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Promontory   Listen
noun
Promontory  n.  (pl. promontories)  
1.
(Phys. Geog.) A high point of land or rock projecting into the sea beyond the line of coast; a headland; a high cape. "Like one that stands upon a promontory."
2.
(Anat.) A projecting part. Especially:
(a)
The projecting angle of the ventral side of the sacrum where it joins the last lumbar vertebra.
(b)
A prominence on the inner wall of the tympanum of the ear.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Promontory" Quotes from Famous Books



... we went to Coldinghame Kirk, 4 miles from the smith's house at Haychester. The kirk hes bein a great fabrick. Its said to have bein built by K. Edgar, anno 1098. Their was their a great abbacy. We saw the promontory so much taken notice of by the seamen called St. Abbes head (Sta. Ebba); over forgt[594] it layes Coldinghame Law, Home to his name. Saw the milne about which my Lord Home (who is the Lo. of erection now) and Renton are contending. Saw at 2 miles distance Haymouth,[595] and above it Gunsgrein, then ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder

... the septuagenarian Cybele, she who had given life to twenty-two sons and daughters, came toiling up the narrow lane into the court, and indicating the neighboring shore, where it skirted the promontory ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... the land as we could prudently, our headway was stopped, and we awaited the arrival of a canoe which was coming out of the bay. All at once we got into a strong current, which swept us rapidly toward a rocky promontory forming one side of the harbour. The wind had died away; so two boats were at once lowered for the purpose of pulling the ship's head round. Before this could be done, the eddies were whirling upon all sides, and the rock so near that it seemed as if one might leap upon it ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... city is almost closed, on one side, by a bold majestic promontory called Point Loma; and on the other, by a natural breakwater, in the form of a crescent, twelve miles long, upon the outer rim of which the ocean beats a ceaseless monody. At one extremity of this silver strand, directly opposite Point Loma and close to ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard

... cape of Quebec, flanked with four bastions, which would command the river St. Lawrence. A second fort was to be built opposite Quebec, which would complete the defense of the face of the town, and a third fort would be constructed at Tadousac on a promontory naturally fortified, to be manned by a garrison which would be relieved ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne

... of September, I had seen two or three small maples turned scarlet across the pond, beneath where the white stems of three aspens diverged, at the point of a promontory, next the water. Ah, many a tale their color told! And gradually from week to week the character of each tree came out, and it admired itself reflected in the smooth mirror of the lake. Each morning the manager of this gallery substituted some new picture, distinguished by more brilliant ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... narrow and wooded valley with a beck—that is the right word in the land which contains Caudebec and Bec Herlouin—running round its base. The church—a strange modern building with some ancient portions used up again—stands on the extreme point of the promontory. This seems the best point for commanding the whole valley, and we may perhaps guess that a less devout prince than William would not have scrupled to raise his donjon at least within the consecrated precinct. But he chose the southern side ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman

... verge of a bold promontory stands the hotel, and looks southeastward over a sweep of sea unbroken to the horizon. Behind it stretches the vast forest, which after two hundred years has resumed the sterile coast wrested from it by the first ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... march capturing the City of Nineveh, that most ancient capital of Assyria": "Capta in transitu urbis Ninos vetustissima sedes Assyriae" (An. XII. 13). In Lucian's amusing Dialogue, entitled "Charon," when Mercury points out the tomb of Achilles on Cape Sigaeum and that of Ajax on the Rhoetaean promontory, Charon wants to see Nineveh, with Troy, Babylon, Mycenae, and Cleone, the following being the conversation; "I want to point out to you," says Mercury, "the tomb of Achilles: you see it on the sea? That's Cape Sigaeum in the Troad: and on the Rhoetaean promontory opposite ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... house or habitation greeted us as we worked by short tacks towards a deep bay which my father, after a prolonged consultation of the chart, decided to be that of Sagona. A sharp promontory ran out upon its northern side, and within the shelter of this Captain Pomery looked to find good anchorage. But the Gauntlet, after all her battering, lay so poorly to the wind that darkness overtook us a good mile from land, and before we ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... did; but—ye gods who watch over boats!—round and round we pirouetted, the two canoes waltzing and polking together in their great ball-room, the Albert N'yanza. The voyage would have lasted ad infinitum. After three hours' exertion, we reached a point of rock that stretched as a promontory into the lake. This bluff point was covered with thick jungle to the summit, and at the base was a small plot of sandy beach, from which there was no exit except by water, as the cliff descended sheer to the lake upon either ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... have——— Called forth the mutinous winds And 'twixt the green sea, and the azured vault Set roaring war; to the dread ratling thunder, Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak, With his own bolt; the strong bas'd promontory, Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluckt up The pine and cedar; graves at my command Have waked their sleepers, op'd and let them forth ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber

... hoping to reach Okkak in two or three days. Having passed the islands in the bay, they kept at a considerable distance from the shore, both to gain the smoothest part of the ice, and to avoid the high and rocky promontory of Kiglapeit. About eight o'clock they met a sledge with Esquimaux driving towards the land, who intimated that it might be well not to proceed; but as the missionaries saw no reason for it, they paid no ...
— Dangers on the Ice Off the Coast of Labrador • Anonymous

... to the Cape of Good Hope to determine its longitude. He got it degrees wrong. He gave to Africa's noble Roman promontory a retrousse twist that would take the pride ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... either of them had seen anything of the missing craft. An affirmative reply came from my friend Ito, aboard the Akatsuki, who informed me that shortly after the fight began, on the other side of the promontory, he had momentarily caught sight of them both, steaming hot-foot after a destroyer which was in full ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood

... beside his chance-found companion, while together they gazed down at the twinkling lights of the bay, where the soft and violet Mediterranean lay under a soft and violet sky, and the boatlamps were languidly swaying dots of white and red, and the Promontory stood outlined in electric globes, like a woman's breast threaded with pearls, the young art-student expressed it, and the perennial, ever-cloying perfumes floated up from square and ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer

