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Soil   Listen
verb
Soil  v. t.  To enrich with soil or muck; to manure. "Men... soil their ground, not that they love the dirt, but that they expect a crop."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Soil" Quotes from Famous Books



... dispositions were as follows. The bed of the river, which lies nearly east and west, is from fifty to one hundred yards wide and about thirty deep, in soil that lends itself easily to the spade. On both sides, for a mile above and below Wolveskraal Drift, the edges of the banks were trenched, and at either end of these trenches traverses, thrown forward ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan

... Then he told her he would gladly execute any commissions she might be pleased to entrust him with. He was in hopes she would beg him to bring her back some consecrated medal, a rosary, or, better still, a little of the soil of the Holy Sepulchre which the Turks carry from Jerusalem together with dried roses, and which the Italian ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France

... the feeling which led the Pisans to load their vessels with earth from the Holy Land, and fill the area of the Campo Santo with that sacred soil! The old house stood upon about as perverse a little patch of the planet as ever harbored a half-starved earth-worm. It was as sandy as Sahara and as thirsty as Tantalus. The rustic aid-de-camps of the household used to aver that all fertilizing matters "leached" through it. I tried to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... In fact, until sought with anxiety when the drought had become excessive and threatened the later crops, and the services of the cheera-taghe were necessary to invoke and with wild barbaric ceremonials bring down the lightning and thunder to clear the atmosphere and the rain to refresh the soil, it was not ascertained that the prophets ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... few bamboo huts on the sward, and here the Chinese guard left me; for armed guards are allowed no further. I was led to the ford, my pony plunged into the swift stream, and a moment or two later I was on British soil and passing the Sepoy outpost, where the guard, to my great alarm, for I feared being shot, turned out and saluted me. Then I climbed up the steep hill to the British encampment, where the English officer commanding, Captain R. G. Iremonger, of the 3rd Burma Regiment, gave ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... short her intended walk. She and Valeria with Professor Fortescue wandered together, far and wide. They watched the daily budding greenery, the gleams of daffodils among their sword-blades of leaves, the pushing of sheaths and heads through the teeming soil, the bursts of sunshine and the absurd childish little gushes of rain, skimming the green country ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... and alcoholic fumes of Whiskey Dick, and felt also that the hands which were thrown up against his breast, the palms turned outward with the instinctive movement of a timid, defenseless man, were unstained with soil or blood. With an oath he threw the drunkard from him and dashed to the rear of the cabin. But too late! There, indeed, was the scattered earth, there the widened burrow as it had been excavated apparently by that mutilated ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte

... excluded from the lecture-room; but they should always be employed as means by which information is communicated. Between lecturers equal in other respects, one with the salt of humor, native to the soil, should be preferred; but it is a sad reflection upon public taste, when a person whose entire intellectual capital is wit, humor, or buffoonery, is preferred to men of solid learning. But it is a worse view of human nature, when men of real merit and worth depreciate themselves and lower the public ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell

... Associated Charities, was amused one day to be told, on knocking at the door of a house where he had studiously endeavored to inspire a sense of cleanliness, that he could not come in, as the floor had just been washed and he might soil it again." [1] ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond

... subsisting through part-time, low-paying jobs. One demographic consequence of the "one child" policy is that China is now one of the most rapidly aging countries in the world. Another long-term threat to growth is the deterioration in the environment - notably air pollution, soil erosion, and the steady fall of the water table, especially in the north. China continues to lose arable land because of erosion and economic development. China has benefited from a huge expansion in computer Internet use, with more than 100 million users at the end of 2005. Foreign investment ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... races admire those personal characteristics which climate and circumstances have impressed on them is not borne out among Australians. An arid soil and a desiccating climate make them thin as a race, but they do not admire thinness. "Long-legged," "thin-legged," are favorite terms of abuse among them, and Grey once heard a native ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... whole fabric of revolution. Dumouriez, beaten at Nerwinde by the prince of Saxe-Coburg, abandoned not only his last year's conquest, but fled from his own army to pass the remainder of his life on a foreign soil, and leave his reputation a doubtful legacy to history. Belgium, once again in the possession of Austria, was placed under the government of the archduke Charles, the emperor's brother, who was destined to a very brief continuance ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... from the front was ominous. Belgium was a smoking waste. Her skies were black with the burning of her towns, villages and homesteads, her soil red with the blood of her old men, her women and children. The French armies, driven back in rout from the Belgian frontier, were being pounded to death by the German hordes. Fortresses hitherto considered impregnable ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor

... grows. When the trench is full of burning wood, allow it a few minutes to burn down to the coals and stop blazing high. Then rest the meat can and cup over the trench and start cooking. Either may be supported, if necessary, with green sticks. If you can not scrape a trench in the soil, build one up out of rocks ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department

... boy's first Kentucky ancestor had been one of those who had stopped in the hills. His rifle had fed him and his family; his axe had put a roof over their heads, and the loom and spinning-wheel had clothed their bodies. Day by day they had fought back the wilderness, had husbanded the soil, and as far as his eagle eye could reach, that first Hawn had claimed mountain, river, and tree for his own, and there was none to dispute the claim for the passing of half a century. Now those who had passed on were coming back again—the first trespasser long, long ago with a yellow document ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... without any regard to the benefit of society. Of the former sort are the yeoman, the manufacturer, the merchant, and perhaps the gentleman. The first of these being to manure and cultivate his native soil, and to employ hands to produce the fruits of the earth. The second being to improve them by employing hands likewise, and to produce from them those useful commodities which serve as well for the conveniences as necessaries of life. The third is to employ hands ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding

... of division of labor in general, in the particular case where it happens to cross political boundaries. The great territorial divisions of industry are determined first and mainly by natural differences of climate, soil, and material resources. Thus trade arises easily between North and South, between warm and frigid climates, between new countries and old, between regions sparsely and regions ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... now contending for existence on the soil of France, and the remains of his former conquests were rapidly melting from him. In the course of January and February, every place in the Adriatic had surrendered. In the following month, Lord William Bentinck left ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler

... a great pine-tree, among whose roots, no doubt, was the den of the bear. The tree itself grew up out of the sloping bank; and its great rhizomes stretched over a large space, many of them appearing above the surface soil. In front of the aperture was a little ledge, where the snow was hacked by the bear's paws, but below this ledge the bank trended steeply down—its slope terminating in the bed ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid

... with yellow flowers and scandent stem, climbing straight up trees or artificial supports. Leaves cleft at the base, acute, entire, glabrous, dark green. According to Blanco it is cultivated best in somewhat sandy soil. Pasay, near Manila, and Bauang, in Batangas, furnish ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera

