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Back country   /bæk kˈəntri/   Listen
Back country

noun
1.
A remote and undeveloped area.  Synonyms: backwoods, boondocks, hinterland.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Back country" Quotes from Famous Books



... must git along," remarked the sheriff, as he picked up his rifle. "You see, we're after a passel o' convicts that broke loose from a camp back country a bit, where they was farmed out to a planter. We larnd they hit foh the river, like every rascal down hyah does as soon as he runs; and we 'spect to cornah the same with these fine dawgs this mawnin'. So long, boyees, and thank ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel

... found near the banks of the rivers, the back country still yielding only a scanty supply of a red-coloured silky grass of little value except when quite fresh. A tree resembling the sycamore of the Murchison, but with the leaves arranged in triplets, and the seed ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory

... part of the Australian coast which was genuinely their own discovery, should not have been in a more interesting region than was actually the case; for the true "Terre Napoleon" is no better for the most part than a sterile waste, with a back country of sand, swamp, and mallee scrub, populated principally ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott

... landward side by inaccessible cliffs. But the Englishman does not know this, and I am by no means certain that either the girl or the surgeon knows it. I am therefore of opinion that they will all be found endeavouring to make their way into the back country by way of False Gap. I want you all, therefore, to spread yourselves in such a way that some one or another of you must inevitably find them, either by overtaking them, or by intercepting them on their return when ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... time, being unwilling to face that crowd of absolute strangers. They were Saxon Stobart and Rodger Vaughan, boys of about fifteen, who were on their way to Oodnadatta. It was their first sight of the back country. ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman

... at me from his poise on his trapeze, and I watched for a few minutes. There was an odd mood about the crowd that day, largely due to a group of loud-mouthed hill-billies from the back country—the sort which is so ignorant as to live in perpetual fear of getting "something slipped over," and so disbelieves everything it is told, looking for something ulterior behind every exterior. Having duly exposed ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby

... addition to its general and industrial school training, has opened the doors of a higher education to all who seek to enter in. The fruition of this opportunity now appears at the very juncture when a call is coming from among the millions of the back country for free churches, pure churches, churches which emphasize virtue and intelligence. Our great schools are bringing to us young men and young women thoroughly fitted to go preaching and teaching among these millions. But how shall they ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 4, April 1896 • Various

... uniform and steel helmet, walks in front. After him, grasping his rifle with both hands across his chest, his weatherbeaten brows puckered as he picks his way over the tumbled stones, comes the living embodiment of the Australian back country. Nine cases out of ten, somehow, the soldier who escorts a prisoner seems to be that bit of pure Australian, either Western Australia or South Australia, the Warrego or ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... goes to open Parliament, the ordinary elephant is of enormous economic value to the country, being a combination, as it were, of a motor truck, a portable derrick, and a freight car. Almost anywhere in the back country, where the only roads are trails through the jungle, one can see "elephants a-pilin' teak in the sludgy, squdgy creeks" or being loaded with merchandise for transport into the far interior. Indeed, the ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... creek. It was useless to follow the sheep though one or two made a brief trial, and camp was made in a cottonwood grove at the mouth of the creek. Cottonwoods fringed the stream as far as it could be seen from our position. Brush Creek we called it believing it to be the mouth of a stream in the back country known by that name. The next day, two or three miles up, a branch was found to come from the south, and as this was thought to be Brush Creek, the larger one was named after Cap., and "Bishop's Creek" was put on our map. Doubtless there ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... alternating the early-flowering with the late varieties. A row of German Iris at the back of this bed will give solidity and the sturdy foliage make an excellent windbreak in the blooming season. If your friendly woman in the back country will give you two dozen of the Madonna lily bulbs, group them in fours, leaving a short stake in the middle of each group that you may know its exact location, for the other lilies you cannot obtain before October, unless you chance to find them in the garden of some near-by florist or ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... fellows said they wanted wives, and would each take one, and both care for the children. The women agreed. The black fellows swam back across the river, each taking a child first, and then a woman, for as they came from the back country, where no creeks were, the ...
— Australian Legendary Tales - Folklore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the Piccaninnies • K. Langloh Parker