... parties," he continued reflectively, and with a shad of sadness in his voice. "Excellent little dinners! But she is so taken up with Russians just now; they quite monopolise her house. Down there; do you see, Mr. Heard? That white villa by the sea, at the end of the promontory? She is so romantic. That is why she bought a house which nobody else would have bought at any price. That little place, all by itself—it fascinated her. Bitterly she regrets her choice. She has discovered the drawbacks of a promontory. My dear Duchess, never live on a promontory! It has ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... a boat was passing the rocky promontory of Kagbubtag.[12] The occupants espied a monkey and a cat fighting upon the summit of the promontory. The incongruity of the thing impressed them and they began to give vent to derisive remarks, addressing themselves to the brute combatants, when lo ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... promontory, a darker speck had started out of the medley of grey tones. In a moment it had doubled its size—had become a blur—then a shape. And at length, out of the leaden wrack, there emerged a small schooner, with tall, raking masts, ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... pour, And back recede alternate; while combin'd Loud shriek the sea-fowls, harbingers assign'd, Clamorous and fearful, of the stormy hour; To listen with deep thought those awful sounds; Gaze on the boiling, the tumultuous waste, Or promontory rude, or craggy mounds Staying the furious main, delight has cast O'er my rapt spirit, and my thrilling heart, Dear as the softer ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... recesses with the clear brilliancy of the sky,—a true northern sky, without a cloud, without even a softening haze, defining every outline, revealing every minute point, cutting with sharp decision the form of every promontory and rock, ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... these were attached to every important palace in the cities of Italy, and stood in great circles—troops of towers—around their external walls: their ruins still frown along the crests of every promontory of the Apennines, and are seen from far away in the great Lombardic plain, from distances of half-a-day's journey, dark against the amber sky of the horizon. These are of course now built no more, the changed methods of modern warfare having ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin

... proceeds, And listens to the herald of the sea That came in Neptune's plea; He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds, What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain? And questioned every gust of rugged winds That blows from off each beaked promontory; They knew not of his story; And sage Hippotades their answer brings, That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed; The air was calm, and on the level brine Sleek Panope with all her sisters played. It was that fatal and perfidious bark, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... not untinged with vague repinings, my footsteps carried me, unwittingly as it were, to that beetling promontory from which our peaceful hamlet derives its name. For long I stood upon the crest of that craggy eminence wherefrom, so tradition tells us, a noble young chieftain of the aborigines who once populated this locality, being despairful of ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... life—under a harsh, unconcerned sky dried by the wind to a clear blue. It had been raining during the night. The sunshine itself seemed poor. From time to time a few bits of paper, a little dust and straw whirled past us on the broad flat promontory of the pavement before the ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... yet all my best enjoyment would be owing to the imagination of the hills, colouring, with their far-away memories, every lowland stone and herb. The pleasant French coteau, green in the sunshine, delights me, either by what real mountain character it has in itself (for in extent and succession of promontory the flanks of the French valleys have quite the sublimity of true mountain distances), or by its broken ground and rugged steps among the vines, and rise of the leafage above, against the blue sky, as it might rise at Vevay or Como. There is not a wave of the Seine but is associated in my mind ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... raved round the promontory on which the fort stands, smiting the rocks, breaking into foam, and jumping, after impact, to a height of a hundred feet and more into the air. As we returned our vehicle broke down through the loss of a wheel. The Admiral went ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... close to the monument of their master. Many persons, too, have made friends and companions of dogs, as did Xanthippus in old times, whose dog swam all the way to Salamis beside his master's ship when the Athenians left their city, and which he buried on the promontory which to this day is called the Dog's Tomb.[27] We ought not to treat living things as we do our clothes and our shoes, and throw them away after we have worn them out; but we ought to accustom ourselves to show kindness in these cases, if only in order to teach ourselves our duty towards ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... electric light all over, and all the appliances for manufacture of the light are complete. I had perhaps better tell you, for none of you, not even Margaret, knows anything of it, that the house is absolutely shut out from public access or even from view. It stands on a little rocky promontory behind a steep hill, and except from the sea cannot be seen. Of old it was fenced in by a high stone wall, for the house which it succeeded was built by an ancestor of mine in the days when a great house far away from a centre ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

... the whole thing overpowers you. The poet that lives in nearly every human soul rouses within you and you feel like withdrawing to yon dense grove or yon peaked promontory to commune with Nature. But be advised in season. Restrain yourself! Carefully refrain! Do not do so! Because out from under a rock somewhere will crawl a real-estate agent to ask you how you like the climate and take a dollar down as first payment on a ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb

... I stand on the pier of Beyrout, while my luggage is being embarked for the Austrian steamer lying in the roads, which, in the Levantine slang, has lighted her chibouque, and is polluting yon white promontory, clear cut in the azure horizon, with a ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... Thunder Bay, we passed Thunder Cape on our right and Pie Island on our left; the former a bold promontory, rising 1300 feet above the sea-level, and wooded with a short stunted growth of bush, principally poplar. Save for its picturesquely situated lighthouse and log hut, where the keeper lives, no other sign of habitation was visible. Thunder Bay and Cape probably take their names ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon

... reasons, when I went into McMurdo Sound in 1908 in command of my own Expedition, known as the British Antarctic Expedition, after having failed to land on King Edward VII Land, I decided to build our hut at Cape Royds—a small promontory twenty-three miles north of Hut Point. Here the whole shore party lived in comfort through the winter of 1908. When spring came stores were sledged to Hut Point, so that should the sea-ice break up early between these two places we might not be left in an awkward position. After ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... shepherdess shielding from the thorns the little white lamb was Alice, and back behind the clump of elms was myself, responding to her silvery call. The cottage on the mountain-side was ours. That lady waving her handkerchief from the promontory was Alice, too; and I was the dim figure on the deck of the passing ship. I was the knight and she the wood-nymph; I the gladiator in the circus, she the Roman lady who agonized for me in the audience; I the troubadour who twanged ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... place we set down who the Pequod's harpooneers were, and to what headsman each of them belonged. first of all was queequeg, whom Starbuck, the chief mate, had selected for his squire. But Queequeg is already known. Next was Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from Gay Head, the most westerly promontory of Martha's Vineyard, where there still exists the last remnant of a village of red men, which has long supplied the neighboring island of Nantucket with many of her most daring harpooneers. In the fishery, they usually go by the generic name of Gay-Headers. Tashtego's long, lean, sable hair, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... clouds seemed to descend and cover the whole surface of the ocean, hiding the island of Capri altogether and blotting out the promontory of Misenum. My mother implored me earnestly to make my escape, saying that her age and frame made it impossible for her to get away, but that she would willingly meet her death if she could know that she had not been the cause of mine. But I absolutely refused to forsake ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... less spirit than the earlier ones, were easily repulsed. The blockade was not more successful. Haco had provided ample stores for the small garrison which he had considered sufficient to protect the promontory of Lihou, naturally almost impregnable; and the force defending the Vale, camped chiefly on Lancresse Common, was only nominally blockaded. The sallies, made from time to time, were ordered more with a view of keeping up the martial ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous

... they had often seen along the shore, who might even now be in the jaws of death. Not a word was spoken. The sound of the waves, as they dashed on the rocks alone broke the stillness. Trembling with excitement, they swept the boat close around the rocky promontory. John, standing up in the bow, held aloft a lantern, so that every cranny of the rocks might be brought out into full relief. At length ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... equally dark, Sanscrit rhymes from the Vedas, were brought by him from Goa, the most brilliant scene of his glory, before Portugal had become a base kingdom; and down that dingle, on an abrupt rocky promontory, stand the ruined halls of the English Millionaire, who there nursed the wayward fancies of a mind as wild, rich, and variegated as the scenes around. Yes, wonderful are the objects which meet the eye at Cintra, and wonderful are ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... the lake, for several miles, my road now leads over the northern spur of the Promontory Mountains. On these hills I find a few miles of hard gravel that affords the best riding I have experienced in Utah, and I speed along as rapidly as possible, for dark, threatening clouds are gathering overhead. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... rocks. Still he tore and clutched at the sea-weed, dragging it in masses larger than his own frog body to where the owl waited for him on the beach, in a sort of grotto hollowed out by the waves. There they piled it until they both were assured they had the proper quantity. Then the owl flew to a promontory and hailed the kingfisher. Arthur, quite worn out, fell asleep. When he awoke, he found him ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays

... frequented by the early Greek navigator. They have also been located geographically, to be sure in a variety of places. The Sirens dwelt on three dangerous rocks near the island of Capraea, according to ancient authorities; or they were found on the promontory between Paestum and Elea, or even down at Cape Pelorum in Sicily. Why should they not be indeed everywhere! Then they have been supposed to personify the secret dangers of a calm sea, and their song is the music of splashing ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... quitted the lofty ridge, and bent their steps towards the lake. Wearied with their walk, they seated themselves beneath the shade of a beautiful feathery pine, on a high promontory that commanded a magnificent view down ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill

... paternal chateau in the Meuse valley, with multitudinous chimneys and the incense of kind luxuriant hearths, suave parks, gardens, and gravelled walks, contracted with dubiety and amazement upon a dismal tower perched upon a promontory. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... said she, "has not the strength to sweep away a dung-hill, let alone such mountains as T'ai-hsing and Wang-wu. Besides, where will you put the earth and stones?" They answered that they would throw them on the promontory of P'o-hai. So the old man, followed by his son and grandson, sallied forth with their pickaxes, and began hewing away at the rocks and cutting up the soil, and carting it away in baskets to the promontory. A widow who lived near by had a little ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... of Saint Winifred's reaching out to his left. Once round that headland he would be safe, and indeed if he once got beyond the little pebbly inlet where he stood, he hoped to find some place where he might scale the rocks, and so cross the promontory and ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... the whole west of Europe, from the head of the Gulf of Bothnia to the most southern promontory of Sicily, from the Oder and the Adriatic to the Hebrides and to Lisbon. It is true that the language spoken over a large portion of this space is not predominantly German; but even in France, and Italy, and Spain, the influence of the Franks, Burgundians, Visigoths, ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... hence, I saw the point of land where poor old Hecuba was buried, and about a league from that place is Cape Janizary, the famous promontory of Sigaeum, where we anchored. My curiosity supplied me with strength to climb to the top of it, to see the place where Achilles was buried, and where Alexander ran naked round his tomb, in honour of him, which, no doubt, was a great comfort to his ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague

... point of land jutting out from the coast-line; the extremity of a promontory, of which last it is the secondary rank. It differs from a headland, since a cape may be low. The Cape of Good Hope is always familiarly known as "The Cape." Cape was also ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... in the Wall is a very remarkable rock forming the southern promontory of the island of Abaco, one of the Bahamas. As its name signifies, it resembles, either, from the action of the waves, or from the cannonadings it has received, a perforated wall. It rises some forty feet above the surface of ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur

... in the temple of Hierapolis; and they wished to know the cost of a pilgrimage to that place. Others held fast to the principles of their native religion. A German, who was nearly blind, sang a hymn celebrating that promontory in Scandinavia where the gods were wont to appear with halos around their heads. The people from Sichem declined to eat turtles, out of ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert

... perambulation by visiting the promontory called "the Capstan"—or rather attempting that visit; for after mounting to nearly its height, by a circuitous path from the town, by which alone the ascent is possible, the side of the promontory being a mere precipice overlooking ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... considerations assigned to them by tradition influenced the monks and the congregation of S. Cuthbert in their final choice of a resting-place for the bones of their beloved saint. The almost impregnable position of the rocky promontory upon which both Cathedral and Castle stand suggests a careful selection on their part, with a view to the prevention of attack and consequent further disturbance of their sacred relics. What the first fortification was is a matter of doubt; most probably it was merely a wall ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate

... arena, a space covering six acres, the area of the Coliseum, was obliged, as Pliny says, to look through a ring with a gem in it—no doubt a concave glass—to see more clearly the sword play of the gladiators. Again, we read of Mauritius, who stood on the promontory of his island and could sweep over the sea with an optical instrument to watch the ships of the enemy. This tells us that the telescope is ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various

