau has a raised rim having all the appearances of being once the margin of an atoll. On these rounded hills occurs the deposit of phosphate of lime which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... however, and seemed to know that no harm would reach them there. Later on in the morning we saw other herds, but invariably at long range, sometimes teetering along the sky line or appearing and disappearing behind the flat-topped umbrella acacias. ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... Yosemite valley. The last cliff before one reaches the level country is known as Cape Sverbef, a bold promontory that projects into the river and is nearly a thousand feet high. Not far from this cliff is a flat-topped mountain remarkable for several crevices on its northern side, from which currents of cold air steadily issue. Ice forms around these fissures in midsummer, and a thermometer suspended in one of them fell in an hour to ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... along the dizzy edge of which I scrambled until some less precipitous point was discovered where I might safely venture to the bottom and then, selecting some feasible portion of the opposite wall, reascend with the same slow caution. Massive, flat-topped spurs alternate with the gorges, plunging abruptly from the shoulders of the snowy peaks, and planting their feet in the warm desert. These were everywhere marked and adorned with characteristic sculptures of the ancient glaciers that swept over this entire region like one vast ice-wind, and the ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir

... clambering carefully around the face of a big rock Pete suddenly whispered that he smelt a "Painter," and upon peering around the corner we found ourselves face to face with a large cat; the animal was crouching upon a flat-topped projecting stone immediately in our path. That it was not the puma of the low-lands, its reddish-colored coat and great size proclaimed. It was a so-called mountain lion and a grand specimen of ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard

... execrable path winding over the saddle of a low range of tumbled ironstone. Just one of those ranges which force themselves with sheer effrontery out from the level of the plain. Loose sugar-loaf excrescences which stud the sea of prairie with a thousand flat-topped islets, and weave the monotony of landscape peculiar to this great continent. The rough post-cart track led down into a vast amphitheatre, so vast that Western Europe can furnish no parallel to it. Yet its counterparts ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer

... was Marudi (Claudetown), the headquarters of the government of the district. There the river, still nearly a hundred miles from the sea, winds round the foot of a low flat-topped hill, on which stand the small wooden fort and court-house and the Resident's bungalow. Some days before that fixed for the great meeting by the tokens we had sent out, parties of men began to arrive, floating down in the long war canoes ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... bright air. Seen at a distance of a couple of hundred yards, the appearance was that of a beautiful pearly-white cloud resting upon the earth. Many fogs had I seen, but never one like this, so substantial-looking, so sharply defined, standing like a vast white wall or flat-topped hill at the foot of the green sunlit slope! I had the fancy that if I had been an artist in sculpture, and rapid modeller, by using the edge of my hand as a knife I could have roughly carved out a human ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... the new scene or picture with something similar in the child's experience. The desert is like the sandy waste or the barren and stony hillside with which the children are acquainted. The square, flat-topped houses of eastern lands have their approximate counterpart in occasional buildings to be found in almost any modern community. The rivers and lakes of Bible lands may be compared with rivers and lakes near at hand. The manner of cooking and serving food under primitive conditions was not so ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts

... score of heads craned over to witness the chase. The spectacle of an ordinary youth giving chase to an omnibus crowded with roystering schoolboys is probably amusing enough; but when that youth has his white collar outside the collar of his great-coat, and wears brilliant tan boots and a flat-topped billycock, it appears, at least so it seemed to me, to be exceedingly funny for the people on ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed

... northerly direction; then we descended into the Upper Shire Valley, which is nearly 1200 feet above the level of the sea. This valley is wonderfully fertile, and supports a large population. After leaving the somewhat flat-topped southern portion, the most prominent mountain of the Zomba range is Njongone, which has a fine stream running past its northern base. We were detained at the end of the chain some days by one of our companions being laid up with fever. ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... my hoe in the furrow, I saw a man come by walking a pretty good horse. He was an elderly, bearded man, very portly, and wore the brown garb of the Capuchins, which I certainly had no reason to love. His bald head, gleaming in the sun, was of the steep and flat-topped shape of our English quartern-loaves; and it came upon me with a shock that here was that Fra Palamone, whom I had last seen extended, shot by my hand, in the Piazza Santa Maria at Florence. This alarming discovery was verified by his nearer approach. I recognised his twinkling, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... pause, the dull thud of the distant explosion. Another followed. At the third shot, instead of the white smoke, there was a prodigious cloud of red dust, in which the whole tomb disappeared. When this cleared away we saw that, instead of being pointed, it was now flat-topped. Other shells continued to strike it with like effect, some breaking holes in the dome, others smashing off the cupolas, all enveloping ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... a glance on the shore opposite to the port of Bombay, he will see a dark blue mass rising like a wall between himself and the horizon. This is Parbul, a flat-topped mountain 2,250 feet high. Its right slope leans on two sharp rocks covered with woods. The highest of them, Mataran, is the object of our trip. From Bombay to Narel, a station situated at the foot of this mountain, we are to travel four hours by railway, though, as the ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... passion of straw hats; and where one lately saw only the variance from silken cylinders to the different types of derbies and fedoras, there was now the glisten of every shape of panama, tuscan, and chip head-gear, with a prevalence of the low, flat-topped hard-brimmed things that mocked with the rigidity of sheet-iron the conception of straw as a light and yielding material. Men with as yet only one foot in the grave can easily remember when the American picked ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... half miles the sea was in sight, some fine flat-topped bergs floating in the nearest bay. Suddenly a dark, rocky nunatak sprang into view on our left. It was a sudden contrast after ten days of unchanging whiteness, and we felt very anxious to visit this new find. As it was in Stillwell's ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... little flat-topped stove the leathern old world-rover muttered and chuckled to himself as he prodded a fork into the browning pork-chops, shooting now and then an affectionate glance toward ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... Fleury Ray, but inverted and more green than violet. Its function is to shunt the lift out of the gas, and this it will do without watching. That is all! A tiny pump-rod wheezing and whining to itself beside a sputtering green lamp. A hundred and fifty feet aft down the flat-topped tunnel of the tanks a violet light, restless and irresolute. Between the two, three white-painted turbine-trunks, like eel-baskets laid on their side, accentuate the empty perspectives. You can hear the trickle of the liquefied gas flowing ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling

... near the Pole itself by a long distance, says Greely, as "we know almost as well as if we had seen it that there is in the unknown regions an extensive land which is the birthplace of the flat-topped icebergs or the palaeocrystic ice." In this glacier-covered land, which he is of opinion must be over 300 miles in diameter, and which sends out icebergs to Greenland as well as to Franz Josef Land, [13] the Pole ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... accompanied by curious canoes like paper-boats, and by fishing-craft which bounded over the waves like dolphins, we spun by the Puerto de la Luz, a line of flat-topped whitewashed houses, the only remarkable feature being the large and unused Lazaretto. A few barques still lie off the landing-place, where I have been compelled more than once to take refuge. In my day it was proposed to cut a ship-canal ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... men arrived just before it became dark. They wore high flat-topped fur caps, a dress something like a long loose blouse, and trousers of fine leather tucked into boots that came up to the knee. Most of them had bows and arrows in addition to their fishing gear. Godfrey felt ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty

... varying from two to five inches in thickness; patches of water, perhaps each an acre in extent, were to be seen from the crow's nest, and from one to the other of these we had to work our way. By-and-by the Cary Isles showed themselves to the northward, and then the flat-topped land between ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn

... downward, and it became evident that Nevia was neither entirely aqueous nor devoid of intelligent life. For the blunt nose of the space-ship was pointing toward what was evidently a half-submerged city, a city whose buildings were flat-topped, hexagonal towers, exactly alike in size, shape, color, and material. These buildings were arranged as the cells of a honeycomb would be if each cell were separated from its neighbors by a relatively narrow channel of water, and ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... On a low, flat-topped bowlder, which served the purpose of a throne, sat the Chief of the Bow-legs, playing with his unwieldy club (which was merely the root end of a sapling hacked into shape with sharp stones), as if it had been a bulrush. In height ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... at the hub of which stood bolt-upright a tall, snowy flagstaff, its shred of bunting hanging limp and lifeless from the peak, and in the dull, dirt-colored buildings of adobe, ranged in rigid lines about the dull brown, flat-topped mesa, a thousand yards up stream above the pool, drowsed a little band of martial exiles, stationed here to keep the peace 'twixt scattered settlers and swarthy, swarming Apaches. The fort was their soldier home; the solitary girl a ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... shore was the peculiar formation known as Island Rock. This was a large rock that stood abruptly up out of the water. Below, about the usual water-line, it was seamed and fissured, but its summit rose up in a narrow, flat-topped peak. At low tide twenty feet of it was above water, but at high tide it was six feet and often more ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... read this will think it a strange thing, but, though I had been busy all that morning handling beautiful little pippins, long, rosy, and flat-topped, I had never even thought ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn

... desolation that met us in the Lone City was at once extraordinary and awesome. It seemed impossible that our rays, acting for so brief a period, could have done so much damage. The city was nothing more than a semicivilized settlement of little, flat-topped stone houses. Our rays, striking these, had discharged harmlessly into the ground. But the interiors had been penetrated through windows and doors, and everything inflammable about them, as well as about the streets, ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings

... the noted book-thief Libri. This manuscript is attributed to the tenth century by Merrill, and by Chatelain in his description of the book. But Chatelain labels his facsimile page "Saec. IX."[20] The latter seems the more probable date. The free use of a flat-topped a, along with the general appearance of the script, reminds me of the style in vogue at Fleury and its environs about the middle of the ninth century. A good specimen is accessible in a codex of St. Hilary on the Psalms (Vaticanus Reginensis ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand

... the low stone roofs of its flat-topped dwellings, the silver spread of lake showed a green-clad island some three miles off shore. The distance made its white stone houses seem small. But as I gazed, I realized that they were large to their environment, all far larger than those of the little town. ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... horse-girths. He made shift, however, to dress himself, and then, with the help of a stick, limped through the French windows that opened from his room on to the verandah, and surveyed the scene before him. It was a delightful spot. At the back of the stead was the steep boulder-strewn face of the flat-topped hill that curved round on each side, embosoming a great slope of green, in the lap of which the house was placed. It was very solidly built of brown stone, and, with the exception of the waggon-shed and other outbuildings which were roofed with galvanised iron, that shone and glistened in ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... Flat-topped houses, colored white and pink and lemon, with almost unbroken fronts, ran round the square. A few had green lattices and handsome iron gates to the arched entrances that ran like a tunnel through the ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss

... hills then, so that he struck the three Maela [Note: i.e. flat-topped hills.] of Meath with his three blows. Cuchulainn heard the blows then that Fergus gave on the hills or on the ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown

... quickly back was one of the heads of the Civil Service. The man at the flat-topped desk was Colonel Stopford. The man on a chair beside him was one of the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... Judge came to, it was with an excruciatingly painful struggle that left him shrinking and nerveless, lying in a corner, blinking at the light of a kerosene lamp. Corrigan sat on the edge of a flat-topped desk watching him with an ugly, appraising, speculative grin. It was as though the man were mentally gambling on his chances to recover from ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... another form of pyramid called the mastaba, which, like the Mexican, was flattened on the top; while in Assyria structures flattened like the Mexican are found. "In fact," says one writer, "this form of temple (the flat-topped) has been found from Mesopotamia to the Pacific Ocean." The Phoenicians also built pyramids. In the thirteenth century the Dominican Brocard visited the ruins of the Phoenician city of Mrith or Marathos, and speaks in the strongest terms ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... clerk, closing the door, went back to his own office. Fronting Drennen, at his flat-topped desk, sat old Marshall Sothern, the muscles of his face tense, his eyes grim with the purpose in them. A second man, small, square, strong-faced, a little reckless-eyed, sat close to Sothern. The third man of the group, standing fronting the two, was a young looking fellow, ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory

... how exactly I agree with him on affinities, and especially on extinct forms as illustrated by his flat-topped tree. (259/2. See page 15 of separate copy: "We should then have the present races represented by the countless branchlets forming the flat-topped summit" of a genealogical tree, in which "all we can do is to map out the summit as it were from a bird's-eye view, and under each cluster, or cluster ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... small, dull, white heads of tubular florets only, crowded in a scaly involucre and borne in spreading, flat-topped terminal cymes. Stem: Stout, tall, branching above, hairy, leafy. Leaves: Opposite, often united at their bases, or ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... at an immense ebony flat-topped desk. The room was furnished like his mind, that is to say, sparsely, and without any southern exposure. A peculiarly terrifying feature of the scene was that the top of the desk was completely bare, not a single paper lay on it. Remembering his ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley

... it was running full in the face of the northeast; the river had widened almost to a sea, growing more and more desolate, with a few lonely islands breaking its expanse, and the shores sinking lower and lower till, near Tadoussac, they rose a little in flat-topped bluffs thickly overgrown with stunted evergreens. Here, into the vast low-walled breadth of the St. Lawrence, a dark stream, narrowly bordered by rounded heights of rock, steals down from the north out of regions of gloomy and ever-during solitude. This is the Saguenay; ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells

... it out of the water. Then he set to work to pound it down into the mud and stones at the bottom of the river with such a persistent thoroughness, that he gave us time to reach the other bank and climb up a stout tree which grew there, a sloping, flat-topped kind of tree that was fortunately easy to ascend, at least for a man. Here we sat gasping, perhaps about thirty feet above the ground level, ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard

... the base was, roughly, three hundred feet, and its thickness varied from three hundred feet or more at the center, to a few feet at each end. Roughly, then, its basic outline was that of an irregular parallelogram, while its profile was that of a flat-topped cone. For some moments the little group stood in silence as they gazed up at the yellowish-gray walls of the ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering

... weather conditions the fall strikes on flat-topped slabs, forming a kind of ledge about two-thirds of the way down from the top, and as the fall sways back and forth with great variety of motions among these flat-topped pillars, kissing and plashing notes as well as thunder-like detonations are produced, like those ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir



Words linked to "Flat-topped" :   flat-top, flat-topped white aster



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