... trees were old and bent and twisted in fantastic shapes— some were small and partly dead, but most were fit for some festival of the gods; and as she went in and out among them, her feet making but slight impression on the moist springy soil, grass-grown and sprinkled with petals, pink and white, she stopped now and then and touched first one and then the other, for a swift moment laid her cheek on the rough bark as if to send a message ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher

... she remarked sadly, "I anticipate many a heartache to see the terrible condition of the fair country that has been turned into a howling wilderness by the vandal German armies. Ah! I almost dread the day, much as I yearn to tread my native soil again." ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson

... is, that they are so very healthy; the winters in both provinces are dry, and, in Upper Canada, they are not severe; and the summers are cool, compared with those of the United States. Indeed, in point of climate, they cannot be surpassed; and I rather think, independently of its fine soil, which enables it to grow every thing (for even tobacco grows well in Upper Canada), that in mineral richness it is not to be exceeded. It abounds in water-power, and has several splendid rivers. As soon as the roads are made (for that is the present desideratum ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... might determine history. He noted there, a force at work that tended to cloud the mind and influence the imagination, in considering such affairs. The estate was called 'a princely property,' and the new holder was the 'aristocratic owner of the soil.' He had 'extensive lands in England;' perhaps he had 'the most beautiful demesne' and 'the finest mansion' in that country. If the Elizabethan landlord, planted in Ireland, drove along the high road, he was described as the 'noble occupant of the carriage.' ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne

... source of surprise and interest. She detected unguessed finenesses in him that seemed to bud, day by day, like flowers in congenial soil. She read Browning aloud to him, and was often puzzled by the strange interpretations he gave to mooted passages. It was beyond her to realize that, out of his experience of men and women and life, his interpretations were far more frequently correct than hers. ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... through the vast vineyards of the Peloponnesus—vineyards that stretched down to the sea and were dotted with sentinel cypresses. The heat was much greater than it had been in Athens. Enormous aloes hedged gardens from which came scents that seemed warm. The sandy soil, turned up by the horses' feet, was hot to the touch. The air quivered, and was shot with a music of insects faint ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... exceedingly. One of them had become Lord Mayor of London, had vigorously supported the unhappy Queen Caroline, had paid the debts of the Duke of Kent, in order that that reputable individual might return to England with his Duchess, so that the future heir to the throne might be born on English soil; he had been rewarded with a baronetcy as a cheap method of paying his services. Another, my father's first cousin once removed, a young barrister, had successfully pleaded a suit in which was concerned the huge fortune of a miserly relative, and had thus laid the foundations of a ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant

... middle of the fifteenth century Italy enjoyed undisputed pre-eminence in the world of learning. The sudden splendour into which the Renaissance had blazed up on Italian soil drew men's eyes thither more than ever; and to its ancient universities students from the North swarmed like bees. To graduate in Italy, to hear its famous doctors, perhaps even to learn from one of the native ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... covers it throughout its entire extent, with the exception of a few spots where the hollowness of the ground has collected a little moisture, or the meandering of some small stream or rivulet enriches the soil, and covers its banks with verdant shrubs ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne

... trench saves labor, and places the refuse in the most immediately safe position, but a buried mass of refuse will take a long time to decay; it should not be disturbed, and will taint the adjacent soil for a long time. This is of less consequence in a merely temporary encampment, while it might entail serious evils in localities continuously inhabited. The following plan of trench has been adopted as a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various

... confirms it. The lowest peoples in point of culture are not the North American Indians nor the African Negroes, but certain isolated groups that live almost in a state of nature, without any attempt to cultivate the soil or to control nature in other respects. Such are the Bushmen of South Africa, the Australian Aborigines, the Negritos of the Philippine Islands and of the Andaman Islands, the Veddahs of Ceylon, and the Fuegians of South America. Now ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood

... almost windless; sweet, nameless odors poured up from the heated summer soil; the shadows of the grasses were outlined like Japanese pictures on the white roadway. Except for the child and the cat, no living being moved, as far as the eye could see; only the burdocks and mulleins swayed almost imperceptibly ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... men. With hands and lamphooks they began to dig into the soil. The task was difficult, for the airshaft in which we had taken refuge was on a considerable slope and very slippery. And we knew that it meant death if we made a false step. A resting place was made, and we were able to stop and take note of each other. We were seven: the professor, ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot

... the horizon and the great, grey Atlantic yawned desolately westward. She was leaving so much behind her, taking so little with her, for the child was grave and old even at the age of eight, and realized that this day meant the updragging of all the tiny roots that clung to the home soil of the older land. Her father was taking his wife and family, his household goods, his fortune and his future to America, which, in the days of 1829, was indeed a venturesome step, for America was regarded as remote as the North Pole, and good-byes were, alas! very real ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson

... That our climate, soil and situation are such as to insure as much health, riches and prosperity as any people can rationally wish, seems not to be doubted. Our natural advantages do not indeed promise such an accumulation of wealth as might satisfy that avarice which like the horse ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast

... Convention than any other. I refer to the security which it gives to the just and equitable action of the Legislature upon all parts of the Union. It could not but have occurred to the Convention that in a country so extensive, embracing so great a variety of soil and climate, and consequently of products, and which from the same causes must ever exhibit a great difference in the amount of the population of its various sections, calling for a great diversity in the employments of the people, that the legislation of the ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Harrison • James D. Richardson

... cloudburst and piled up to set into pudding-stone. And all the mud which had overlaid the garden and orchard was setting like a concrete pavement. The ancient figs and peach-trees, half buried in the slime, rose up stiffly from the fertile soil beneath; and the Jail Canyon Ranch, once so flamboyantly green, was now shore-lined with a blotch of dirty gray. Only the alfalfa patch remained, and the house on the hill—everything else was either washed away or covered with ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge

... will now require particular attention and a nice discrimination in the application of water: it may be comprehended by all persons interested in gardening operations, that when the soil on the surface of the pot looks damp it will not require water until it gets thoroughly dry at this season, and then it is to be given before the plant droops or flags for want of it. But when the plant droops and the soil on the surface appears damp, the cause ...
— In-Door Gardening for Every Week in the Year • William Keane