... the treasures of the ancient language from Alfred to Wycliffe, we should easily double the herbarium of the linguistic flora of England. And what are these Western Isles as compared to Europe; and what is Europe, amere promontory, as compared to the vast continent of Asia; and what again is Asia, as compared to the whole inhabitable world? But there is no corner of that world that is not full of language: the very desert and the isles of the sea teem with dialects, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... waste time in obeying. The others followed, and the boat shoved off. But scarcely had the oars caught the water when around the promontory came a large man-o'-war's launch, a rapid-fire gun mounted on her bows. She was manned by about twenty men in ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr

... sped the boat past the precipitous cliffs, which, with the promontory-like point ahead, were the destruction of many a brave vessel in the stormy times; and an inexperienced watcher from the shore would often have suffered from that peculiar sensation known as having the heart in the mouth on seeing the boat careen over before some extra strong puff ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn

... grade extended to Humboldt Wells, five hundred miles west of Ogden, while the Central Pacific in reprisal claimed the line to the western end of Weber Canon some thirty miles east of Ogden. The facts were the two completed lines met at Promontory Point fifty-three miles west of Ogden, April 28th, 1869. By act of Congress, it was decided that the Union Pacific Railroad Company should build the line to Promontory where the two roads should connect but that the Central Pacific Railroad ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey

... labourers, directed by Colonel Fletcher of the royal engineers, upon a plan carefully thought out and laid down by Wellington himself. The first and principal chain of fortifications stretched for nearly thirty miles across the whole promontory between the river Tagus and the sea, about twenty-five miles north of Lisbon. The summits of hills were crowned with forts, their sides were escarped and protected with earthworks, their gorges were blocked with redoubts, a small river at the foot of them was made impassable ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... come hither; thou remember'st Since once I sat upon a promontory, And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, The rude sea grew civil at her song; And certain stars shot madly from their spheres To hear the sea ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... been, among other divinities, the object of Egyptian adoration ages before Alexandria was built or the Ptolemies reigned. There was also, by a curious coincidence, a statue of the same name at a great commercial town named Sinope, which was built upon the extremity of a promontory which projected from Asia Minor into the Euxine Sea. Sinope was, in some sense, the Alexandria of the north, being the center and seat of a great portion of the commerce of that ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott

... second, from our own Cove, scrutinizing all the banks, and rocks, and shady nooks, so familiar through many a wild exploring of ours; to reach the third we were obliged to stand out a considerable distance to sea, as the promontory bounding the White-Rock Cove on this side stretched far beyond the other rocky buttresses, making one of the most prominent land-marks in that part of the south coast. It was underneath its shelter that we had lunched the day before, ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous

... of central France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Yonne, 34 m. S.S.E. of Auxerre on a branch of the Paris-Lyon railway. Pop. (1906) 5197. The town, with wide streets and picturesque promenades, is finely situated on a promontory, the base of which is washed on the south by the Cousin, on the east and west by small streams. Its chief building, the church of St Lazare, dates from the 12th century. The two western portals are adorned with sculpture in the ornate Romanesque style; the tower on the left of the facade was ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... and discharge for every landscape, and when we have followed down this artificial promontory, a wharf, and have seen the waves on three sides of us, we have taken the first step toward circumnavigating the globe. This is our last terra firma. One step farther, and there is no possible foothold but a deck, which ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... promontory," said the sailor; "we must retrace our steps, holding towards the right, and we shall thus ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... by surprise, for the men were hurriedly hoisting sail, and, as I learned afterwards, the Teaser had been quite hidden till she rounded a little promontory at the mouth of the channel between the first and second islands—the channel for which we had so vainly steered on the ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn

... charge so long as it lived. Many have shown particular regard in burying the dogs which they had cherished and loved, and among them Xantippus of old, whose dog swam by the side of his galley to Salamis, when the Athenians were forced to abandon their city, and was afterwards buried by him upon a promontory which is still called the ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy

... admirals, they then disabled all they came across, so that no one thought of resistance for the confusion, but fled for Patrae and Dyme in Achaea. The Athenians gave chase and captured twelve ships, and taking most of the men out of them sailed to Molycrium, and after setting up a trophy on the promontory of Rhium and dedicating a ship to Poseidon, returned to Naupactus. As for the Peloponnesians, they at once sailed with their remaining ships along the coast from Dyme and Patrae to Cyllene, the Eleian arsenal; where Cnemus, and the ships from Leucas that were to have joined them, ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides

... island of Samos, and made himself tyrant: he was entrapped and crucified in 522 B. C. Chersonese is the ancient name for a peninsula. Sunium is the name of a promontory southeast of Athens. ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... contrasted with the rich chrome yellow of the birch and poplars, the sere red leaves of the gigantic oaks, and with the ever verdant plumage of the junipers, clustered in massy patches on every rocky promontory, and the tall spires of the ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)

... a double monastery, apparently in imitation of Whitby, at Coldingham on the promontory still called S. Abb's Head. She does not seem, however, to have maintained, like Hild, the discipline and fervour of which she herself gave an example; for Bede notes here a rare example of those disorders of which there were certainly far ...
— Early Double Monasteries - A Paper read before the Heretics' Society on December 6th, 1914 • Constance Stoney

... abode, has designedly made all access to it perilous. At Rome we are not yet in the south; we have there a foretaste of its sweets, but its enchantment only truly begins in the territory of Naples. Not far from Terracina is the promontory fixed upon by the poets as the abode of Circe: and behind Terracina rises Mount Anxur, where Theodoric, king of the Goths, had placed one of those strong castles with which the northern warriors have ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... general effect so pleasing, that were there nothing further, the place would be beautiful, but the canvas is admirably filled. Lake Ennel, many miles in length, and two or three broad, flows beneath the windows. It is spotted with islets, a promontory of rock fringed with trees shoots into it, and the whole is bounded by distant hills. Greater and more magnificent scenes are often met with, but nowhere a more beautiful or a ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young

... chapter. Go where you will in Yorkshire, you will find no more fascinating woodland scenery than this. From the broken walls and towers of the old Norman castle the views over the ravines on either hand—for the castle stands on a lofty promontory in a sea of foliage—are entrancing; and after seeing the astoundingly brilliant colours with which autumn paints these trees, there is a tendency to find the ordinary woodland commonplace. The narrowest and deepest ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home

