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Equinoctial

noun
1.
The great circle on the celestial sphere midway between the celestial poles.  Synonyms: celestial equator, equinoctial circle, equinoctial line.



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"Equinoctial" Quotes from Famous Books



... those white phantasmagoria which, at the approach of equinoctial days, mark the coming of the winds. Over the rim of the sea a bright cloud gently pushes up its head. It rises; and others rise with it, to right and left—slowly at first; then more swiftly. All are brilliantly white and flocculent, ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn

... preparations had been made to receive him. Suspecting nothing, Hawkins with his four consorts sailed, as before, in October 1567. The start was ominous. He was caught and badly knocked about by an equinoctial in the Bay of Biscay. He lost his boats. The Jesus strained her timbers and leaked, and he so little liked the look of things that he even thought of turning back and giving up the expedition for the season. However, the weather mended. They put themselves ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude

... stormy day," continued he. "The equinoctial gale blew violently, and scattered the yellow leaves of Liberty Tree all along the street. Mr. Oliver's wig was dripping with water-drops; and he probably looked haggard, disconsolate, and humbled to the earth. ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... cleaning had affected the bolts of the keel: in the neighborhood of the Balearic Isles the sides had been strained and had opened; and, as the plating in those days was not of sheet iron, the vessel had sprung a leak. A violent equinoctial gale had come up, which had first staved in a grating and a porthole on the larboard side, and damaged the foretop-gallant-shrouds; in consequence of these injuries, the Orion had run ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... returning flight, The longer sunshine, and the shorter night, Arcturus' beams, and Corvus' glitt'ring rays, Diffuse a promise of the genial days. Yon muddy remnant of the winter snow Shrinks humbly in the equinoctial glow, Whilst in the fields precocious grass-blades peep Above the earth so lately wrapt in sleep. What sweet, elusive odor fills the soil, To rouse the farmer to his yearly toil! Though thick the clouds, and bare the maple bough, With what gay song he guides the cumbrous plough! In him there ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... by an enormous wave, and might have been said to be LIFTED over the barrier into her pres- ent position. Besides, on that ever memorable night, there had not only been the ordinary spring-tide, but an equinoctial tide, such a one as could not be expected to occur again for many months. Waiting was out of the question; so Curtis determined to run the risk, and to take advantage of the spring-tide, which would occur to-day, ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne

... ashes are often carried by the wind to the distance of eighty leagues, and its noise like prodigious thunder is sometimes heard at a hundred leagues from Quito. In the whole march, which was nearly under the equinoctial line, the troops of Alvarado found everywhere abundance of emeralds. After a long and difficult march through these arcabucos, where they were for the most part obliged to cut their way through the thick brushwood by means of axes and their swords, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... surrounded by the choice flowers which Dumay cultivated; the family customs, as regular as clock-work, the provincial decorum, the games at whist while the mother knitted and the daughter sewed, the silence, broken only by the roar of the sea in the equinoctial storms,—all this monastic tranquillity did in fact hide an inner and tumultuous life, the life of ideas, the life of the spiritual being. We sometimes wonder how it is possible for young girls to do wrong; but such as do so have no blind mother to send her plummet ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac

... thing. And, in any case, Rogers could not have heard her, for he was listening now to the uproar of the children as they criticised Daddy's ridiculous effusion. A haystack, courted in vain by zephyrs, but finally taken captive by an equinoctial gale, strained nonsense too finely for their sense of what was right and funny. It was the pictures he now drew in the book that woke their laughter. He gave the stack a physiognomy that ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... we crossed the equinoctial line in longitude 21 degrees 50 minutes west. The weather became fine and the south-east tradewind was fresh and steady, with which we kept a point free from the wind and got to the southward at a ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh

... when I looked out from my window, I saw that the sky had cleared, and the sun was shining joyously. It was one of those lovely days which come as a lull sometimes in the midst of the equinoctial gales, as if they were weary of the havoc they had made, and were resting with folded wings. For the first time I saw the little island of Sark lying against the eastern sky. The whole length of it was visible, from north to south, with the waves beating ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... Pytheas is further confirmed by the astronomical observations which he records. He notices, for example, that the longest day in Britain contains "nineteen equinoctial hours." Amongst the ancients, it must be remembered, an "hour," in common parlance, signified merely the twelfth part, on any given day, of the time between sunrise and sunset, and thus varied according to the season. But the standard ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare

... to government, "Go on—be good, and you'll be happy. Grow up in the way you are bent, and when you get old, you'll be there." It sees a gigantic future for the country. It sees the Polar sea running with warm water, the North Pole maintaining a magnificent perpendicularity, and the Equinoctial Line extended all around the earth, including Hoboken and Hull. It sees its millions of people happy in their golden (greenback and currency) prosperity, and also happy in a full supply of PUNCHINELLO to every family. It sees ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various

... continued to push steadily forward. Meanwhile the gloom seemed to gather around them, until even stout-hearted Jack shuddered a little as he surveyed the wide stretch of waters that had begun to tumble in the freshening wind, and thought what might happen if they could find no harbor, with a fierce late equinoctial gale sweeping ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel

... fellow voyagers on board the Mukhbir, including the excellent engineer, Mr. David Duguid, we steamed out of the quiet cove, at a somewhat late hour (6.30 a.m.) on March 21st; and, dashing into the dark and slaty sea, stood to the south-east. For two days the equinoctial weather had been detestable, dark, cloudy, and so damp that the dry and the wet bulbs showed a difference of only 4—5. This morning, too, the fire of colour had suddenly gone out; and the heavens were hung with a gloomy ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton

... emissary, emission, emollient, empiric, empyreal, emulous, encomium, endue, enervate, enfilade, enigmatic, ennui, enunciate, environ, epicure, epigram, episode, epistolary, epitome, equestrian, equilibrium, equinoctial, equity, equivocate, eradicate, erosion, erotic, erudition, eruptive, eschew, esoteric, espousal, estrange, ethereal, eulogistic, euphonious, evanescent, evangelical, evict, exacerbate, excerpt, excommunicate, excoriate, excruciate, execrable, exegesis, exemplary, exhalation, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... memory. I remember the happy days when the haddock were more numerous on all the fishing-grounds than sculpins in the surf; when the deepwater cod swain close in shore, and the dogfish, with his poisonous horn, had not learned to take the hook. I can number every equinoctial storm, in which the sea has overwhelmed the street, flooded the cellars of the village, and hissed upon our kitchen hearth. I give the history of the great whale that was landed on Whale Beach, and ...
— The Village Uncle (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... short, though we had no longer any fear of not getting round to the Isle of Wight before the equinoctial gales commenced. We sailed early in the morning, papa being anxious to get across the mouth of the Thames, either as far as Ramsgate or Deal, to avoid the risk of being run down by vessels standing up or down ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston

... elasticity. If it were all sound, it would break by its own obstinate stiffness: the soundness is checked by the rottenness, and the stiffness is balanced by the elasticity. There is nothing so dangerous as innovation. See the waves in the equinoctial storms, dashing and clashing, roaring and pouring, spattering and battering, rattling and battling against it. I would not be so presumptious as to say, I could build anything that would stand against ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... more slowly on March 19, 1917, when all northern France was swept by fierce equinoctial gales, and rain squalls were frequent in the battle area. Despite weather conditions, which hampered military operations, the British troops made good progress, and on the 20th held the line of the Somme in ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... wast in very gracious fooling last night when thou spokest of Pigrogromitus, of the Vapian passing the equinoctial of Queubus. 'Twas very good, i' faith.—Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, act ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... what one saw, through the equinoctial twilight, peering at the flying tourist, down the deep fiords, from dim patches of snow, where the last Laps and reindeer were watching the mail-steamer thread the intricate channels outside, as their ancestors ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... wishing such a thing myself, for we had no time to lose, nor any means to secure and lead it home, should we succeed in capturing one, not having any cords with us; and moreover, intending to return from the bay in the canoe. When we arrived at the bay, the night, which comes on rapidly in equinoctial countries, had almost closed. We were scarcely able to see, without terror, the changes that the late storm had occasioned; the narrow pass which led from the other side of the island, between the river and a deep stream that ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss

... he looked forward was not to be reached without passing through a season of more than equinoctial storms and tempests. His career had reached its highest point only to be threatened with a speedy close. He himself did not exceed more than two or three years' longer lease of life, and went by easy stages to Venice, where he spent eight days.] "No place," [he writes,] "could be better ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... fretted away. Unexpected breezes broomed and rasped the smooth bay in evanescent patches of stippled shade, and, besides the small boats, the ponderous lighters used in shipping stone were hauled up the beach in anticipation of the equinoctial attack. ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... discovered by De Quiros, make all one continent, from which New Zealand seems to be separated by a strait; and, perhaps, is part of another continent, answering to Africa, as this, of which we are now speaking, plainly does to America. This continent reaches from the equinoctial to 44 degrees of south latitude, and extends from 122 degrees to 188 degrees of longitude, making indeed a very large country, but nothing like what De Quiros imagined; which shows how dangerous a thing it is to trust too ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton

... spring the sun rises from a point on the horizon, where the four great circles, namely, the horizon, the zodiac, theequator, and the equinoctial colure, meet, and, cutting each other, form three crosses. The sun is in the sign of Aries, "a better star," because the influence of this constellation was supposed to be benignant, and under it the earth reclothes itself. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri

... same functions as Coleoptera, and thus render their existence unnecessary. The large proportion of climbing forms of carnivorous beetles is an interesting fact, because it affords another instance of the arboreal character which animal forms tend to assume in equinoctial America, a circumstance which points to the slow adaptation of the fauna to a forest-clad country throughout an immense lapse of ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... and Holland new One wondrous sheet of paper grew, And could I sing but half the grace Of half a freckle in thy face, Each syllable I wrote would reach From Inverness to Bognor's beach, Each hair-stroke be a river Rhine, Each verse an equinoctial line!" ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... cooly mildness brings us back, Now th' equinoctial heaven's rage and wrack Hushes at hest of Zephyr's bonny breeze. Far left (Catullus!) be the Phrygian leas And summery Nicaea's fertile downs: 5 Fly we to Asia's fame-illumined towns. Now lust my fluttering thoughts for wayfare long, Now my glad eager feet grow steady, strong. O fare ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... and engaged under the frozen Serpent of the south. Falkland Island, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress of their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know that whilst some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude and pursue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke

... noontide. The last traces of the by-gone summer were being swept away by equinoctial gales, which whirled the remaining yellowing leaves from the trees, and strewed with them the walks of the deserted Hofgarten; a stormy gray sky promised rain at the earliest opportunity; our Rhine went gliding by like ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill

... cool it began to be rainy, and the weather grew decidedly unpleasant. But our boarder bade us take courage. This was probably the "equinoctial," and when it was over there would be a delightful Indian summer, and the turnips ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton

... most of which somewhat of his conscience, such as it was, dropped out, was proceeding homeward through Devonshire Street, with the brightest of his wits still about him. It was a raw night, one of the rawest ever got up by a belated equinoctial, with almost nothing stirring in the streets but the wind, and the loose shutters and old remnants of summer awnings left to its tender mercies. Aeolus, with these simple instruments of sound, added to the many sharp corners of city architecture, managed to get up something of a symphony, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... in the lurid August skies and circled ominously round the horizon during the first weeks of September, broke at last in an equinoctial which was long remembered in the mill-house. It took its place in the family calendar of momentous dates with the hard winter of 1800, with the late frost that had coated the incipient apples with ice and frozen the new potatoes in the ground in the spring of '97, ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... carefully-worked stone, three arrows were cut in relief, so that the shaft ends came together and made equal angles in the centre. The points were directed eastward, the two outside showing the two solstitial points, and that in the centre the equinoctial. A line on the carved band holding them together was in range with holes in two stones which stood exactly north and south. A cord drawn tightly through the holes in these two stones would, at the moment of noon, cast its shadow on the line drawn across ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin

... who say that paradise was on the equinoctial line are of opinion that such a situation is most temperate, on account of the unvarying equality of day and night; that it is never too cold there, because the sun is never too far off; and never too hot, because, although the sun passes over the heads of the inhabitants, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... sentences, affecting to ignore what a gust of fresh air, high spirits, and good fellowship this flimsy bit of paper wafted into the jaded club-room. On reperusal, it was full of evil presage— 'Al scenery'—but what of equinoctial storms and October fogs? Every sane yachtsman was paying off his crew now. 'There ought to be duck'—vague, very vague. 'If it gets cold enough' . . . cold and yachting seemed to be a gratuitously monstrous union. His pals had left him; why? 'Not the "yachting" ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... drowning people it would be no comfort that they were shipwrecked only by equinoctial gales. There! there! what do you think of that blast?" cried Rosamond; "is ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... fencing bout, and misapprehensions to become ingrained. And there is another side to this, for the parent begins with an imperfect notion of the child's character, formed in early years or during the equinoctial gales of youth; to this he adheres, noting only the facts which suit with his preconception; and wherever a person fancies himself unjustly judged, he at once and finally gives up the effort to speak truth. With our chosen friends, on the other hand, and ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... souvenir of it was exquisite—red barges beating miraculously up the shallow puddles to Moze Quay, equinoctial spring-tides when the estuary was a tremendous ocean covered with foam and the sea-wall felt the light lash of spray, thunderstorms in autumn gathering over the yellow melancholy of deathlike sunsets, wild birds crying across ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... were carefully observed. Denas got no more letters, and the summer weather became autumn weather; and then the leaves faded and began to fall, and the equinoctial storm set the seal of advancing winter on the cliff-breast. Yet through all these changes the clock ticked the monotonous days surely away, and one morning when Denas was standing alone in the cottage door a little lad slipped up and put ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... View of Astronomy, repeats Adelard upon the question of Arim, "where there is no latitude," while (4) Roger Bacon discusses not only the true and the traditional East and West, but even a twofold Arim, one "under the solstice, the other under the equinoctial zone." Arim he finds not to be in the centre of the real world, but only of the traditional. In another passage of the Opus Majus, Bacon, our first English worker in the exact sciences, allows the world-summit not to be exactly 90 degrees from the east, although so placed by mathematicians. ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... Alone! Alone! [Pause.] I remember one autumn when the equinoctial storm raged over England's sun my dragon ship was wrecked and I was tossed up on the rocks alone. Afterward everything grew calm. Oh, what long days and nights! Only the cloudless sky above and endlessly the deep blue sea around me. Not a sound of any living creature! Not even the gulls to wake ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg

... now relating is distinguished, above all the rest, by the extent and importance of its discoveries. Besides several smaller islands in the Southern Pacific, he discovered, to the north of the equinoctial line, the group called the Sandwich Islands; which, from their situation and productions, bid fairer for becoming an object of consequence, in the system of European navigation, than any other discovery in the South Sea. He afterward explored what ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... hundred or eight hundred leagues; and if I had here an astrolabe to take the altitude of the pole, I could tell thee how many we have travelled, though either I know little, or we have already crossed or shall shortly cross the equinoctial line which parts the two opposite ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... garrison was starving; and the besiegers laughed in scorn at the slow progress of the puny insects who sought to rule the waves of the sea. But ever, as of old, Heaven aids those who help themselves. On the first and second of October a violent equinoctial gale rolled the ocean inland, and swept the fleet on the rising waters almost to the camp of the Spaniards. The next morning the garrison sallied out to attack their enemies, but the besiegers had fled in terror under cover of the darkness. The next day the wind changed, and a counter ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... "the Council for New England," they obtained from the king in 1620 a new charter,[4] granting to them all the territory in North America extending "in breadth from forty degrees of northerly latitude, from the equinoctial line, to forty-eight degrees of the said northerly latitude, and in length by all the breadth aforesaid throughout the main-land from sea to sea." In the new grant the number of grantees was limited to forty, and all other persons enjoying rights in the company's lands stood ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler

... Hispaniola, declaring in his instructions to their commanders, that he was going to the Cape Verde islands, and thence, "in the name of the Sacred Trinity," intended to navigate to the south of those islands, until he should arrive under the equinoctial line, in the hope of being "guided by God to discover something which may be to His service, and to that of our Lords, the King and Queen, and to the honour of Christendom;" "for, I believe," he adds, ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps

... the gnomon there naturally grew up the conception of angular measurements; and with the advance of geometrical conceptions there came the hemisphere of Berosus, the equinoctial armil, the solstitial armil, and the quadrant of Ptolemy—all of them employing shadows as indices of the sun's position, but in combination with angular divisions. It is obviously out of the question for us here to trace these details ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... commonly so called, where, of the spices, cloves are obtained, and so named from this drug, [54] are five. They begin at that of Bachan, which is on the equinoctial line, and extend north and south. The farthest north is that of Terrenate, which is six or seven leguas in circumference. It consists entirely of a very high elevation, on the summit of which is a volcano, which sends forth fire. In the medial region of this mountain ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair

... We crossed the equinoctial, with a fine fresh gale at N.E. on Friday, the 28th November, at four in the morning, being thus, by estimation, in long. 27 deg. 59' W. from London. In the morning of the 2d December, we saw a sail in the N.W. and made the Gloucester's and Tryal's signals to chase; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... representation of a scene which often transpired on board of vessels in passing the line. This time-honored custom of introducing to old Neptune and his suite the persons who, for the first time in their lives, cross the equinoctial line, is now nearly abolished. But until within a quarter of a century, the occasion of crossing the line was one of no little importance. It was a jubilee on board ship which was looked forward to with eagerness ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head