... he saw a boat coming down the stream, and in the distance it very strangely resembled some little craft with upright mast and dark sail; but as it came nearer it proved to be a patch of root-matted vegetable soil, washed from the bank, and having in the centre a small nipah palm, which slowly passed from might, to be cast ashore upon some mud bank, and again ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... his mother or his father professed. I shall stand by his side and place my hand upon his throbbing brow—and he will hope, and not despair. Who knows whether or not our hope and our faith have power in some strange way to link the present to the future, carrying forward the spirit-seed to soil in which it blooms in splendor through ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... and, hardly knowing why he did so, he walked down the lane till he could see her window. There was a light in the room. For several minutes he stood gazing at the window, feeling his feet sink into the marshy soil. He wondered how he could pass the long hours of the night without speaking to her. He had just resolved that he would go to the hotel and implore Mrs. Floyd to let him see Harriet if only for a moment, when he noticed a shadow on the wall of the room. It looked like some one ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben

... important force in the growth of her nature. No one can estimate the results on a character of these slow absorptions, these unconscious biases, from daily contact. All precepts, all religions, are insignificant agencies by their side. They are like sun and soil to a plant: they make a moral climate in which certain things are sure to grow, and certain other things are sure to die; as sure as it is that orchids and pineapples thrive in the tropics, and ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous

... mentioned by Benjamin now exists, and it may be doubted whether the present building covers the tomb which was seen by the Hebrew traveller. We could find no ancient remains near it, as the Tigris is constantly changing its course, and was still eating away the bank of alluvial soil, upon the edge of which the building stood. It is highly probable that the tomb seen by Benjamin of Tudela had long before been carried away by the river." Layard's Early Adventures in Persia, ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela

... them touch each other at certain points. The exceptions are caused by his sometimes altering his manner of characterization and proceeding from the inside first. This variation goes to the extent of distinguishing influences of the soil as well as of social grade and temperament. His northerners speak and act otherwise than those of the south or west, and, in the main, are true to life, despite the author's perceptible ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... it is to be remarked, in passing, that though this Poet is evidently bent on making his exhibition a thorough one, though he is determined not to leave out anything of importance in his diagrams, he does not appear inclined to soil his fingers by meddling with the lower orders, or to countenance any innovation in his art in that respect. Whenever he has occasion to introduce persons of this class into his pieces, they come in and go out, and perform their part ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... subject of marriage and divorce, reminds me of an equally exciting one in 1860. A very liberal bill, introduced into the Indiana legislature by Robert Dale Owen, and which passed by a large majority, roused much public thought on the question, and made that State free soil for unhappy wives and husbands. A similar bill was introduced into the legislature of New York by Mr. Ramsey, which was defeated by four votes, owing, mainly, to the intense opposition of Horace Greeley. He and Mr. Owen had a prolonged discussion, in the ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... patch of ground forming his holding, however squalid it may be, however inadequate for his support. In short, in Ireland there is a dual ownership—that of the proprietor, who has no interest in the soil so long as the tenant pays his rent and fulfils the conditions of his tenancy; and that of the tenant, who, subject to the payment of his rent and performance of the fixed conditions, acts, thinks, and carries himself as the owner of ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.

... God! I worship Him! Grant me a portion of the blessed soil Of this most favoured land where I have found His mercy; in Damascus will I build An altar to His name, and praise Him there Morning and night. There is no other God In all ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke

... fond of infesting dahlias, and their depredations must be guarded against. Hollyhocks, if entirely free from disease, will still be handsome objects, but their beauty will be somewhat on the wane; seeds may be saved from the best flowers, and should be sown at once in a pan of light sandy soil, and placed in a cold frame. Rooted layers of carnations of all sorts and of every section should now be planted out into a rich light soil, or, what is more preferable, two can be placed in a 5-inch or 6-inch pot, and wintered thus under glass. Asters ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... is always more wretchedness below than there is brotherhood above, all was given away, so to speak, before it was received. It was like water on dry soil; no matter how much money he received, he never had any. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... unrolled; Whose empire o'ershadows Atlantic's wide breast, And opens to sunset its gateway of gold! The land of the mountain, the land of the lake, And rivers that roll in magnificent tide— Where the souls of the mighty from slumber awake, And hallow the soil for whose ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... were large plantations of firs, set too closely to attain any size, and remaining stunted in height and scrubby in appearance. Indeed, many of the smaller and more weakly had died, and the bark had fallen down on the brown soil neglected and unnoticed. These trees had a ghastly appearance, with their white trunks, seen by the dim light which struggled through the thick boughs above. Nearer to the sea, the valley assumed a more open, though hardly a more cheerful character; it looked dark and overhung ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell

... there, the woman holding the child in her arms, and biting her thin lips from which hunger had drained all the red. There was scant food on the table, and as his gaze went back to it, it seemed to him that, for the first time, he grasped the full meaning of a war for the people of the soil. This was the real thing—not the waving banners, not the bayonets, not the fighting ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... a close parallel between this experience and that of the journeyman moving from the familiar soil of civilianism to the terra incognita of military life. But there is also the marked difference that everyone he meets can tell him something that he needs to know. More particularly, if he has the ambition to ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... up the ridge, then swept along the flank of it, and round the end in huge bulk, to the level on the other side. The water lay soaking into the fields. The valley was desolated. What green things had not been uprooted or carried away with the soil, were laid flat. Everywhere was mud, and scattered all over were lumps of turf, with heather, brushwood, and small trees. But it was early in the ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... were the following. At the centre of the chosen area he dug a circular pit through the soil to the hard clay beneath, and cast into this, with solemn observances, some of the first fruits of the season. Each of his men also threw in a handful of earth brought from his native land. Then the pit was filled up, an altar erected upon it, and a fire kindled on the ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... Great Britain had left foreign competitors far behind in the instrumental department of astronomy. The quadrants and circles of Bird, Cary and Ramsden were unapproached abroad. The reflecting telescope came into existence and reached maturity on British soil. The refracting telescope was cured of its inherent vices by British ingenuity. But with the opening of the nineteenth century, the almost unbroken monopoly of skill and contrivance which our countrymen had succeeded in establishing was invaded, and British workmen ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... days before the meeting of the convention. He wasted not an hour of them on the manufacturing towns; he went to the country—to the farmers and the villagers, the men who lived each man in his own house, on his own soil from which he earned his own living. Up and down and across the state he went, speaking, organizing, planning, inspiring—he and the coterie of young men who looked up to him as their leader and followed him in this desperate assault as courageously ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips

... his wife, and his children; swarming, working, cooking, eating, and screaming, in a floored and wainscoted room where everything is dropping to pieces, and into which you descend two steps—a depth which seems to suggest the gradual elevation of the soil ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac

... his native soil: a giant Antaeus who, as the myth tells us, ever had to touch Mother Earth ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis

... on the Rossberg. A devastated tract of the globe it seems. Our eyes rest on barren soil devoid of vegetation. Beneath a large field of huge boulders, imbedded in snow and ice, the Alpine vegetation thrives. The whole valley is one immense graveyard, and the great rocks are giant tombstones, encircled by wreaths of white flowers ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai

... sense of values was impregnated with what he called his 'espagnolisme'—his immense admiration for the noble and the high-sounding in speech or act or character—an admiration which landed him often enough in hysterics and absurdity. Yet this was the soil in which a temperament of caustic reasonableness had somehow implanted itself. The contrast is surprising, because it is so extreme. Other men have been by turns sensible and enthusiastic: but who before ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... forget the dismal appearance of the Cedar Barrens. The soil was nowhere more than two inches deep, and the trees which covered it by millions had all died as soon as they attained a height of fifteen or twenty feet. Swarms of ill-omened turkey-buzzards were the only ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... in the glory of ownership of the ownership of land and houses, of beeves and woolly flocks, of wide fields and thick-growing woods, even when that ownership is of late date, when it conveys to the owner nothing but the realization of a property on the soil; but there is much more in it when it contains the memories of old years; when the glory is the glory of race as well as the glory of power and property. There had been Beltons of Belton living there for many centuries, and now he was ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope

... we find vast quantities of the precious metals in the mountains of the Brazils and along the whole range of the Andes. In the province of Minasgeraes, gold is obtained from subterranean excavations, as also by washing the surface soil, when diamonds are also found. Auriferous deposits exist in the deep valleys among the mountains of Chili, and in Peru and Bolivia are immense veins of silver ore. High up on the Andes are the mines ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston

... three were turned on the sterile scene around them. The island was not absolutely destitute of vegetation, as is the case a few degrees further south; but it might be said to be nearly so. A few stunted plants were to be seen in the fissures of the rocks, and a little soil had been made, seemingly by the crumbling of the stones, in which a wiry grass occasionally showed itself. As for the mountain, however, it was mostly bare; and when our party began to climb, the ascent was not ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... just breaking through the fog that lay on the Long Island shore, and revealing the waters that rolled darkly between that and Bellevue. She threaded her way through the enclosures which we have mentioned. The light was just sufficient to reveal a few spring flowers, starting up from the soil, and the soft foliage of an old vine or two that covered the nakedness ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... Thereto I wend and strive to pluck a green shoot from the ground, That I with leafy boughs thereof may clothe the altars well; When lo, a portent terrible and marvellous to tell! For the first stem that from the soil uprooted I tear out Oozes black drops of very blood, that all the earth about Is stained with gore: but as for me, with sudden horror chill My limbs fall quaking, and my blood with freezing fear stands still. 30 Yet I go on and strive from earth a new tough shoot ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... said MacIan, violently, and planted the steel point in the soil like a man planting ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... policy was not doubtful. No doubt it would have been a nice thing could we have possessed in 1914 a great army fashioned and trained, not for firing rifles on the seashore, but for a struggle on French and Belgian soil. But such an army would have taken two generations at least to raise and train in peace time, and if we had laid out our money on it after 1870 instead of on ships, we should not have had the sea power which Tirpitz says gave us "bulldog" strength. In strategy and ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane

... least one gentleman here! Let him alone, monsieur! Plead not! After all, death is but death." But I stayed him with uplifted hand, and went on: "Monsieur de Montluc, you will ever regret this. Will you soil your glory with this act ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... it holy ground, The soil where first they trod! They have left unstained what there they found— Freedom to ...
— Excellent Women • Various

... settlements; but the Portuguese still retained possession of the country, and continued to prosper. Meanwhile Diego Caramuru, 'the man of fire,' had a son who in course of time became a prosperous settler; and as his sons grew up he trained them to become cultivators of the soil and traders in the valuable products of the New World. He took a piece of ground, far removed from the spot where his father had been cast ashore, and a short distance in the interior of the country. Here the eldest sons of the family dwelt ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne

... however, had spread far and wide the tidings of who they were, what they proposed to do, and where they were going, and before they could cross into Mexico they were attacked by a party of ex-Confederates and renegade Mexican rancheros. Being on American soil, Young forbade his men to return the fire, and bent all his efforts to getting them over the river; but in this attempt they were broken up, and became completely demoralized. A number of the men were drowned while swimming the river, Young himself was shot and killed, a few were captured, and ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... a decree, which forbade the admission of any Megarian on Attic soil, and also all trade with that people. The Megarians, who obtained all their provisions from Athens, were thus ...
— Peace • Aristophanes

... come you think I'd soil my shadow letting that viper trail it, boss? I never disobeyed you before, Mr. Secretary, but that trash can show hisself out!" and Jonas withdrew to his own office, while Brown, shrugging his shoulders, opened and ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... land; I've told thee I'm a gentleman by birth, Designed for ease: not doomed to turn the earth. Howe'er I'll now the diff'rent parts allot, And thus divide the produce of the plot:— What shall above the heritage arise, I'll leave to thee; 'twill very well suffice; But what is in the soil shall be my share; To this attend, see ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... captains and steersmen, when they hung back in fear lest their ships should be shattered on the rocks. "Spare not these timbers," he cried, "but let every hull among them go to wreck, rather than suffer the enemy to violate the soil of Lacedaemon. Where is your loyalty to Sparta? Have you forgotten the debt which you owe to her? Have at them, I say, and hurl this fort with its defenders into the sea." Saying this he ordered the master of his own trireme to beach the vessel, and ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... struck and the camels loaded up; then when they had moved away, the dried grass and corn stalks were fired at the windward end of the valley and in a few minutes the flames swept along in a broad sheet, and in a quarter of an hour a coating of gray ashes covered the soil where lately the encampment with its surroundings of cultivation stood. Two of the men were left behind with fast camels. They were to leave the animals a mile from the camp on its northern side, so that they would neither be on the line by which the ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... they passed by. They went on in a great deep water, sometimes very broad, sometimes more narrow, on the sides whereof were huge rocks, and here and there little trees growing out of the clefts of them, with small heaps of earth lying on them, but they increase not much in that soil. ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke

... see the forest runners land. Henry and his comrades for their part were no less curious and soon they were inspecting this little settlement which for protection had been cast in a spot surrounded by the waters of the Ohio. They saw Corn Island, a low stretch of soil, somewhat sandy but originally covered with heavy forest, now partly cleared away. Yet the ax had left sycamores ten feet through ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler

... how useful, even from remotest times, the poets of noble thought have been! Orpheus taught us the mystic rites and the horrid nature of murder; Musaeus, the healing of ailments and the oracles; Hesiod, the tilling of the soil and the times for delving and harvest. And does not divine Homer owe his immortal glory to his noble teachings? Is it not he who taught the warlike virtues, the art of fighting ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... will be remembered, is in British territory, and all the great discoveries of gold have been made to the east of that town. Doubtless gold will be gathered in Alaska itself, but the probabilities are that the richest deposits are upon Canadian soil. ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis

... all grounds for the agitation of the subject. They were difficult to enforce and it was claimed by residents of the Coast that in spite of federal authority Oriental laborers were finding their way into American ports. Moreover, several Western states, anxious to preserve the soil for American ownership, enacted laws making it impossible for Chinese and Japanese to buy land outright; and in other ways they discriminated against Orientals. Such proceedings placed the federal government in an embarrassing position. By treaty it had guaranteed specific rights to ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... kick, or allow myself to hint in any other way at the appalling magnitude of the disaster. The whole world of Costaguana (the country, you may remember, of my seaboard tale), men, women, headlands, houses, mountains, town, campo (there was not a single brick, stone, or grain of sand of its soil I had not placed in position with my own hands); all the history, geography, politics, finance; the wealth of Charles Gould's silver-mine, and the splendour of the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, whose name, cried out in the night (Dr. Monygham heard it pass over his head—in ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... miles of one another. And the general outcome of these changes is, that not only has every extensive region its own meteorologic conditions, but that every locality in each region differs more or less from others in those conditions; as in its structure, its contour, its soil. Thus, between our existing Earth, the phenomena of whose crust neither geographers, geologists, mineralogists, nor meteorologists have yet enumerated, and the molten globe out of which it was evolved, the contrast in ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... fancy of men. Everybody in town seemed sulky and surly, ready to snap at a word. The blight of contention and strife seemed to be its heritage, the seed of violence and destruction to be sown in the drouth-cursed soil. ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... harbor is small, and can accommodate only about twenty vessels. It has water enough, and is under shelter of the river Saguenay and a little rocky island; which is almost cut by the river; elsewhere there are very high mountains with little soil and only rocks and sand, thickly covered with such wood as fir and birch. There is a small pond near the harbor, shut in by mountains covered with wood. There are two points at the mouth: one on the south-west side, ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain

... past the normal limits of Earth's air. Some may have seen such plungings from many miles away and died of the concussion. The ground heaved in great waves which ran terribly in all directions. Vast chasms opened in the soil, and flames as of hell flowed out of them. Seashores were overwhelmed by mountainous tidal waves, caused by cubic miles of seawater turned to steam when islands fell into the ocean at tens ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster

... found him upon the banks of the Kentucky, the wild and beautiful river from which the wilderness around derived its name; and the next morning, crossing it on a raft of logs speedily constructed by Nathan, he trod upon the soil of the north side, famous even then for its beauty and for the deeds of bloodshed almost daily enacted among its scattered settlements, and destined, unhappily, to be rendered still more famous for a tragedy which that very day witnessed, far off among the barren ridges of the Licking, where sixty ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... not sell candy. Once she suggested that he should learn a trade, to which Master Simon always replied, that he was born to be a gentleman, and would never voluntarily demean himself by pursuing a degrading occupation. He was above being a mechanic, and he would never soil his hands with dirty work. Katy began to think he was really a fool. She could scarcely think him "poor and proud"; he was only poor ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic

... long experience stood him fairly well in the place of science and knowledge of improved methods, and he was better equipped than the man who has in his brain all that the books can teach, yet is without experience. Best of all, he had inherited and acquired an abiding love of the soil; he never could have been content except in its cultivation; he was therefore in the right condition to assimilate fuller knowledge and make the most ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe

... on board at 5 a.m., and the Dhebash with fish, strawberries, and fresh vegetables. This is a beautiful climate, though there is scarcely any rain; only one very slight shower has occurred during the last three years at Suez, but the soil of the desert after the Nile overflow ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... gardens are very curious; they were formed by dividing the stalks of the water weeds near their roots, and sprinkling the surface of them with earth, which sinking a little way was entangled in the fibres and retained; Fresh soil was then added, until the whole was consolidated, and capable of bearing a considerable weight. The ground is now about nine inches thick, floating upon the surface of the water, and the stalks of the weeds below it having disappeared. ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster

... various processes of preparation before they are ready for consumption by civilized peoples. Iron and the various other ores used in the arts must undergo elaborate processes of manufacture; coal must be mined, broken, cleaned, and transported; the soil in which food-stuffs are grown must be fertilized and mechanically prepared; and even the water required for domestic purposes in many instances ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... never have the right to feel that grass again. Resolutely Dane willed that thought out of his mind, tried to fix upon something more lulling which would bring with it the sleep he must have before he went on. And in the end he did sleep, deeply, dreamlessly, as if the touch of Terra's soil was in itself the sedative his tautly strung ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... white bags carrying bones, which were supposed to be the bones of defunct relatives, were suspended from tripods of bamboo to preserve them from the pollution of the soil. ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser

... are at the headwaters of the Humboldt River, along which we traveled for three hundred miles, over an alkali and sandy soil until we came to a place where it disappeared. This was called the "Sink of the Humboldt." This valley is twenty miles wide by about three hundred long. During this part of our journey there was nothing of interest ...
— California 1849-1913 - or the Rambling Sketches and Experiences of Sixty-four - Years' Residence in that State. • L. H. Woolley

... retreats from the bustle of business. The roads which intersect this charming island were beautifully Macadamised, as I well remember, long before that grand improvement was heard of in England; and as the soil of the island is made up of that rich kind of mould resulting from decomposed basalt or lava, the whole surface affords a good sample of the perennial verdure of tropical scenery, which dazzles and surprises the new-comer, while its interest seldom fails to rise still ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... rode back to Carteret Park beside the Indian officer and his daughter as a man might ride in a trance. Surely within an hour the whole world had been changed! He rode on air instead of solid soil, and the sunshine of heaven was not half so brilliant ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming

... Why might not he go with him and see his foster-mother and Father Anselm again? He spoke his wish timidly, but it was kindly and favourably heard; and before the spring green had begun to clothe the trees, Father Paul, together with Raymond and his shadow Roger, had set foot once more upon the soil of France. ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... the settlers on Iceland's soil were subjects of the king of Norway. For that matter, why comes not King Hakon and ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various

