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Islet   Listen
noun
Islet  n.  A little island.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Islet" Quotes from Famous Books



... them more sharply, and below them on the pebbles by the caffe they could see the foam of breaking waves. But to the right, and nearer to them, the sea was still as an inland pool, guarded by the tree-covered hump of land on which stood the house of the sirens. This hump, which would have been an islet but for the narrow wall of sheer rock which joined it to the main-land, ran out into the sea parallel ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens

... islands, some were thrown up shortly before the beginning of the Christian era; in particular, one called the Great Cammeni, which, however, received a considerable accession to its size by a fresh eruption in A. D. 726. The islet nearest Santorin was raised in 1573, and was named the Little Cammeni; and in 1707 there was added, between the other two, a third, which is now called the Black Island. This made its appearance above water on the 23rd of May, 1707, and was first mistaken for ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... changed. It seemed as if the party had reached the shores of a great, level, grassy sea, with only here and there a seeming islet, where a thicket grew, to break the sky-line of the horizon. For a few minutes the rear-guard drew up to collect the straggling baggage-mules, and then away they went with a wild shout, as if they ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... boy would not have stayed a day on Earraid; which is only what they call a tidal islet; and except in the bottom of the neaps, can be entered and left twice in every twenty-four hours, either dry-shod, or at the most by wading. Even I, who had the tide going out and in before me in the bay, and even watched for the ebbs, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... long one, but the night was delightful, and the half ducat was a prize for Giuseppi; but what influenced Francis principally in accepting was curiosity. San Nicolo was a little sandy islet lying quite on the outside of the group of islands. It was inhabited only by a few fishermen; and Francis wondered that a man, evidently by his voice and manner of address belonging to the upper class, should want to go to such a place as this at this hour of the night. Certainly ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty

... thousand were left upon a small and barren island by the sailing of the ships. The sovereign and the people of the larger island rejoiced greatly when they saw the host thus scattered and many of them cast upon the islet. As soon as the sea calmed they assembled a great number of ships, sailed thither and landed, hoping to capture all those refugees. But when the latter saw that their enemies had disembarked, leaving the vessels unguarded, they ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober

... is battened down. It takes him several weeks before he can attract attention. But the captain is a horrible man, and some of the crew are not much better. Eventually Dick jumps ship by stealing a ship's dinghy, and lands on a tiny rocky islet. The dinghy is lost in a storm. Eventually Dick is rescued and is taken back to his home town, where he vows never to ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston

... sure but that it was all royal chaff, till I made my way back south to the head-waters again, and had the natives of the islet Mpabala slowly moving the hands all around the great expanse, with 183 deg. of sea horizon, and saying that is Chambeze, forming the great Bangweolo, and disappearing behind that western headland to change its name to Luapula, and run down past Cazembe to Moero. ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... rays have attained the right angle, and warm winds blow up mist and rain and melt the snowbanks, and the sun, dispersing the mist, smiles on a checkered landscape of russet and white smoking with incense, through which the traveller picks his way from islet to islet, cheered by the music of a thousand tinkling rills and rivulets whose veins are filled with the blood of winter which ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... promontory, cross a last bridge to a large rock-islet standing out from the mainland, and lo! the crescent of the coast is completed, and far to the south we see a low mountain ending the curve; it ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... strongholds of the Macdonalds in Islay are the following:—In Loch Finlagan, a lake about three miles in circumference, three miles from Port Askaig, and a mile off the road to Loch-in-Daal, on the right hand, on an islet, are the ruins of their principal castle or palace and chapel; and on an adjoining island the Macdonald council held their meetings. There are traces of a pier, and of the habitations of the guards on the shore. A large stone was, till no very distant period, to be seen, on which Macdonald ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various

... becalmed off the mouth of the Cove; and when at length we entered, a boat, containing four seamen in charge of a midshipman, who had been most carefully instructed concerning the precise nature of the duty which he was to perform, was cast adrift, just inside the Heads, but outside the islet which masked the entrance. While they pulled away for the shore we in the felucca stood on into the Cove, every man of us with his sword or cutlass girded to his waist, and a brace of loaded pistols thrust into his belt, standing ready to leap aboard ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... beauties, its brilliance of style, make it an exposure of all that was worst and much of what was best in his character and genius. Tended by his old friend Mme. Recamier, to whom, if to any one, he was sincerely attached, Chateaubriand died in the summer of 1848. His tomb is on the rocky islet of Grand-Be, off ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... islet formed of frozen mud and roots; it is scarcely two paces across, but large enough to give ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann

... structure of the geological feature of this islet led me to examine the south-east part, which was the most exposed to the weather, and where the disposition of the strata was, of course, more plainly developed. The base is a coarse granular, silicious sandstone, in which large pebbles of quartz and jaspar are imbedded. This stratum ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... play Leutgert to Lindley Murray. It is some consolation, however, to reflect that they seldom last long. They unfold their wing-like ears and make a frantic flutter at the sun, only to come down beam first on some rocky islet in the Icarian sea. Their creditors do not have even the mournful satisfaction of contemplating the hole—the amateur editor invariably pulls it in after him. But until his first notes fall due he is ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... express purpose of fighting for Japan at once ensured me a most friendly welcome among them. While this was going on, the ship was unmoored, and a few minutes later we were outside the harbour and shaping a course that took us at no great distance past the islet which Hugo has immortalised in his ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood

... finite, the unknown is infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land; to add something to the extent and solidity of our possessions."—Huxley in "Reception of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various

... The air seemed full of half-vibrations, sub-noises, that crowded it as completely as do the insect sounds of midsummer; yet she could only distinguish the ripple beneath her feet, and the rote on the distant beach, and the busy wash of waters against every shore and islet of the bay. The mist was thick around her, but she knew that above it hung the sleepless stars, and the fancy came over her that perhaps the whole vast interval, from ocean up to sky, might be densely ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... course. It would be a mistake, he said, to leave the raft so far from our sleeping place, instead of taking it away, when not only should we have it near us in case of a sudden attack by the natives, but we could utilise it for fishing, and that by removing it to the southernmost islet, which was farthest away from the fishing village on the largest island, we could easily ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke

... of the pirate schooner was quite alive to his danger, and had taken the only means in his power to prevent it. Close to where his vessel lay, a large rock rose between the shore of the large island and the islet in the bay which has been described as separating the two vessels from each other. Owing to the formation of the coast at this place, a powerful stream ran between the rock and this islet at low tide. It happened to be flowing out at that time like ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne

... the squall was over, I walked round to the weather side of the islet with some children. We found the beach covered with some thousands of atuli and beautiful little garfish which had been driven on shore by the force of the wind. We were soon joined by women carrying baskets, which ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke

... sometimes a faint or far-off whisper—"the horns of elf-land"—gave us assurance of plenty of space and the sea-room we were sorely in need of just then. Once we saw looming right under our prow a little islet with a tuft of fir-trees crowning it—the whole worthy to be made the head-piece or tail-piece to some poem on solitude. It was very picturesque; but it seemed to be crouching there, lying in wait for us, ready to arch its back the moment we came within reach. The rapidity with which we ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... were workshops: the seaside, the springs, the summer mountains, the cataracts, the theatres, the panoramas of islet-fondled rivers speeding by strange cities. I was condemned to look upon them all with mercenary eyes, to turn their gladness into torpid prose, and speak their praises in turgid columns. Never nepenthe, never abandonne, always wide-awake, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... whence the eye followed the bending flood, that trended towards where, with eternal toil and sullen roar, agonize for ever the hoary rapids of Lachine. In the other direction the eye roved downwards over Hochelaga and Longueuil, Longue Pointe and Pointe aux Trembles, towards where lay the islet-strewn shallows of Boucherville, and, lower yet, the village of Varennes. The mountains of Boucherville, Beloeil, Chambly, and Vermont shadowy bounded the horizon; and, turning from these, abrupt before him rose the awful and spectral presence of Mount Royal. Skirting its foot he now proceeded, ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... dark. He tried to stand up, that he might ascertain the nature of the country on which he had been thrown; he could see no trees, and he fancied that he could distinguish the foam-covered waves leaping up on the other side of the land. It might be a point of land, or it might be some small sandy islet; it had, at all events, a very desolate appearance. Was he its sole occupant? He scarcely dared to shout out an inquiry, lest the sea-bird's shriek should be the only reply he might receive—or, what would be worse, no responding voice should answer him. He sat down again, wishing that day would ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston

... seamed cliffs and pouring over them to the very beaches in tapestries of vines and creepers, we were almost in the ring of the surf: and it came as a shock to me that the lazy swell on which we had so long lifted and dropped, heeding it least among many threats, could beat on this islet so terrifically. ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... skirted the river; and now, for the first time, Angela saw that river flowing placidly through a rural landscape, the rich green of marshy meadows in the foreground, and low wooded hills on the opposite bank, while midway across the stream an islet covered with reed and willow cast a shadow over the rosy water ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... board and sailed their ways over the sea, intent on murdering Telemachus. Now there is a rocky islet called Asteris, of no great size, in mid channel between Ithaca and Samos, and there is a harbour on either side of it where a ship can lie. Here then the Achaeans placed themselves ...
— The Odyssey • Homer

... and weary, the butterfly was resolute in the enjoyment of the sweetness of life, Its flight, usually bold, free, and aspiring, was now clumsy, wavering, erratic. Three-quarters of a mile away was an islet. Some comely instinct guided it thitherwards, sometimes staggering low over the water, sometimes flitting splendidly high until distance and the ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... hurricane is spent, And the good boat speeds through the brightening weather; But is it earth or sea that heaves below? The gulf rolls like a meadow-swell, o'erstrewn With ravaged boughs and remnants of the shore; And now, some islet, loosened from the land, Swims past with all its trees, sailing to ocean: And now the air is full of uptorn canes. Light strippings from the fan-trees, tamarisks Unrooted, with their birds still clinging to them, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... see the sun rise; far more wonderfully, to my mind, than his famous setting, which everybody glorifies. My bedroom window commands a perfect view: the still, grey lagune, the few seagulls flying, the islet of S. Giorgio in deep shadow, and the clouds in a long purple rack, behind which a sort of spirit of rose burns up till presently all the rims are on fire with gold, and last of all the orb sends before it a long column of its own essence ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... of her nature, had at once sought the highest point on the rocky islet, and there she drank in the joy of sight and sound and feeling. She could see—so perfect was the day—the line marking the Minquiers far on the southern horizon, the dark and perfect green of the Jersey ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the Persians had occupied the rocky island of Psytalia. Its ledges and its summit glittered with arms, and beside it some light craft had taken post to assist friendly vessels in distress. Past the islet the great fleet swept in four successive divisions driven by the measured stroke of tens of thousands of oars. On the left of the leading line was the Phoenician fleet led by the tributary kings of Tyre and ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... rise out of the haze; but they were few, and soon swallowed in the general element again. Balmy sunny islets, islets of the blest and the intelligible:—on which occasions those secondary humming groups would all cease humming, and hang breathless upon the eloquent words; till once your islet got wrapt in the mist again, and they could recommence humming. Eloquent artistically expressive words you always had; piercing radiances of a most subtle insight came at intervals; tones of noble ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... since I was knee-high! But I know well enough what you and the like of you are thinking about. You don't care a d—— about the craft, and if you could only get the power from us old ones, you would run her on the first islet you came to, so that you might plunder her of the whisky. But there will be none of that, my young whelp! Here we shall lie, as long ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland

... teeth of the wind, and straight towards the roar of the breakers on the farther side of the sand. A line of Matthew Arnold's, 'The naked shingles of the world,' was running in my head. 'Seven miles from land,' I thought, 'scuttling like sea-birds on a transient islet of sand, encircled by rushing tides and hammered by ocean, at midnight in a rising gale—cut off even from our one dubious refuge.' It was the time, if ever, to conquer weakness. A mad gaiety surged through me as I drank the wind and pressed forward. It seemed but ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... I never concealed my opinion—from myself—that Eddi was a better man than I. Yet I have worked hard in my time—very hard! Yes—yess! So the morning and the evening were our second day on that islet. There was rain-water in the rock-pools, and, as a churchman, I knew how to fast, but I admit we were hungry. Meon fed our fire chip by chip to eke it out, and they made me sit over it, the dear fellows, when I was too weak to object. ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling

... there. Again and again I swept the horizon in search of the ships; nowhere could I discern them. In what direction could they have been driven? I at last observed beyond a line of reefs what I took to be a group of cocoa-nut trees rising out of a low islet faintly traced against the blue sky like gossamer webs. Yes, there were trees, but among them, after keeping my glass steady for a minute or more, I made out the masts and yards of a ship. That she was either the "Eagle" or ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston

... Lord James, his handsome high-bred face creased with impatience and anxiety. "D'you fancy we're anywhere near the islet from which we put ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet

... a hundred yards from the shore, the islet must have been recently a peninsula, for it retains a portion of the once connecting bank of alluvium, in the form of a short flat-topped cliff, about thirty feet above the water. Some curious looking sculptures on the rocks are said to represent Naragur (or Vishnu), ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... as regards King Badr Basim, after Princess Jauharah had ensorcelled him and had sent him with her handmaid to the Thirsty Island, saying, "Leave him there to die of thirst," and Marsinah had set him down in a green islet, he abode days and nights in the semblance of a bird eating of its fruits and drinking of its waters and knowing not whither to go nor how to fly; till, one day, there came a certain fowler to the island to catch somewhat wherewithal to get his living. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... obsessed with the idea that the crew, with Carlsen as prime instigator, had determined to leave them stranded on some volcanic, lonely barren islet. Rainey wondered what actual foundations ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn

... the boundary between Peru and Brazil on the south side of the Amazon, special pains were taken to ascertain correctly the latitude and longitude of its mouth; the observations for the latitude and longitude were taken on a small islet, probably overflowed at high water, in the middle of the ...
— Life of Rear Admiral John Randolph Tucker • James Henry Rochelle

... even parsimony cannot complain. So up in the morning early, so soon as the first beams of the sun slant into the chamber—down to the loch or river, and with a headlong plunge scrape acquaintance with the pebbles at the bottom; then rising with a hearty gasp, strike out for the islet or the further bank, to the astonishment of the otter, who, thief that he is, is skulking back to his hole below the old saugh-tree, from a midnight foray up the burns. Huzza! The mallard, dozing among the reeds, has taken fright, and tucking ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... They might multiply in peace without either fearing anything or harming anything. I spoke of this to the steward. He at once had male and female rabbits brought from Neuchatel, and we went in high state, his wife, one of his sisters, Theresa, and I, to settle them in the little islet. The foundation of our colony was a feast-day. The pilot of the Argonauts was not prouder than I, as I bore my company and the rabbits in triumph from our island to ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... (sea or river) al-Kunuz": Lane (ii. 576) ingeniously identifies the site with the Upper Nile whose tribes, between Assouan (Syene) and Wady al-Subu'a are called the "Kunuz"lit. meaning "treasures" or "hoards." Philae is still known as the "Islet of Anas (for Uns) al-Wujud;" and the learned and accurate Burckhardt (Travels in Nubia p. 5) records the local legend that a mighty King called Al-Wujud built the Osirian temples. I can give no information concerning Jabal al-Sakla (Thakla), ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... sight the rock looms up large like a frowning inhospitable islet, the stretch of the Neutral Ground being so low that one cannot detect it above the sea-level until almost right upon it. We left the Vinuesa and entered a boat with a couple of sturdy rowers, who offered to pull us across the ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... nose to stumpy tail, with a {66} beaver-shaped face, teeth like a cat, and short webbed feet. Some hunters say the sea-otter is literally born on the tumbling waves—a single pup at a time; others, that the sea-otter retire to some solitary rocky islet to bring forth their young. Certain it is they are rocked on the deep from their birth, "cradled" in the sea, sleeping on their backs in the water, clasping the young in their arms like a human being, tossing up seaweed in ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... islands by turns, beginning at the little islet which looks in the distance like a boat in full sail, it is level with the water, and has only three or four trees upon it. The name they had given to it was "Ship Island." The Indians have some name for it which I have forgotten, but it means, I have ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill

... far out, guarding the entrance to the Frith, rising sheer up from the deep sea, at ten miles' distance from the nearest land, looms Ailsa, white with sea-birds, towering to the height of twelve or thirteen hundred feet. It is a rocky islet of about a mile in circumference, and must have been thrown up by volcanic agency; for the water around it is hundreds ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... strange that so many came to the States, sir. The farms of Beauce, of l'Islet, of the Chaudiere, were so crowded. Years ago, the old folks used to tell me, the boys began to drive the little white horses hitched to buckboards across the border in the early summer, and the boys were strong and willing, ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... Allies were not less vigorous than ashore. They judged it necessary to occupy Corfu, in order to accommodate the remnants of the Servian army that had escaped across Albania. They occupied Corfu. They judged it necessary to occupy Castellorizo, an islet off the coast of Asia Minor. They occupied Castellorizo. They {86} judged it necessary to occupy Suda Bay in Crete and Argostoli Bay ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... anchored in a bay, where such a tempest overtook them that it broke three cables out of four that he had, and one used for weighing anchor. He sent these six soldiers in a small vessel to see if there was on an islet any water, of which they were in great need. The men lost their way, without finding any water; and when they returned where they had left their ship they could not find it. They met with some of those Indians ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various