... over the whole people, but it was very rarely that every part of Wales obeyed one king. The country was divided into smaller kingdoms. In many ways Gwynedd was the most powerful. It was very easy to defend; for it was made up of the island of Mon (Anglesey), the promontory of Lleyn, and the mountain mass of Snowdon. Its steep side was thus towards England, and its cornlands and pastures on the further side. It was also the home of the family of Cunedda, from Maelgwn to the ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards

... on old Manhattan, Where land-sharks breed and fatten, They've wiped out Tubby Hook. That famous promontory, Renowned in song and story, Which time nor tempest shook, Whose name for aye had been good, Stands newly christened 'Inwood,' And branded with the shame Of some old rogue who passes By dint of aliases, ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... perished from famine and from excessive labour. The men were too few, too weak, too destitute of the helpful ways of English sailors, to assist in providing for themselves. Thus penned up on the bleak promontory, cholera-stricken, mocked rather than sustained during their benumbing toil with rations of uncooked meat and green coffee-berries, the British soldiery wasted away. Their effective force sank at midwinter to eleven ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... to the forlorn and lonely monastery of Pitsoonda on the promontory where the great lighthouse burns. Along the seashore were swamps overgrown with bamboos and giant grasses, twelve feet high. The sea was grey and calm. Lying on the sand, one saw the reflection, or the ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... whales, lowered our boats, and succeeded in taking one; the blubber of which, when boiled out, yielded us seventy-five barrels of oil. Pursuing our voyage, on the twenty-third of February we passed the Falkland Islands, and about the 5th of March, doubled the great promontory of South America, Cape Horn, ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay

... and was in many parts exceedingly picturesque; now passing, in the form of a mere bridle-path, along the verge of the precipices, where thousands of sea-gulls floated around the giddy heights, or darted down into the waves which fell on shingly beach, or promontory, or bay of yellow sand, far below; anon cutting across the grassy downs on some bold headland, or diverging towards the interior, and descending into a woody dell in order to avoid a creek or some other arm of the sea that had cleft the rocks and ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne

... late, (but wherefore I know not), lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me, than a foul ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge

... But Charles did not leave her long in doubt. On the north side of the Mohawk, and at about fifty miles from its mouth, is a mountain which, as we have already said, juts, in a nearly perpendicular promontory, into the bed of the river; its inclination is sufficient to admit of its receiving the name of a nose. Without the least intention of alluding to our hero, the early settlers had affixed the name of St. Anthony, who appears ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper

... abruptly, slipped on his snow-shoes, and went round the shoulder of the hill, and up on to the promontory, to get out of earshot of that voice, and determine which of the two ice-roads, stretching out before them, was main channel and which ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... crouching beneath the crags. I can see the long golden strip of strand beyond; and, farther still, across the wide estuary of the Wraythe, the line of shadowy cliffs that extend like a rugged wall out to the dim promontory ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... first one and then another, then a third, several couples out love-making in the spring evening; and a consequent feeling of loneliness was beginning to grow upon me, when I came to a dam across the river, and a mill—a great, gaunt promontory of building,—half on dry ground and half arched over the stream. The road here drew in its shoulders, and crept through between the landward extremity of the mill and a little garden enclosure, with a small house and a large signboard within its privet hedge. I was pleased to fancy ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... house, a building of the size of a better sort of country residence of our own, was then, as now, occupied by the Florentine governor of the Tuscan portion of the island. It stands on the extremity of a low rocky promontory that forms the western ramparts of the deep, extensive bay, on the side of which, ensconced behind a very convenient curvature of the rocks, which here incline westward in the form of a hook, lies the small port, completely concealed ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... visit Llanfair, the birth-place of the great poet, Goronwy Owen, whose works I had read with enthusiasm in my early years. I went on to Holyhead, and ascended the headland. The prospect, on every side, was noble, and in some respects this Pen Santaidd reminded me of Finisterra, the Gallegan promontory which I had ascended some ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... changes in European politics and society had molded the forms of colonization. The Reformation had broken the harmony of religious opinion; and differences in the Church began to constitute the basis of political parties. After the East Indies had been reached by doubling the southern promontory of Africa, the great commerce of the world was carried upon the ocean. The art of printing had been perfected and diffused; and the press spread intelligence and multiplied the facilities of instruction. The feudal institutions, which had been reared in the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... Crespi calls it La Punta del Angel Custodia. The site of the camp is about a mile north of the Montara fog signal. By noon of the next day, October 31st, the pioneers had prepared a passage over the bold promontory of Point San Pedro, and at ten o'clock in the morning the company set out on the trail of the exploradores and made their painful way to the summit. Here a wondrous sight met their eyes and quickened their flagging spirits. Before them, bright and beautiful, was spread a great ...
— The March of Portola • Zoeth S. Eldredge

... found himself at first in a thoroughly European quarter, the houses having low fronts, and being adorned with verandas, beneath which he caught glimpses of neat peristyles. This quarter occupied, with its streets, squares, docks, and warehouses, all the space between the "promontory of the Treaty" and the river. Here, as at Hong Kong and Calcutta, were mixed crowds of all races, Americans and English, Chinamen and Dutchmen, mostly merchants ready to buy or sell anything. The Frenchman felt himself as much alone ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne

... 'Palaio-Kastro' of the modern Greek, was founded by Augustus on an isthmus connecting Prevesa with the mainland to commemorate his triumph. Leake ('Travels in Northern Greece', vol. i. p. 175) identifies Actium with Punda ([Greek (transliterated: aktae], "the head of a promontory") on the headland opposite Prevesa (see 'Childe Harold', Canto II. ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... Brandywine, the tide flowed far inland to the rocks on which Minuit's Swedish expedition landed, leaving one dry spot called Cherry Island, a name still borne by a shoal in the river. Fort Christina, on the edge of the overflowed meadow, with the rocky promontory of hills behind it, its church and houses, and a wide prospect across the delta and river, was a fair spot in the old days. The Indians came down the Christina in their canoes or overland, bringing their packs of beaver, otter, and deer skins, their tobacco, corn, and venison to ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher

... the next morning, the first thing in order was to ascend the promontory for the view it would afford. But they could not walk up, it was so difficult and tiresome. Before they left the ship the American consul visited her, and proffered his assistance to the tourists; for he had ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... him, and they soon rejoined Penellan. The sailor had said what was true. An elevated point of land jutted out like a promontory, and curving towards the coast, formed a little inlet of a mile in width at most. Some moving ice-blocks, broken by this point, floated in the midst, and the sea, sheltered from the colder winds, was not yet ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne

... bottom. On the west, nothing appears opposed to the storm of the ocean except the hardest and most solid rock; on the east, we find coasts exposed to the sea which could not have remained in a similar situation on the west. Let us but compare the two opposite coasts of England, viz. the promontory of Norfolk and Suffolk upon the one side, and Pembrokeshire and Carnarvonshire on the other, both similarly exposed, the one to the north east storm of the German sea, the other to the south west billows of the Atlantic. What a striking ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton

... have been supposed, that after it had been ascertained by Diaz that the southern promontory of Africa could be doubled, and by Covilham, that this was the only difficulty to a passage by sea to India, the court of Portugal would have lost no time in prosecuting their discoveries, and completing the grand object they had had in view for nearly a century: this, however, was ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... We ascended a promontory that jutted out from the main land a quarter of a mile, perhaps more. Wauna conducted me to the edge of the cliff and told me to look down. An ocean of whirlpools was before us. The maddened dashing and thundering of the mighty waters, and the awe they inspired no words can paint. ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley

... to Egypt, and that he lives in the days of Antony and Cleopatra. Surely he that imagines this may imagine more. He that can take the stage at one time for the palace of the Ptolemies, may take it in half an hour for the promontory ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... return of the Mytilenaean envoys from Athens, where of course they had accomplished nothing, the siege of Mytilene began in earnest. The city was situated on a promontory facing the Asiatic coast on the south-eastern side of the island, and had two harbours, on its northern and southern side. Both of these harbours were now held in close blockade by the Athenians, who established two camps, one on either side of the town, and patrolled the harbour-mouths with their ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... sounds are thus described by Dr. BUIST in the Bombay Times of January 1847: "A party lately crossing from the promontory in Salsette called the 'Neat's Tongue,' to near Sewree, were, about sunset, struck by hearing long distinct sounds like the protracted booming of a distant bell, the dying cadence of an AEolian harp, the note of a pitchpipe or pitch-fork, or any ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... being landed at three points—at Enos, at Suol, a promontory on the west of the Gallipoli Peninsula, and at the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... given to the first promontory to appear is significant. Nisir signifies 'protection' or 'salvation.' The houseboat ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... 476, the empire of the West, and the last Roman emperor lived out his life in retirement in the Lucullan villa on the promontory of Misenum. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... Though they did not actually make the little bay on which the treasure beach debouched, they fetched up near it against a broken hill of ice that had lodged on the sharp slopes of a little promontory, making the connection without further damage than a splitting of the forward end of their encasing floe, with hardly ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn

... had made up his mind to remain in Aberdeen, which is a beautifully built town, and which teemed to him with old associations. He spent his winters in diligently instructing his class, and in summer was often found at Peterhead, a town situated on the most easterly promontory of Scotland, and which was then noted for its medicinal waters. Beattie was troubled with a vertiginous complaint, which he found benefited by the use of the Peterhead Spa. He no doubt also admired and often visited the noble sea scenery to the south of that town.—Slaines Castle, standing ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... steer for Veragua, Hojeda made all sail for the river of Darien; but having lost his old pilot, on whose experience he chiefly depended, he missed the river, and resolved to establish a settlement on the eastern promontory of the gulf of Uraba, which he did accordingly, calling his new town St Sebastian; because that saint is said to have been martyred by the arrows of the infidels, and was therefore thought a fit patron to defend him against the poisoned arrows of the Indians. He had scarcely fixed in this place ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... the East Verde, half a mile above its mouth, a small creek comes in from the south, probably dry throughout most of the year; and on a promontory or point of land left by this creek a small ruin occurs. It is similar in plan and in character of masonry to those just described, and differs from them only in that its site is better adapted for defense, being protected on two sides by steep hills or cliffs. ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff

... we are at Stalden, a village perched upon a rocky promontory, at the junction of the valleys of the Saas and the Visp, with a church and white tower conspicuous from afar. We climb up to the terrace in front of it, on our way into the town. A seedy-looking priest is pacing up and down, taking the fresh breeze, his ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... to the rock which closed the fortress, was only accessible by a long, narrow promontory which joined it in front to the plateau on which the "pah" was erected. On its two other sides rose pointed rocks, which jutted out over an abyss a hundred feet deep. On that side descent was impossible, and had it been possible, the bottom was shut in by the enormous rock. The only outlet ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... their various temples as the only proofs of their former existence." Denon's description of the first view of Thebes by the French army, which he accompanied in the expedition into Upper Egypt, is singularly characteristic. "On turning the point of a chain of mountains which forms a kind of promontory, we saw all at once ancient Thebes in its full extent—that Thebes whose magnitude has been pictured to us by a single word in Homer, hundred-gated, a poetical and unmeaning expression which has been so confidently repeated ever since. This ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various

... cliff about two hundred yards distant, and running in a direct line to the westward. To the northward the coast for miles was one continued line of rocky cliffs, affording no chance of life to those who might be dashed upon them; but to the southward of the cliff which formed the promontory opposite to Forster's cottage, and which terminated the range, there was a deep indent in the line of coast, forming a sandy and nearly land-locked bay, small indeed, but so sheltered that any vessel which could run in might remain there ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... from the cars at Cape Horn, in this county, by one Leonidas Parker, since deceased. It was not fully light when I reached the track of the Central Pacific Railroad. Having mined at an early day on Thompson's Flat, at the foot of the rocky promontory now called Cape Horn, I was familiar with the zigzag paths leading down that steep precipice. One was generally used as a descent, the other as an ascent from the canon below. I chose the latter, as being the freest from the chance ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes

... dispersed under the copses which hemmed in on every side this little sequestered paradise. What a spot for a tent! I could encamp here for months, and never be tired. Not a day would pass by without discovering some new promontory, some untrodden pasture, some unsuspected vale, where I might remain among woods and precipices lost and forgotten. I would give you, and two or three more, the clue of my labyrinth: nobody else should be conscious of its entrance. Full of such agreeable dreams, I rambled about ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... about south-south-west, and called Diego Ramirez, distant from the land ten or twelve leagues; and as I do not find that the existence of such an island has ever been contradicted by any person who has sailed round this promontory, I determined to keep as near as possible in its parallel, the wind being from west-north-west to west-south-west, and the weather rather hazy; if I should make it, I could pass either within or without, as might ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter

... plainly enough insinuates that Achilles died fighting for his country, and represents the Greeks as maintaining a bloody battle about his body, which lasted a whole day. Achilles having been lamented by Thetis, the Nereids, and the Muses, was buried on the promontory of Sigaeum; and after Troy was captured, the Greeks endeavored to appease his manes by sacrificing Polyx{)e}na, on his tomb, as his ghost ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway

... primeval nest, High on a promontory Star-pharosed, where she takes her rest To brood new aeons 'neath her breast, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... the Northern ocean. So called from the Soloe islands near that promontory of Norway called Stad. That species of sea fowl which frequent the Bass, probably received their name from being more commonly ...
— The Norwegian account of Haco's expedition against Scotland, A.D. MCCLXIII. • Sturla oretharson

... star-white brethren bred Nigh where the last of all the land made head Against the sea, a keen-faced promontory, Flowers on salt wind and sprinkled ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... all around the cypress. Ivies twined about its trunk. On the bank the green turf looked dry, but cool. Just under the tree the brook broke into a miniature cascade, and went rippling down in a score of pygmy, sparkling waterfalls. On a tiny promontory a marble nymph, a fine bit of Greek sculpture, was pouring, without respite, from a water-urn into the gurgling flood. But Drusus did not gaze at the nymph. Close beside the image, half lying, half sitting, in an abandon only to be produced by a belief that she was quite ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... Epidamnus) was a Corcyraean colony, but its founder was of Corinth, the metropolis of Corcyra. It stood some sixty miles north of the Ceraunian promontory (Book V., 747). About the year 1100 it was stormed and taken by Robert the Guiscard, after furious battles with the troops of the Emperor Alexius. Its modern name is Durazzo. It may be observed that, ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... north side of the bay, opposite the cottages, a promontory ran out into the water. On it, sometimes on its very edge, sometimes drawn a little back with a space of smooth rocks in front of it, was the house built by King Otto, Konrad Karl's unfortunate predecessor on the Megalian throne. Perhaps that ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham

... over there," I said, pointing to a promontory of rocks sufficiently high to make it probable ...
— A Drama on the Seashore • Honore de Balzac

... of the Far East—Macao—is at last in sight, and it presents immediately a visual contrast to Canton, by reason of its picturesque situation. There is something about the promontory that takes you back to Southern Europe, to the summer sea and the shores of the Mediterranean, perhaps to a brightly situated fishing port of the littoral of the Riviera. As the vessel rounds the cape and comes to ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... black and beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was but the more forcibly illustrated by the surf which reared high up against it its white and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking forever. Just opposite the promontory upon whose apex we were placed, and at a distance of some five or six miles out at sea, there was visible a small, bleak-looking island; or, more properly, its position was discernible through the wilderness of surge in which it was enveloped. About two miles nearer the land arose another ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill

... Sir Walter Scott]. 'He took pains,' Wordsworth said; 'he went out with his pencil and note-book, and jotted down whatever struck him most—a river rippling over the sands, a ruined tower on a rock above it, a promontory, and a mountain-ash waving its red berries. He went home and wove the whole together into a poetical description.' After a pause, Wordsworth resumed, with a flashing eye and impassioned voice; 'But Nature does not permit ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson

... of trampled France had failed Like a brief dream of unremaining glory, From visions of despair I rose, and scaled The peak of an aerial promontory, 130 Whose caverned base with the vexed surge was hoary; And saw the golden dawn break forth, and waken Each cloud, and every wave:—but transitory The calm; for sudden, the firm earth was shaken, As if by the last wreck ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... the foot of which the waters flowed in sullen sweeps. Here, careful as he was, he slipped, and lay for a moment stunned and chilled with his sudden immersion. Struggling to the bank, he regained his foothold, and, rounding the promontory of cliff which had almost defeated his search, he turned the angle that hid the grotto, and found himself ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather

... haunches, and swayed itself gently to and fro, with its head on one side, as if admiring the Arctic scenery. There was not much more than a space of five hundred yards between the parties, but owing to the great promontory which formed an effectual screen between them, and the fact that the light air blew from the land to the sea, neither bear nor ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne

... batteries and the mouth of the harbor for two hours and a half, destroying a number of houses on Smith Cay, setting fire to the Spanish cruiser Reina Mercedes, which was moored near the end of the Socapa promontory, and killing or wounding twenty-five or thirty officers and men on the cruiser, in the batteries, and in Morro Castle. The earthwork batteries east and west of the entrance did not prove to be very formidable and ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan

... horn, and promising faithfully to repeat the earl's message, prayed God to bless him and the honest soldier. A rocky promontory soon excluded them from his sight, and in a few minutes more even the sound of their horses' hoofs was lost on the soft herbage ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... than salt, for its bounds are narrow and the extensive delta of its eastern shore would argue its depth slight. Ahead of us, as we travelled north making a bee-line for the end of the peninsula, all the afternoon, loomed the rocky promontory of Krusenstern, one of Kotzebue's capes, and far beyond, stretching up the dim coast-line, lay the way to Point Hope. It was with a sinking of the heart that I gazed upon it, for I knew already, though I had not announced ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... sinus. Sinus strictly signifies "a bending," especially inwards. Hence it is applied to a gulf, or bay, of the sea. And hence, again, by metonymy, to that projecting part of the land, whereby the gulf is formed; and still further to any promontory or peninsula. It is in this latter force it is here used;—and refers especially to the Danish peninsula. See Livy xxvii, 30, xxxviii. 5; Servius on ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... which the children gave the name of "Go Bang"—a name that adhered to it ever afterwards—was across the river from the village, the lighter was poled over to that side. There was no wharf, so she was made fast to a little grassy promontory that Captain Johnson said was once one of the abutments of a bridge. There was no bridge now, however, and already Mark saw that his canoe was likely to prove ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe

... house, a modest bit of architecture, lies Long Isle, just where the river seemingly pauses for a deep breath after its bold sweep around the promontory crowned by the Academy Buildings. Here and there along the path are little wooden benches to tempt the passer to rest and view from their hospitable seats the grand panorama of gently flowing river, of broad marsh and meadow beyond, of tiny villages dotting the distances, ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour

... to the north lay near the centre of the cone-shaped mass of land which constitutes the promontory of the Cape. If we suppose this cone to be divided into three zones or longitudinal bands, we find each presenting distinct peculiarities of climate, physical appearance and population. These are more marked beyond than within the colony. At some points one district seems to be continued in and to ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... sides—a most welcome vision after eleven months of the desert sea and the dusty browns of Australia and New Zealand. Nearer yet, and the coast line came into sight, fringed by the feathery cocoanut tree of the tropics, and marked by a long line of surf. The grand promontory of Diamond Head, its fiery sides now softened by a haze of green, terminated the wavy line of palms; then the Punchbowl, a very perfect extinct crater, brilliant with every shade of red volcanic ash, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... sight of the promontory of Sunium, where the Greek Muse, in an awful vision, came to me, and said in a patronising way, "Why, my dear" (she always, the old spinster, adopts this high and mighty tone)—"Why, my dear, are you not charmed to be in this famous neighbourhood, in this land of poets and heroes, ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... summit of the mesa is gradually approached. Near the top the road is flanked on one side by a very abrupt descent of broken slopes, and on the other by a precipitous rocky wall that rises 30 or 40 feet above. The road reaches the brink of the promontory by a sharp rise at a point close to the village ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various

... within its borders. In both, however, the highest mountain-chains, the Rocky Mountains and Coast Range with their wide intervening table-land in North America, and the chain of the Andes with its lesser plateaus in South America, run along the western coast; both have a great eastern promontory,—Newfoundland in the northern continent, and Cape St. Roque in the southern;—and though the resemblance between the inland elevations is perhaps less striking, yet the Canadian range, the White Mountains, and the Alleghanies ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... revolt in Asia the Persians coasted along Thrace; before their advance the great Athenian Miltiades was compelled to fly from the Dardanelles to his native city. In 492 Mardonius was appointed viceroy of Asia Minor. He reorganised the provincial system and then attempted to double the perilous promontory of Athos, but only a remnant of his ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... to do so, detain me more than one night. I was afraid that my sudden arrival among my friends might cause some suspicion if I remained there at all. But after the winds had driven me, on my departure from Sicily, to Leucopetra, which is a promontory of the Rhegian district, I went up the gulf from that point, with the view of crossing over. And I had not advanced far before I was driven back by a foul wind to the very place which I had just quitted. And as the night was stormy, and as I had lodged that night in the ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... the French could not be far-off. At length, he desired that his generals should be within call from Cotuy, a small town which stood on the banks of the Cotuy, near the western base of the mountainous promontory of Samana—promontory at low ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... Rebellion of 1715. Subsequently it was much augmented and enlarged, and bore, until its destruction after the battle of Culloden, the name of Fort George, an appellation now transferred to its modern successor on the promontory of Ardesseil. ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson

... spur of the Blue Ridge, the Catoctin Mountain, strides out to the river, and the railroad, striking it, wraps itself around the promontory in a sharp curve, like a blow with the flat of an elastic Damascus sword. The broad Potomac sweeps rushing around its base: it is the celebrated Point of Rocks. The nodding precipice, cut into a rough and tortured profile by the engineers, lays its shadow to sleep on the whizzing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... wind sweeps down on us, from off the moorland, in fiercer and fiercer gusts; the waves dash heavily against our rock promontory; the rain drifts wildly past my windows; and the densest darkness overspreads the whole sky. The storm which has been threatening for ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... was of a higher mood. But now my oat proceeds, And listens to the herald of the sea, That came in Neptune's plea. He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds, What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain? And questioned every gust of rugged wings, That blows from off each beaked promontory. They knew not of his story; And sage Hippotades their answer brings, That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed; The air was calm, and on the level brine Sleek Panope with all her sisters played. It was that fatal and perfidious bark, Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... substance chalk, which the chemist regards as a nearly pure carbonate of lime, and the microscopist as an aggregation of inconceivably minute shells and corals, forms the sub-soil of the hilly districts of the south-east of England. The chalk-hills known as the South Downs start from the bold promontory of Beachy Head, traverse the county of Sussex from east to west, and pass through Hampshire into Surrey. The North Downs extend from Godalming, by Godstone, into Kent, and terminate in the line of cliffs which stretches from Dover to Ramsgate. ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... hot into the water, and killed a mighty sturgeon that was sporting beside the vessel. When this astonishing miracle was made known to the Governor, and he tasted of the unknown fish, he marveled exceedingly; and, as a monument thereof, he gave the name of Anthony's Nose to a stout promontory in the neighborhood, and it has continued to be called Anthony's Nose ever since." It was called by the Indians "Kittatenny," a Delaware term, signifying "endless hills." The stream flowing into the river south of Anthony's Nose is ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce

... behind some promontory lie The huge leviathans to attend their prey; And give no chase, but swallow in the fry, Which through their ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... and Corinth were behind the combatants, the mountains of Alexander's Macedon rose in the distance; the rock of Sappho and the heights of Actium, were before their eyes. Since the day when the world had been lost and won beneath that famous promontory, no such combat as the one now approaching had been fought upon the waves. The chivalrous young commander despatched energetic messages to his fellow chieftains, and now that it was no longer possible to elude the encounter, the martial ardor of the allies was kindled. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley



Words linked to "Promontory" :   point, Cape Horn, natural elevation, Calpe, Jebel Musa, Rock of Gibraltar, Cape Sable, Cape Canaveral, Cape Hatteras



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