... thought impertinent in thee to hazard a conjecture that, with the resources the Government of Demerara has, stones might be conveyed from the rock Saba to Stabroek to stem the equinoctial tides which are for ever sweeping away the expensive wooden piles round the mounds of the fort? Or would the timber-merchant point at thee in passing by and call thee a descendant of La Mancha's knight, because thou maintainest ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... weather. Some hold opinion that the Newfoundland might be the more subject to cold, by how much it lieth high and near unto the middle region. I grant that not in Newfoundland alone, but in Germany, Italy and Afric, even under the equinoctial line, the mountains are extreme cold, and seldom uncovered of snow, in their culm and highest tops, which cometh to pass by the same reason that they are extended towards the middle region: yet in the countries ...
— Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland • Edward Hayes

... Liverpool on the 20th of March, she was bound for America with a burden of nine hundred and thirty-one souls, principally emigrants. The equinoctial gales were blowing, and Captain Williams thought it wise to make for the Harbour of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Arrived off Lake Prospect on the 31st, the vessel was expected, very shortly, to be safe in ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope

... fauourable, they inriched it by their own industry with the best wines and sugers in the world. (M351) The like maner of proceeding they vsed in the Isles of Acores by sowing therin great quantity of Woad. So dealt they in S. Thomas vnder the Equinoctial, and in Brasil and sundry other places. And if our men will follow their steps, by your wise direction I doubt not but that in due time they shall reape no lesse commodity and benefite. Moreouer ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt

... as long as he could—the young shepherd quitted the party with great regret; but there was no time to lose, for he had two leagues to go, and there was no moon, and the roads were still broken into immense ruts by the equinoctial rains. On the following day, Hector returned to the Chateau d'Urtis through the meadow. When he arrived near the willow that served for his bridge across the river, he was surprised to see neither shepherdess nor ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... of ghostly flappings to and fro in the rough wind on winter nights. Doors and window frames were blistering and splitting for want of paint. Close by the sacred terrace itself lay the fragments of a broken chimney-pot, blown down during the last equinoctial gales and suffered to lie where it had fallen. Everywhere were visible tokens of that miserly thrift which, carried to excess, degenerates into unthrift of the worst and meanest kind, from which the transition to absolute ruin is both ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various

... unites some inferences from Scripture, and goes back to the account in the Book of Genesis and concludes that the earthly Paradise was in the distant east. He says, however, that if he could go on, on the equinoctial line, the air would grow more temperate, with greater changes in the stars and in the water. He does not think it possible that anyone can go to the extreme height of the mountain where the earthly Paradise is ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale

... north-east, sailing always before the wind, till the 13th May, when we came within eight degrees of the line, where we met a contrary wind. We lay off and on from that time till the 6th June, when we crossed the equinoctial line. While thus laying off and on, we captured a Portuguese caravel, laden by some merchants of Lisbon for Brasil, in which vessel we got about 60 tons of wine, 1200 jars of oil, 100 jars of olives, some barrels of capers, three vats of pease, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... go further on towards the east [again for west] from that place already occupied, constantly hugging the shore, until he shall be over against [or on the other side of] an island, by him called Cimpango, situated in the equinoctial region, where he thinks all the spices of the world and also the precious stones originate. And he says that in former times he was at Mecca, whither spices are brought by caravans from distant countries, and these [caravans] ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead

... no more objects of interest to detain us at Pulo Nanas, and our chuliahs having already gone on to prepare dinner at Pulo Panjan, we rallied our forces and followed suit. It was already four o'clock, and so near the equinoctial line, where there is no twilight, it is dark soon after six; but then Pulo Panjan was on our route homeward, and we should have time at least to dine and gather some of the beautiful flowers for which the island is famous, as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... well. He got furious, which was just what I wanted. We argued and reasoned; and the debate ended in his asking me out the first fresh day that came last September. I don't know if you remember that equinoctial gale that blew about the 18th or 19th. It was strong, much stronger than I cared for; but I was pinned to my engagement. I met him down at the creek. The wind blew off the land. It was calm enough in the sheltered water; but when we got out, by Jove, I wished a hundred times that I was here. ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... that the Chaldeans may have made spheres, like the armillary sphere, for representing the poles of the heavens; and with rings to show the ecliptic and zodiac, as well as the equinoctial and solstitial colures; but we have no record. We only know that the tower of Belus, on an eminence, was their observatory. We have, however, distinct records of two such spheres used by the Chinese ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes

... sea-like diapason of the wind in the elm-trees on the lawn, and the animating song of the river in the glen. The weather during the whole of that autumn was extraordinarily fine. After a week of equinoctial storm in the end of September, the weather settled into exquisite repose. Day succeeded day, calm, bright, sunny. It was as warm as August, but with all the tonic freshness of autumn. November, usually a month ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson

... Madeira it is in the 32d. Madeira was, therefore, his first stop, and from thence he despatched five or six ships loaded with provisions directly to Hispaniola, only keeping for himself one ship with decks and two merchant caravels. He laid his course due south and reached the equinoctial line, which he purposed to follow directly to the west, making new discoveries and leaving Hispaniola to the north on his starboard side. The thirteen islands of the Hesperides lie in the track of this voyage. They belong to ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... During the equinoctial gales many of the ships were so badly strained that Admiral Duncan returned to Yarmouth Roads to gather and repair his fleet, leaving the Jason and two other ships to watch the enemy. De Winter lost not a moment in taking advantage of his absence, and on the 7th of October sailed out with ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty

... our galley as far as the Start, when the appearance of the weather became very threatening. It was just about the time of the equinoctial gales, and there was a consultation among us whether we should run into Torquay ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... perceived, in the case of the two stars previously scrutinized, that the apparent difference of declination from the maximum positions was nearly proportional to the sun's distance from the equinoctial points; and he reallzed the necessity for more observations before any generalization could be attempted. For this purpose he repaired to the Rectory, Wanstead, then the residence of Mrs Pound, the widow of his uncle James ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... men, in public and in private situations, are not to be governed by their relation to the great Governor of the Universe, or by their relation to mankind, but by climates, degrees of longitude, parallels, not of life, but of latitudes: as if, when you have crossed the equinoctial, all the virtues die, as they say some insects die when they cross the line; as if there were a kind of baptism, like that practised by seamen, by which they unbaptize themselves of all that they learned in Europe, and after which a new order ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... climate in lower latitudes. Fortunately there were hundreds of other animals to secure our little company from hunger, and even from thirst, at need. The beach was the home of numbers of galapagos—a kind of turtle so called from an archipelago in the equinoctial sea, where also they abound, and mentioned by Arthur Pym as supplying food to the islanders, It will be remembered that Pym and Peters found three of these galapagos in the native boat which carried ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne

... "Where the four circles, the horizon, the zodiac, the equator, and the equinoctial colure, join; the last threeintersecting each other so as to form three crosses, as may be seen in ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... tower on another; on the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra. ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... seemed good to those all-commanding powers, and turned inside out, as we do haycocks in harvest, top to bottom, or bottom to top: or as we turn apples to the fire, move the world upon his centre; that which is under the poles now, should be translated to the equinoctial, and that which is under the torrid zone to the circle arctic and antarctic another while, and so be reciprocally warmed by the sun: or if the worlds be infinite, and every fixed star a sun, with his compassing planets (as Brunus and Campanella conclude) cast three or four worlds into one; ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year George Gordon Byron Growing Gray Austin Dobson The One White Hair Walter Savage Landor Ballade of Middle Age Andrew Lang Middle Age Rudolph Chambers Lehmann To Critics Walter Learned The Rainbow William Wordsworth Leavetaking William Watson Equinoctial Adeline D. T. Whitney "Before the Beginning of Years" Algernon Charles Swinburne Man Henry Vaughan The Pulley George Herbert Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... windy morning, a punctual equinoctial gale, gathering up its energies to keep inoffensive persons awake all night and, if possible, knock some chimney-stacks down, blew Uncle Mo's pipelight out, and caused him to make use of an expression. And Aunt M'riar reproved ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... the subject of the fable, Viracocha continued his journey, working his miracles and instructing his created beings. In this way he reached the territory on the equinoctial line, where are now Puerto Viejo and Manta. Here he was joined by his servants. Intending to leave the land of Peru, he made a speech to those he had created, apprising them of the things that would happen. He told them that people would come, who would say that they were Viracocha their ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa

... furious gale, we found ourselves in warm weather, having entered the edge of the Gulf Stream. We proceeded in a south-east direction, crossing the trade winds on our way to the equinoctial line. Were it not for the monotony, which always fatigues, there would be few undertakings more interesting than a sail through the latitudes of "the trades," where we meet with a balmy atmosphere, gentle breezes, and smooth seas. In the night the heavens are ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... the summer calms were past. On as we drove, the equinoctial deep Ran mountains-high before the howling blast. We gazed with terror on the gloomy sleep Of them that perished in the whirlwind's sweep, Untaught that soon such anguish must ensue, Our hopes such harvest of affliction reap, That ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth

... Serendib is situated just under the equinoctial line; so that the days and nights there are always of twelve hours each, and the island is eighty parasangs in length, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... symptoms of a fundamental change, the outward manifestations of the passing from childhood to manhood or womanhood. This is childhood's equinoctial storm, marking the beginning of the second season of life's year. In this storm, it is the paramount duty of the parent to be a safe and ever-present pilot through the sea that to the captain of this craft ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue

... an instance: instead of taking his ugly cutter down coast by the inner passages, he must needs get out into the open water, which is at this time of year exceptionally unquiet, from sheer delight at getting kicked about. Indeed, when we picked up an equinoctial gale half-way across, and had our hands exceedingly full to keep the boat afloat, the man fairly revelled in the scene and the work; and what's more, that sleepy, straggling person Haigh did too. It wasn't in my line at all. I've not the smallest objection ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

... as the celestial sphere is distributed into five zones, into the same number is the terrestrial; which zones are the arctic and antarctic, the summer and winter tropics (or temperate zones), and the equinoctial; the middle of which zones equally divides the earth and constitutes the torrid zone; but that portion which is in between the summer and winter tropics is habitable, by reason the air is ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... peaceful days could not last long. They came to an end with the big bazaar. The band ceased to play on the lawn, the pleasure boats ceased to ply up and down the Thames, the lovely Indian summer passed into duller weather, the equinoctial gales visited the land, and Ogilvie knew that he must brace himself for something he had long made up his mind to accomplish. He must pass out of this time of quiet into a time of storm. He had known from the first that he must do this, but until the bazaar came to an end, by a sort ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade

... Satan. About the year 158, he undertook a journey of charity to Rome, to confer with pope Anicetus about certain points of discipline, especially about the time of keeping Easter, for the Asiatic churches kept it on the fourteenth day of the vernal equinoctial moon, as the Jews did, on whatever day of the week it fell; whereas Rome, Egypt, and all the West, observed it on the Sunday following. It was agreed that both might follow their custom without breaking the bands of charity. St. Anicetus, to testify ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... heavy rain each night,—it is the hurricane season;—and it seems these become more violent the farther south we sail. But we are nearing those equinoctial regions where the calm of nature is never ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... Watchstone to the Brogar Ring marks the setting of the sun at the Beltane festival in May and its rising ten days before the winter solstice, while the line from Maeshowe to the Watchstone is in the line of the equinoctial rising and setting. These alignments are the work of Mr. Magnus Spence; readers must choose what importance they will assign ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet

... island is under the Equinoctial line; its night is still twelve hours and its day the like. Its length is fourscore parasangs and its breadth thirty, and it is a great island, stretching between a lofty mountain and a deep valley. This mountain is visible at a distance of three days' journey and therein are ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... fortress of O'Sullivan's, had fallen even earlier; so that no roof remained to the lord of Berehaven. Still he held his men well together in the glens of Kerry, during the months of Summer, but the ill-news from Spain in September threw a gloom over those mountains deeper than was ever cast by equinoctial storm. Tyrrell was obliged to separate from him in the Autumn, probably from the difficulty of providing for so many mouths, and O'Sullivan himself prepared to bid a sad farewell to the land of his inheritance. On the last day of December he left Glengariffe, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... entirely at his own expense. It was divided into five general parts: Zoology and Comparative Anatomy; Geography and the Distribution of Plants; Political Essays and Description of Peoples and Institutions in the Kingdom of New Spain; Astronomy and Magnetism; Equinoctial Vegetation. It took two years to issue the first volume, but the others then came along more rapidly, yet it was ten years before the last book of the set was published. The total expense of issuing this set of books was more than a million francs, or, to be exact, two ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... was over, and the sun gone back towards the equinoctial, when we considered of our next adventure, which was to go over the sea of Zanguebar, as the Portuguese call it, and to land, if possible, upon the continent ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe

... quarrel with this English climate, for all weathers are good to those who love the open air, and have their special attractions. What a pleasure it is to be out in rough weather in October when the equinoctial gales are on, "the wind Euroclydon," to listen to its roaring in the bending trees, to watch the dead leaves flying, the pestilence-stricken multitudes, yellow and black and red, whirled away in flight on flight before the volleying blast, and to hear and see ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson

... rain. The next day, that of the religious marriage, it rained at Saint Cloud, but the weather in Paris was magnificent, so that nothing was lost of the magnificence of the procession or of the brilliancy of the illuminations. The Emperor's good fortune, it was said, had twice triumphed over the equinoctial storms. In the ever-flattering Moniteur it was said: "April 2 had been chosen for Their Majesties' entrance into the capital and the wedding rites. One strange circumstance aroused universal attention and called forth much favorable comment. A tempest had ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... the old instruments having stood the wear of long past years, had become almost useless, and six new instruments were made by imperial authority. These were the T'ien-t'ee 'Celestial Globe' (6); Chih-taoue 'Equinoctial Sphere' (2); Hwang-taoue 'Zodiacal Sphere' (1); Te-p'ing kinge 'Azimuthal Horizon' (3); Te-p'ing weie 'Altitude Instrument' (4); Ke-yene 'Sextant' (5). These were placed in the Observatory, and to the present day are respectfully used. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... the other servants, though they were never so busy for his wants. Mrs. Willis's dainties were often untouched, and he would frequently sit for hours between slumber and waking, or mumble to himself as I read the prints. But about the time of the equinoctial a great gale came out of the south so strongly that the water rose in the river over the boat landing; and the roof was torn from one of the curing-sheds. The next morning dawned clear, and brittle, and blue. To my great surprise, Mr. Carvel sent for me to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... All rivers have altered their channels; many are altering them for ever.[16] Longitude and latitude might be assigned, at the most, if even those are not substantially defeated by the Miltonic "pushing askance" of the poles with regard to the equinoctial. But, finally, we remark, that whereas human nature has ever been prone to the superstition of local consecrations and personal idolatries, by means of memorial relics, apparently it is the usage of God to hallow such remembrances by removing, abolishing, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... the pattern of the long ship in which Danaus came into Greece: and this was the first long ship built by the Greeks. Chiron, who was born in the Golden Age, forms the Constellations for the use of the Argonauts; and places the Solstitial and Equinoctial Points in the fifteenth degrees or middles of the Constellations of Cancer, Chelae, Capricorn, and Aries. Meton in the year of Nabonassar 316, observed the Summer Solstice in the eighth degree of Cancer, and therefore the ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton

... material change, the daily record of wind, weather, and the ship's general course—the repetition of which would be both useless and wearisome —continued through the month and until the vessel was near half the seas over. Fine warm weather and the "harvest-moon." The usual equinoctial ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... through the spheres of the seven planets. Jacob saw the Spirits of God ascending and descending on it; and above it the Deity Himself. The Mithraic Mysteries were celebrated in caves, where gates were marked at the four equinoctial and solstitial points of the zodiac; and the seven planetary spheres were represented, which souls needs must traverse in descending from the heaven of the fixed stars to the elements that envelop the earth; and seven gates ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... shown in all the previous maps, could be detected by either compass or chronometer, and the watch we used was an excellent one. The season of the year was very unfavourable. The "smokes" filled the air with an impenetrable haze, and the equinoctial gales made it impossible for us to cross to the eastern side. When we caught a glimpse of the sun rising from behind the mountains to the east, we made sketches and bearings of them at different latitudes, which enabled us to secure approximate measurements ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... quite an equinoctial storm swept the city, banging shutters and signs, and a steeple on 122d Street was struck ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... stairs, shaking with a dizzying, wave-like motion bare heads, or helmets, or red caps, or else bayonets or human shoulders with such impetuosity that some people disappeared every now and then in this swarming mass, which was mounting up without a moment's pause, like a river compressed by an equinoctial tide, with a continuous roar under an irresistible impulse. When they got to the top of the stairs, they were scattered, and their chant died away. Nothing could any longer be heard but the tramp of all the shoes intermingled with the chopping sound of ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... place it on this side of the line, in the first climate.] is situate just under the equinoctial line; so that the days and nights there are always twelve hours each, and the island is eighty[Footnote: The eastern geographers make a parasang longer than a French league.] parasangs in length, and as many ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... This equinoctial storm raged itself out during the night, and the first rays of the sun again brought us fine weather and a fair wind, which enabled us once more to quit the English harbour. In no situation are the vicissitudes ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue

... a foreknowledge of this inevitable result, derived from intuition or experience, is the agent which breaks up the clouds of her sorrow: so that, while the grief of a man stricken down by misfortune is an equinoctial storm, dark and dismal, which lasts for weeks and months, the grief of woman is a succession of refreshing April showers, each of brief duration, and the spaces between them filled with sunshine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various



Words linked to "Equinoctial" :   equinoctial year, equator, equinoctial point, great circle, equinox



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