... Chevalier O'Keefe, being suspected of suicide, was not buried in consecrated ground, but tumbled into a field near by, where he doubtless improved the quality of the soil for many years afterward. Such was the untimely end of a very brave and gallant gentleman. ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... so gloomy a place, and more than once did I think of departing and seeking out my poor old mother in her mountain home, contenting myself hereafter with labouring like any honest villano born to the soil. But there ever seemed to be a voice that bade me stay and wait, and the voice bore a suggestion of Madonna Paola. But why dissemble here? Why cast out hints of voices heard, supernatural in their flavour? The ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini

... unlike a human foot and seemed more like the track of a bear. Several other prints of a similar nature became visible now that they examined the spongy soil carefully. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... infancy, none of them case-hardened into national insularity—enjoyed a unique opportunity, an opportunity never likely to be again presented, of producing a literature common in essential characteristic, but richly coloured and fancifully shaded in each division by the genius of race and soil. And this literature was developed in the two centuries which have been the subject of our survey. It is true that not all the nations were equally contributors to the positive literary production of the time. England ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... uncertain thoughts, it is the indefiniteness of our impressions, that fill darkness, whether mental or physical, with spectres and hobgoblins. Democracy is nothing more than an experiment in government, more likely to succeed in a new soil, but likely to be tried in all soils, which must stand or fall on its own merits as others have done before it. For there is no trick of perpetual motion in politics any more than in mechanics. President Lincoln defined democracy to be "the government of the people by the people for the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... fertilizer is used in small amount with the purpose of merely giving the plants a start, it should be near the seed. If the application is heavy, and the roots of the plants spread upon all sides, the fertilizer, as a rule, should be applied to all the ground, and should be mixed with the surface soil. This puts the plant-food where needed, and saves from danger of injury to the seed through contact. A seeming exception may be found in the case of the potato, but usually some close tillage confines its roots to the row for a time. Experience indicates ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee

... building called Santa Cruz; whilst almost parallel with the northern face rose two rocky ridges called the Great and Small Teson, the nearest within 600 yards of the city ramparts, and crowned by a formidable redoubt called Francisco. The siege began on January 8. The soil was rocky and covered with snow, the nights were black, the weather bitter. The men lacked entrenching tools. They had to encamp on the side of the Agueda farthest from the city, and ford that river every time the trenches were relieved. The 1st, 3rd, ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett

... was devoted to flowers. Here were to be found the old fashioned flowers dear to our grandmothers, and more particularly the old fashioned flowers native to English and Scottish soil. Between the two gardens a thick row of tall, splendid sunflowers made a stately hedge. Then came larkspur, peonies, stocks, and sweet-williams, verbenas and mignonette, with borders of lobelia and heliotrope. Along ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor

... first impression you get of Miles Standish? of John Alden? Read the lines that bring out the soldierly qualities of the one and the studious nature of the other. What lines show that Standish had fought on foreign soil? Read the lines that show John Alden's interest in Priscilla. What request did Standish make of Alden? How was it received? Why ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... traverses a high plateau whose fertile soil is well cultivated, a country beautiful after its kind, but to one fresh from the grandeur of the Highlands the stretch of six miles to Wappinger Falls seems but a tame affair, with only one of the old mile-stones left to tell the tale of long ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine

... knew that a young man had called on Cynthia. The girls had discussed the event excitedly, had teased Cynthia about it; they had discovered, moreover, that the young man had not been a tiller of the soil or a clerk in a country store. Ellen, with the enthusiasm of her race, had painted him in glowing colors—but she had neglected to read the name on ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... New Haven and Rhode Island—as well as Catholic Maryland, were formally established between 1629 and 1638, and Maine in 1639, at a period when the politically inspired proscription of the Catholic religion, succeeding the robbery of the soil, was goading the unhappy Irish to the rebellion of 1641. While that rebellion, with its fierce excesses and pitiless reprisals, was convulsing Ireland, the united Colonies of New England banded themselves together ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... love! whose radiant flame Out-glares the heaven's Osiris,[H] and thy gleams Out-shine the splendour of his mid-day beams. Welcome, O welcome, my illustrious spouse; Welcome as are the ends unto my vows; Aye! far more welcome than the happy soil The sea-scourged merchant, after all his toil, Salutes with tears of joy, when fires betray The smoky chimneys of his Ithaca. Where hast thou been so long from my embraces, Poor pitied exile? Tell me, did thy graces ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... producing intoxication, by Dr. Gibson Leaves, variegated, by M. Carriere Mangosteens Marigold, white Mildew, Continental Vine National Floricultural Society Norton's (Captain) cartridge Oak, the Pig Breeding Potato Crop, returns respecting the state of in Ireland Pots, garden Reaping machines Roses, soil for Sale of cattle at Tortworth Sap, motion of, by Mr. Lovell Sheep, Leicester breed of Statistics, agricultural Timber, woody fibre of Trees, woody fibre of —— movement of sap in, by Mr. Lovell Vine mildew, Continental Wheat crops, returns respecting the state of —— growing of, without ploughing ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various