... observed that the two boats, although bound for the same islet, did not row in company. They were beached as far from each other as the little bay into which they ran would admit of, and the crews stood aloof in two ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne

... Jamaica. For nine weeks the ships wandered painfully among the keys and shoals he had named the Garden of the Queen, and only an opportune easterly wind prevented the crews from open mutiny. The first land sighted was the Islet of Guanaja, about forty miles to the east of the coast of Honduras. Here he got news from an old Indian of a rich and vast country lying to the eastward, which he at once concluded must be the long-sought-for empire of the Grand ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... Boehmisch-Leipa passed near it, and it became the stronghold of a Raubritter, Mikisch Passzer of Smoyn, who became such a terror to the neighbourhood that the Sixtowns league of Lausitz in 1444 attacked it with 9000 men, broke down the dam that held back the water, and made of the rock an islet in a lake and constrained Mikisch to surrender. Soon after, however, he recommenced his lawless proceedings, and was again attacked in 1445, and after a siege that lasted five weeks, forced to quit his fortress. At the end of the seventeenth century ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... would open up a valuable trade with the upper part of the Ohio Valley. I have no doubt that it will be carried into effect, or perhaps a railroad substituted. Close upon the verge of the precipice at the fall, is observed a small islet or green knoll, from whence poor Sam Patch took his final plunge. Sam, it would seem, was no subscriber to the tenets of the Temperance Society, for upon this occasion his perceptions were far from being clear; and having neglected to spring in his usual adroit style, the unlucky ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various

... gig, accompanied by the second barge, armed with a brass six-pounder gun and small arms, and manned with twenty officers and men. While engaged on the extreme side of a reef, extending from a small islet, in taking astronomical observations, they were disturbed by an extraordinary yell proceeding from about forty men of colour, who were advancing from the islet along both sides of the reef, with the evident intention of surrounding Sir E. Belcher and his party, on nearing whom they commenced ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat

... his own; he neglected those who had ruined themselves for his sake. Henry Goring accused the Prince of shabbiness to his face, but assuredly he who insisted on laying down money on the rocks of a deserted fishers' islet to pay for some dry fish eaten there by himself and his companions—he who gave liberally to gentle and simple out of the treasure buried near Loch Arkaig, who refused a French pension for himself, and ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... the Grand Cul de Sac, and then formed a line close and compact right across the entrance of the bay. The fleet under the French admiral was by far the most powerful; but he was thrice defeated in his attacks upon the British squadron, and he then landed 5000 picked troops in a bay, between Gros Islet and the Carenage Bay. D'Estaing resolved, in the first instance, to direct his entire force against Medows, who was cut off, by his movement, from all support from the other divisions of the British. General Medows had only 1,300 men, with two twelve-pounders and four six-pounders, to defend ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... seem to be of great extent, but to the delight of the adventurers, from the midst of the cocoanut grove that crowned the islet there flowed a tiny stream of clear water. This was indeed a godsend, as they did not know how long they might have to remain there. With a spade, which formed part of the dirigible's outfit—"I ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... our present need no better asylum could have offered. The island was small and occupied only by my own domestic establishment. It lay in the bight of Oliver's Bay, quite a mile from the nearest shore, and there was but one other bit of land anywhere around—an uninhabited islet known as 'The Thimble,' that lay a quarter of a mile due east. Surely this isolation promised security. Here, if anywhere, we might snap our fingers at the machinations of M. Balencourt and the mysterious 'Forty.' It would be rather cold off ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen

... beginning of the new year. Dangerous illness. Kindness of Arabs. Complete helplessness. Arrive at Tanganyika. The Doctor is conveyed in canoes. Kasanga Islet. Cochin-China fowls. Reaches Ujiji. Receives some stores. Plundering hands. Slow recovery. Writes despatches. Refusal of Arabs to take letters. Thani bin Suellim. A den of slavers. Puzzling current in Lake Tanganyika. Letters sent off at last. Contemplates visiting ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... southward began to open out the ice from the point near which we lay. As soon as the channel was three or four hundred yards wide, we warped into the clear water, and, making sail, rounded the point in safety, having no soundings with twenty fathoms, at one third of a mile from a small rocky islet lying off it. In the mean time the wind had been driving the ice so fast off the land as to form for us a clear communication with the open water before seen to the eastward; and thus we were at length liberated from our confinement, ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... part on this green islet, Love, Thou for the Eastern main, I, for the setting sun, Love— Oh, when ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart

... antagonists, to the end that after a victory with these we may despise the infantry. You know well that the whole outcome of the war depends on each side on our fleets. If we come out victorious in this engagement, we shall suffer no harm from any of the rest but cut them off on a kind of islet,—for all surrounding regions are in our possession,—and without effort subdue them, if in ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio

... from their convent by those sounds, the monks who inhabited the little islet began to issue from their lowly portal, with cross and banner, and as much of ecclesiastical state as they had the means of displaying; their bells at the same time, of which the edifice possessed three, pealing the death toll over the long lake, which came to the ears of the now silent ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... did not give up his scheme. Forming his camp on an islet in the Otaki River, and taking up a bold attitude, he endeavoured to secure the assistance of the Ngatiraukawa tribesmen. But Hadfield had followed him along the coast, and now brought his great influence ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas

... haven, the groves and sylvan shades must long since have been destroyed, for to the new-comers the bay appeared inclosed by spits of sand, though there was a rising ground in front that cut off the view. In the centre of the bay was a low sandy islet, covered with remains of masonry, and with a fort in the midst. On this was mounted the French banner, but likewise drooping; and all around it lay the ships with furled sails and trailing ensigns, giving them an inexpressibly mysterious look of woe, like living creatures with folded wings and ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... horse-race, and on the third a naval battle involving three thousand men. Afterwards there was also an infantry battle. The Athenians conquered the Syracusans (these were the names that were used in the naval battle), made a landing on the islet, and having assaulted a wall constructed around the monument took it. These were the sights offered to spectators, and they lasted for a ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio

... days' hunting and fishing. Then Champlain sailed on, his little two-masted boat outstripping the native canoes, till the unwelcome sound of rapids fell on the silent air, and through the dark foliage of the islet of St. John he could see "the gleam of snowy foam and the flash of hurrying waters." The Indians had assured him that his boat could pass unobstructed through the whole journey. "It afflicted me and troubled me exceedingly," he ...
— 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

... Ursula stood on the level ground underneath the Tree, and they looked up at the branches, and down to the water at their feet; and now it seemed to them as though the Tree had verily growth in it, for they beheld its roots, that they went out from the mound or islet of earth into the water, and spread abroad therein, and seemed to waver about. So they walked around the Tree, and looked up at the shields that hung on its branches, but saw no blazon that they knew, though they were many and diverse; ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... Ever in the dullest existence there is a sheen either of Inspiration or of Madness (thou partly hast it in thy choice, which of the two), that gleams-in from the circumambient Eternity, and colours with its own hues our little islet of Time. The Understanding is indeed thy window, too clear thou canst not make it; but Fantasy is thy eye, with its colour-giving retina, healthy or diseased. Have not I myself known five-hundred living soldiers sabred into crows'-meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which they called their ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... for its size, the richest in the world; a special account of it will soon be given. Entrance into this bay is furnished by a passage on its western side, four leguas in width. In the middle of this passage, eight leguas from Manila and opposite this city, is an islet called Maribelez; it is inhabited, and is two leguas in circuit in 14 1/2 deg. latitude. It serves as a watch-tower to look for foreign ships, which can be seen fifteen leguas ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various