... with the oppressed in the back country, the South had much difficulty in holding the mountaineers in line to force upon the whole nation their policies, mainly determined by their desire for the continuation of slavery. Many of the mountaineers accordingly deserted the South in its opposition to the tariff ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... 'our side of the water,' no matter where, but away up in the back country, how teetotally different they be! bean't they? A great big, handsome wooden house, chock full of winders, painted so white as to put your eyes out, and so full of light within, that inside seems all out-doors, ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... negotiate with South Australia for a port in the Northern Territory, from which, if advisable, that Colony might join up with Port Darwin. Such a scheme, Sir Thomas said, would bring the three principal ports, Brisbane, Rockhampton and Townsville, in touch with their western back country, which would also have its choice of ports. Queensland would become connected through its Gulf outlet with the Eastern countries; have a more direct route to Europe, and be practically independent of Sydney and Melbourne. He added that whether the scheme would eventuate ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield

... freckled and experienced. His stooped shoulders thrust forward a beardless round face, whose permanently arched eyebrows seemed to ask a continuous question, his short, dark hair receded from a high forehead, and a thick mid-body betokened alike middle age and easy living. A planter of the back country, and a politician, his capital was a certain native shrewdness and little else. Of course, in company such as this, and at such a day, the conversation must drift toward the ever ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough

... the honey dew from the leaves in back country places, where sugar is scarce and where candy is seldom ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley

... scrub and brush. About four miles from our camp of last night we crossed high stony ridges, and immediately beyond came to some steep sand-drifts, among the hollows of which I dug for water, but at five feet was stopped by rock. The scrubby, hilly, and rugged nature of the back country, generally about three hundred feet above the level of the sea, now compelled me to keep the beach for five miles, from which I was then again driven by the hills terminating abruptly towards the ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... very different from that of Dick's home that the surly, silent Driggs was driving. Before long he was out in the suburbs of the town, traveling up the back country into ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock

... it. When it is occupied it should be improved by having seeds sown during the beginning of the wet season to produce plants with deep roots which will take the place of the annuals. If this was done and tanks and wells made in the back country the land would probably carry at least twice the quantity of stock it could now; but to get improvements of that character made a freehold tenure would probably be required. At 11.40 Jemmy and I waited behind the main party on this ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough

... Hampton and Salisbury. The scenery of the Merrimack is familiar to all readers of Whittier: the cotton-spinning towns along its banks, with their factories and dams, the sloping pastures and orchards of the back country, the sands of Plum Island and the level reaches of water meadow between which glide the broad-sailed "gundalows"—a local corruption of gondola—laden with hay. Whittier was a farmer lad, and had only such education as the district school could supply, supplemented by two ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... plants (the residences of the officials and their families), a court-house and other public buildings of such size and ornate construction that they surpassed those of any other town in the colony, except the capital; an environment of back country grateful to look upon, and a harbour of ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke

... native style, of plaster and thatch; have their own headman government—under supervision—and are kept pretty well swept out and tidy. Besides these three main gathering places are many camps and "shambas"[8] scattered everywhere; and the back country counts millions of raw jungle savages, only too glad to drift in occasionally for a ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... Scotch places of worship, a large well built court-house and jail, and some pretty country-houses. I should think that Belleville has nearly four thousand inhabitants; and, as it is the outlet of a rich back country, and on the main road from Kingston to Toronto, it will increase most rapidly. The worst feature about Belleville in 1837 was that it was the focus of American saddle-bag preachers, teachers, and rebelliously disposed folks; but I am told that most of these uneasy loafers have ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... . . Peculiar to the back country. It derives its vernacular name from being only found where the mulga-tree (Acacia aneura and other species) grows; it is a very nutritious and ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... tribes as there are houses in Clan Campbell. But cheek by jowl is a long strip held by the Tuscaroras, a murdering lot of devils, of whom you and I'll get news sooner than we want. The Tuscaroras are bad enough in themselves, but the worst part is that all the back country in the hills belongs to their cousins the Cherokees, and God knows how far north their sway holds. The Long House of the Iroquois controls everything west of the coast land from Carolina away up through Virginia to New York and the Canadas. That means that ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... plodder, going along keeping his own counsel. He could not talk readily, even in a small company, and was hopeless when it came to "speaking a piece" on Friday at the school. But he was a sturdy, outdoor boy, by this time remarkably proficient with horses. At the age of fifteen he had explored the back country for miles roundabout. ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden

... years (1747-1751), but all through life he often used his knowledge in measuring or platting his own property. Far more important is the service it was to him in public life. In 1755 he sent to Braddock's secretary a map of the "back country," and to the governor of Virginia plans of two forts. During the Revolution it helped him not merely in the study of maps, but also in the facility it gave him to take in the topographical features of the country. Very largely, too, was the selection ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford

... from the back country, did not know the names of half a dozen boats, and what he knew about were those which touched daily at ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston



Words linked to "Back country" :   hinterland, country, rural area, boondocks



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