... mathematics itself seems shallow when, like Hegel, we have no love for nature's intelligible mechanism nor for the clear structure and constancy of eternal things. Ideal philosophy is a flower of the spirit and varies with the soil. If mathematics suffers so little contradiction, it is only because the primary aspects of sensation which it elaborates could not lapse from the world without an utter break in its continuity. Otherwise though mathematics might not be refuted it might well be despised, like an obsolete ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... the Maryland Colony in the days of the Calverts became the first home of true religious liberty on American soil has been so often blasted by historians that one is loath to enter upon this moth-eaten claim for fear of merely repeating what others have more exhaustively stated. Catholics seem to forget what Bishop Perry has called attention to: "The Maryland charter of toleration ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... day of October, 1444, the king confirmed the mayor, recorder and certain aldermen as justices of the peace, and, among other things, granted to the corporation the soil of the Thames within the City's liberties.(838) This grant was not made without some little opposition from the inhabitants of the ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... The soil for miles around Rome is undermined, and the long labyrinths thus created are called catacombs. [350:1] The galleries are often found in stories two or three deep, communicating with each other by stairs; and it has been thought that formerly some of them were ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... was told was one of the best wheat countries in the world. "At first," said his informant, a pioneer, "we thought it was a desert, and we thought so, too, for a long time afterwards; it looked like loose sand, and the wind actually blew the soil about as if it were dust. Now, and without irrigation, it produces its thirty bushels of wheat per acre ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... of the banquet was burned, so that it might ascend to him in the column of smoke. The sacrifice of agriculturists, however, naturally turns to the idea of presenting to the god, with joy and thankfulness, a part of the gifts, or the first or best part of the gifts, which, as lord of the soil, he has bestowed. The idea of propitiation or atonement does not enter into the ordinary sacrifices at this time. Jehovah in his sterner moods may demand more awful offerings. As we see from the story of Abraham offering up Isaac, it was thought ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... is so strange a thing, it is great sign That God doth love thee. Therefore with thy prayer Sometime assist me: and by that I crave, Which most thou covetest, that if thy feet E'er tread on Tuscan soil, thou save my fame Amongst my kindred. Them shalt thou behold With that vain multitude, who set their hope On Telamone's haven, there to fail Confounded, more shall when the fancied stream They sought ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... constitution resided—but that each county should elect three members instead of two, he considering that the knights of the shires approached the nearest to the constitutional representation of the country, because they represent the soil. At the same time, he recommended that the city representatives should be augmented, and that in increasing the number of representatives for the English counties, the shires of Scotland should be allowed an equal privilege, in order to prevent any jealousy which might arise from an ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... though on a larger scale, were not associated in the mind with the exertions of patriotic valour, and the achievements of individual enterprize, like the Alps or the Danube, the Grampians or the Tweed. It is impossible to tread the depopulated and exhausted soil of Greece without meeting with innumerable relics and objects, which, like magical talismans, call up the genius of departed ages with the long-enriched roll of those great transactions, that, in their moral effect, have raised the nature of man, occasioning trains of reflection ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt

... slaves, nor am I a tyrant. I have accepted the glorious title of Priest of the People, and nothing—nothing" the count repeated, vehemently, "shall tempt me from my duty. I am here at Lucca to establish a mission—to plant in this fertile soil the sacred banner of freedom—red as the first streaks of light that lace the eastern heavens; red as the life-blood from which we draw our being. I am here, under the protection of this glorious banner, to combat the tyranny upon which the church and the throne are ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... wrote, and the men who read these romances, the first springs of our modern fiction, were influenced by two dominant ideas: "One religious, which had fashioned the gigantic cathedrals, and swept the masses from their native soil to hurl them upon the Holy Land; the other secular, which had built feudal fortresses, and set the man of courage erect and armed within his own domain."[1] These two ideas were outwardly expressed in the Roman Church and ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... outer entrance or disturb the roots of the heather growing there. Any movement might be noticed by those below. It is lucky, indeed, that the rock ends just when it gets to its narrowest, and that it is but sandy soil through which we have to scrape our way. It will be hard work, for you have scarce room to move your arms, but you have plenty of time since we ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty

... I!" exclaimed Count Haugwitz, "and so do all your subjects. Sire, your whole people ardently desire to chastise this arrogant France, and to sweep these hosts of Jacobins from the soil of Germany. Oh, my king and lord, only make a trial, only raise your voice and call upon the people to rally around your standards, and to wage war against France! You will see them rally enthusiastically around ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... There is (p. 84 of the R.I.A. Transactions for 1789) a particular account of a number of these artificial caves at the west end of the church of Killossy, in the county of Kildare. Under a rising ground, in a dry sandy soil, these subterraneous dwellings were found: they have pediment roofs, and they communicate with each other by small apertures. In the Brehon laws these are mentioned, and there are fines inflicted by those laws upon persons who steal from ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... a tribute, not a recognition in any shape, form or manner was paid to woman; that upon the platform, as honored guests, sat those who had been false in the hour of our country's peril; that upon this historic soil, stood the now freeman, once a slave, whose liberty and life were given him at the hands of woman; that the inhabitants of the far off isles of the sea, India, Asia, Africa, Europe, were gladly welcomed as free citizens, while woman, a suppliant beggar, pleaded of one man, invested ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... nursery, which contains the seeds and first productions of every kind, out of which those who followed him have but selected some particular plants, each according to his fancy, to cultivate and beautify. If some things are too luxuriant it is owing to the richness of the soil; and if others are not arrived to perfection or maturity, it is only because they are overrun and oppressed by those of ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... moving ways are in tunnels beneath the soil," Pegrani was explaining. "What lies before you is the city of Ilen-dar, capital city of the empire, and like all other cities of Antrid, it is self-sustaining. The vegetation is inedible, all of our food is synthetic and highly concentrated. You were fed by intravenous injection while ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent

... where already in the darkness the little yellow knobs of rhubarb were coming. He held the lantern down to the dark earth. She saw the tiny knob-end of the rhubarb thrusting upwards upon the thick red stem, thrusting itself like a knob of flame through the soft soil. His face was turned up to her, the light glittered on his eyes and his teeth as he laughed, with a faint, musical neigh. He looked handsome. And she heard a new sound in her ears, the faintly-musical, neighing laugh of Anthony, whose moustache ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... the Holy Land in a way strikingly providential. After speaking at Alexandria, Cairo, and Port Said, he went to Jaffa, and thence to Jerusalem, on November 28. With reverent feet he touched the soil once trodden by the feet of the Son of God, visiting, with pathetic interest, Gethsemane and Golgotha, and crossing the Mount of Olives to Bethany, thence to Bethlehem and back to Jaffa, and so to Haipha, Mt. Carmel, and Beirut, Smyrna, Ephesus, Constantinople, ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson

... miles of the journey the nature of the earth had been modified. The declivities diminished and became damp. Here and there ran narrow streams, which indicated that the sub-soil enclosed everywhere a watery network. During the last day's march the caravan had kept along one of these rivulets, whose waters, reddened with oxyde of iron, eat away its steep, worn banks. To find it again could not ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... there was enough dry grass growing on it, should it catch fire, to scorch us very much, if not to destroy us; and ahead, for some distance, it grew much thicker; while beyond again there appeared a wide extent of sandy soil, which, if we could once reach, we should probably be in safety. As the sun rose, the wind shifted to a quarter which blew the flames more rapidly than heretofore towards us. Ned and I exerted ourselves to the utmost to drag on poor Pedro, who was not so well aware of our ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston

... was insufficient for the support of all the inhabitants. For example, a barren rock in the ocean would be overpopulated, even if it contained only one inhabitant. It follows that the term "overpopulation" should be applied only to an economic situation in which the population presses on the soil. The point may be illustrated by ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland

... is divided into what is called and . The outfield is the land which has been last brought into a state of cultivation, and in most parts the soil is mossy. It is sown generally with oats. The infield, on the contrary, has been long in a state of culture, and it produces barley, called in Zetland bear, and potatoes. The outfield is seldom well drained, although ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... gentlemen had ever thought of buying a piece of land, nor had they any reason to suppose that they ever would purchase an inch of soil unless they bought it in a flower-pot; but they all agreed that the way things were managed now there was no time for a man to attend ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton

... fortified; it is the entrance to Calais, to Dover and London. Look you, m'sieur; we cannot afford to lose this place. We cannot afford to lose even Nieuport, which is our last stand on Belgian soil. Therefore, the Germans cannot take it, for there are still too many of us to kill before Kitchener comes to save us." He spoke thoughtfully, between puffs of his cigarette, and added: "But of course, if the great ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne

... to the place of all-important source of the world's coffee was entirely a nineteenth century development. When the coffee tree found its true home in southern Brazil in 1770, it began at once to spread widely over the area of excellent soil; but there was little exportation for thirty or forty years. By the middle of the nineteenth century Brazil was contributing twice as much to the world's commerce as her nearest competitor, the Dutch East Indies, exports in 1852-53 being 2,353,563 ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... farther. It followed the lane of carbonized soil. That marking narrowed—the Cerberus had plainly been descending. Then the streak came to an end. It pinched out to nothing. The Cerberus should have been at ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... towards the end of the monsoon, when the rains have thoroughly saturated the soil and filled the fields with water, often to the top of the dikes. Then ploughing begins, and the grass with which the fields were recently covered is turned over in clods, as we do at home, by means of a curious wooden plough shod with bronze ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly

... Cuban forces under General Garcia holding the extreme right connecting with the water front on that side of the city. Next to them came Ludlow's McKibben's and Chaffee's forces. In McKibben's brigade was the Twenty-fifth, which dug its last trench on Cuban soil on July 14th, on the railroad running out from Santiago to the northwest. This intrenchment was the nearest to the city made by any American organization, and in this the regiment remained until ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward

... which he put in practice against the Characitanians. These are a people beyond the river Tagus, who inhabit neither cities nor towns, but live in a vast, high hill, within the deep dens and caves of the rocks, the mouths of which all open towards the north. The country below is of a soil resembling a light clay, so loose as easily to break into powder, and is not firm enough to bear any one that treads upon it, and if you touch it in the least, it flies about like ashes or unslaked lime. In any ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... embarrass the judgment of the educated. The value of a doctrine cannot be determined on its own apparent merits by men whose habits of mind are settled in other forms; while men of experience know well that out of the thousands of theories which rise in the fertile soil below them, it is but one here and one there which grows to maturity; and the precarious chances of possible vitality, where the opposite probabilities are so enormous, oblige them to discourage and repress opinions which threaten to disturb established ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... entertainment. If he ever did say as much, it must be set down to that peculiar form of credulity which makes perverts think that every one is about to follow their example. In Christopher Milton, "a man of no parts or ability, and a superstitions nature" (Toland), such credulity found a congenial soil. ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... miracle of Spring which changed the earth had changed Myra and Joe. They too had put forth power and life, blossom and new green leaves. They had gone to the earth to be remade; they had given themselves over to the great physician, Nature; they had surrendered to the soil and the sun and the air. Earth had absorbed them, infolded them, and breathed anew in their spirits her warmth, her joy, her powerful peace. They had run bare-headed in the sun; they had climbed, panting, the jutting mountainside; they had taken the winds of the world on the topmost peak; ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim

... over which the crushing wheel has rolled for years. Hence, though the product of impulsive benevolence may sometimes be bountiful, yet when we contemplate its workings for any lengthened period, its fruits are found neither uniform nor abundant. The soil is too ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark

... unpleasant laugh, and then began to pick up the pieces of the broken pot, and examine the injured orchid, to see what portions would live; but after a few minutes' inspection he bundled all into a wooden basket, carried it out to the rubbish heap, and called one of the men to sweep up the soil upon the ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn

... revision has approached, has presented to the tenant the temptation not to make the best of his land, and so run the risk of an augmentation of rent, has been a source of insidious demoralisation to the occupant of the soil. ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... these processes. "A calendar might be laid out in great squares upon the earth," she had written in her notebook, "and the months would tell their own stories." It was all a great wonder, that man had learned so perfectly how to draw from the mute soil its sweetness and vigor. Nothing man did seemed more interesting than this tilling and sowing. She noted how even snow had its use in catching and holding seed against the wind, and watched the sower marking his own progress and regulating ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... deal. Wonderful satirist, that. But still, I must admit that neither he nor Miss Austen are common. Now there's Mark Twain—for general reading, rain or shine, can't be beaten. American to the core, sir. Smacks of the soil. Perhaps he missed any warm love interest—but a delightful humorist, sir. You ...
— Best Short Stories • Various

... all the items that could be analyzed in a lab until somebody thought of one I'd missed, the most obvious of them all—soil and grass samples from under the spot where the UFO had hovered. We'd had samples, but in the last-minute rush to get back to Dayton they had been left in Florida. I called Florida and they were shipped to Dayton and turned over to an ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt

... come from Denmark, and only a strong fleet can stay them from our shores. I can deal with those who are here, and these in time will help me against fresh comers to the land. There is that in English soil that makes every settler an Englishman in heart. But there is warfare before us yet, and the fleet must break the force of the storm, if it ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler

... watched the last shovel-full of earth thrown upon the coffin, and witnessed the ramming down of the soil, and the heaping of it over at top to make the usual monument; for all this was done speedily and carefully, lest there should be any tendency to exhume the body ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... land was the prime source of livelihood. A man of hardihood, thrift, perseverance, and bodily strength could surely make a comfortable living for himself and his family, if only he could settle on a good tract of rich soil; and this he could do if he went to the new country. As a matter of course, therefore, vigorous young frontiersmen swarmed into the region ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt

... return to the tent. In the morning Max would accuse him of sleepwalking, and if Steve indignantly denied it, Max could ask him to look at his feet, and demand if he was in the habit of going to bed with the soil of the woods on ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie

... in the path a small enclosure, the gate of which was quickly opened by the Parrot. The soil was arid and stony but a magnificent, majestic rose-bush adorned with one Rose, which was more beautiful than all the roses of the world grew in the midst of ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur

... fruitful soil uncultivated here," he said; "and, I may add, without the sinful leaven of self-commendation, that, since my short sojourn in these heathenish abodes, much good seed has been ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper



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