... the bridge, crowning an islet, stands one of those curious churchlets, or churclings I was about to say, that possess so powerful a fascination for the archaeological mind. Particularly striking was the little Romanesque interior in the September ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... people, who had, probably, not been before visited by Europeans, and that it might, at the same time, be useful to examine the inlet, I bore up, as soon as I had sent our despatches and letters on board the Lee, and stood in towards the rocky islet, called Agnes's Monument, passing between it and the low point which forms the entrance to the inlet on ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... painting away, with his wife and children at his side, on an old flat-bottomed boat moored to a willow branch alongside of a green islet, where the wagtails were chirping themselves hoarse. The boats drew quickly up beside him, any novelty being a break to the everlasting tedium of fashionable society: and while the Duchess greeted with her sweetest smile Madame Vedrine, who had once been her guest at Mousseaux, ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... character, the scenery of the upper extremity being majestic, while that of the lower half is pastoral and tame. Of its numerous islands the best-known is Inishail, containing ruins of a church and convent, which was suppressed at the Reformation. At the extreme north-eastern end of the lake, on an islet which, when the water is low, becomes part of the mainland, stand the imposing ruins of Kilchurn Castle. Its romantic surroundings have made this castle a favourite subject of the landscape painter. Dalmally, about 2 m. from the loch, is one of the pleasantest villages ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... He was well known to Kathleen, and it turned out that, having seen the cockle start at too great a distance to be hailed, and having set his heart on joining in the excursion, he had watched their movements, observed their landing on the islet—which was not far from the main circlet of land—and, running round till he came opposite to it, swam off and got into the boat. Being somewhat tired he had lain down to rest and ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... Hague, sent him to undergo his perpetual imprisonment at the fortress of Loewestein, very near Dort, but, alas! also very far from it; for Loewestein, as the geographers tell us, is situated at the point of the islet which is formed by the confluence of the Waal ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... passage home. But though Rio is one of the most magnificent bays in the world; though the city itself contains many striking objects; and though much might be said of the Sugar Loaf and Signal Hill heights; and the little islet of Lucia; and the fortified Ihla Dos Cobras, or Isle of the Snakes (though the only anacondas and adders now found in the arsenals there are great guns and pistols); and Lord Wood's Nose—a lofty eminence said by seamen to resemble his lordship's conch-shell; ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... The oceans became interested participants and enormously high tides possibly caused by the difference in level between the Atlantic and Pacific, clawed away great hunks of land. The great island became a small island, the small island an islet. At last nothing but ruffling blue water lay between the Grass and South America. Over this stretch of sea the great fans blew their steady breath, protecting the continent behind from the fate of ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... resembling them also in climate and productions." The probabilities are that to the west and southwest of California, instead of watery expanse of the Pacific, only broken here and there by an ever-verdant islet, there was either a continental expanse of land or, at any rate, a vast archipelago. We know that over a large part of the Northern Pacific area the land has sunk not less than six thousand ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... from the islet in the stream the voice Of the fish-hawks that o'er their nests rejoice! From them our thoughts to that young lady go, Modest and virtuous, loth herself to show. Where could be found to share our prince's state, So fair, so virtuous, ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... against their walls for six days; on the seventh they were betrayed by two of their chiefs, and the Persians occupied the city. The temples were burned in revenge for the firing of Sardis, and the inhabitants were bound, and placed as prisoners in the neighboring islet of AEgilia, to wait there till Datis should bring the Athenians to join them in captivity, when both populations were to be led into Upper Asia, there to learn their doom from the lips ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... oval of the schooner's broad bilge showed above water, and the old Polly was so flat and tubby that their floating islet afforded only ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... surface of Derwent-water, and always in the same place, a considerable tract of spongy ground covered with aquatic plants, which is called the Floating, but with more propriety might be named the Buoyant, Island; and, on one of the pools near the lake of Esthwaite, may sometimes be seen a mossy Islet, with trees upon it, shifting about before the wind, a lusus naturae frequent on the great rivers of America, and not unknown in other ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... easily made the rounds of the pretty islet of Jersey, in his capacity of merchant of small wares, long before Alixe Delavigne, braving the stormy channel, had proceeded from Folkestone directly to Richmond, and hidden herself in the leafy bowers of Rosebank Villa. Smiling, gay and debonnair ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... or so later. The Hosmers had taken the little steam launch for a trip to the island of Elephanta, containing the famous caves of the same name. It was a glorious morning, and the short trip over the dancing, dazzling waves to the pretty islet, with its steep banks and waving palms, was a delightful one. As they landed, the captain pointed out the mangrove swamps, and the rich growth of wild indigo and Karunda bushes, while Hope went wild over the splendid butterflies, which settled down in ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... narrow channel with a thunder which throbbed like a pulse; yet in the intervals of its pulsation I could catch the thin, prattling tinkle of a brook running merrily down the gorge to plunge headlong into the sea. Round every spar of the crags, and over every islet of rock, the foam played ceaselessly, breaking over them like drifts of snow, forever melting, and forever ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... and calmly. "I have given information both at Vienna and in Constantinople, that here close to the Ostrova Island a nameless and uninhabited islet has been formed in the course of the last fifty years. Then I begged of the Vienna Government as well as of the Sublime Porte to leave me the usufruct of the islet for ninety years: as an acknowledgement ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... were too few people to retain a constant pastor. This island was too little inhabited to have had a minister on its shores since the chapel had gone to ruin, a hundred years before—but the time was at hand at last. There had been a disappointment in some arrangements in the nearest neighbour islet; and Mr Ruthven and his wife were appointed to reside here for a year or more, as might appear desirable. Rollo considered this great news. Children and betrothed persons would be brought hither to be baptised and married—arriving ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau

... of this grammar and vocabulary was learned from dealings with the Port Adam natives and also from a stay of several weeks with Rev. A. I. Hopkins, at Mangoniia, on the mainland opposite the artificial islet Ferasubua. ...
— Grammar and Vocabulary of the Lau Language • Walter G. Ivens

... as Gilbert could ascertain, several timbers, thrown over each other, had lodged, probably upon a rocky islet in the stream, the uppermost one projecting slantingly out of the flood. It required all his strength to resist the current which sucked, and whirled, and tugged at his body, and to climb high enough to escape its force, ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... the evening we are not two leagues distant from it. Its body -dusky, enormous, hillocky - lies spread upon the sea like an islet. Is it illusion or fear? Its length seems to me a couple of thousand yards. What can be this cetacean, which neither Cuvier nor Blumenbach knew anything about? It lies motionless, as if asleep; the sea seems unable to move it in the least; it is the waves that undulate upon ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... densely populated islands of Sibuku and Sibesi were entirely covered by a deposit of dry mud several yards thick, and furrowed by deep crevasses. Of the inhabitants all perished to a man. Three islands, Steers, Calmeyer, and the islet east of Verlaten, completely disappeared and were covered by twelve or fourteen feet of water. Verlaten, formerly one mass of verdure, was uniformly covered with a layer of ashes about one hundred ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... that the wind would not help me to take the course I desired, and that it was fair for the other, so I made sail to the N.N.W. When I was two leagues from the cape of the island, I discovered a very wonderful harbor.[120-2] It has one mouth, or, rather, it may be said to have two, for there is an islet in the middle. Both are very narrow, and within it is wide enough for a hundred ships, if there was depth and a clean bottom, and the entrance was deep enough. It seemed desirable to explore it and take soundings, ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... leguas from Potol. There they anchored, for the brisas, which there are side winds, were breaking the counterbalances of the caracoas. At that place the Indians told him that the enemy had arrived at Hambil, an islet which, stretching between Potol and the island of Tablas, forms channels between them. Thereupon he left, notwithstanding the severe weather. Father Fray Martin de San Nicolas, associate in that priorate, accompanied him from here, in a suitable boat. At length, by dint ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various

... once been an islet on this part of the reef, a tiny thing, consisting of a few palms and a handful of vegetation, and destroyed, perhaps, in some great storm. I mention this because the existence of this islet once upon a time was the means, indirectly, of saving Dick's ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... O'Flaharty, wife of the preceding; heiress of a wealthy house; died young, leaving to her only son an islet in the ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... As we then were, I saw that the boat would go through the narrower one—the swifter evidently; and at the same moment a pile of wood and dead rubbish on the sandspit ceased to obstruct the view, and to my horror I saw that the little long islet, whose sands were only just above the level of the water, was occupied by a group of seven or eight alligators, the nearest being a monster, the rest varying to the smallest, which was ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn

... houses on their backs. A great white jellyfish, looking like a big tapioca pudding, had been washed up with the tide out of the reach of the sea, and a small colony of ants was feasting on it. We did not try to explore the interior of the islet. We named it Fir Island from its crown of fir-like casuarina trees, which sent out on every breeze a balsamic odor that was charged ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman

... the day long in the full sun, which beat down with a memory of summer that already had departed. At noon they landed on a rocky islet, a mere clump of firs water bound, and after eating their luncheon they lay under the fragrant trees and talked ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... stones. In the winter he had only the empty and deserted harbour to look at; the semicircular bridge with its poles had the appearance of a yawning row of teeth, and he could see the wood-shed, the riding-school, and the two gigantic, denuded lime trees. Sometimes an ice-yacht would sail past the islet; sometimes a few boys would pass on skates; otherwise it was quiet ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg

... peaks lift up their heads in picturesque masses out of the ocean, twenty-three and a half miles from the Golden Gate, the famous entrance of San Francisco Bay. Farallon is a Spanish word, meaning a small pointed islet in the sea. ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff



Words linked to "Islet" :   isle, Perejil



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