United States or Iceland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Constantinople, like haughty Rome, is built on seven hills the houses being so disposed that they do not intercept the view commanded by each on the amphitheatrical acclivities.
The night was as black as the bottom of a well; but the prodigious swelling and flinging of white waters hove a faintness upon the air that was in its way a dim light, by which it was just possible to distinguish the reeling masts to the height of the tops, and to observe the figure of the brig springing black and trembling out of the head of a surge that had broken over and smothered her as in a cauldron, and to note the shapes of the nearer liquid acclivities as they bore down upon our weather bow, catching the brig fair under the bluff, and so sloping her that she seemed to stand end on, and so heeling her that the sea would wash to the height of the main hatch.
Our camp had been on the low ground, near the water, in the midst of many scrubby hills, all of which commanded our position. There were now a great many well armed natives around us, and though they were very kind and friendly, I did not like the idea of their occupying the acclivities immediately above us at all events, not during my contemplated absence from the party.
Among these hills there are, here and there, expanses of level country large enough for a farm, with the addition of some fields upon the easier acclivities and woodlands higher up. There was one field of a hundred acres upon Captain Webster's mountain farm so level that a lamb could be seen on any part of it from the windows of the house.
Our road, the smoothest conceivable, led us, perhaps too rapidly, by so cheerful a landscape. I caught glimpses of fields and copses as we fled along, that could have afforded me amusement for hours, and orchards on gentle acclivities, beneath which I could have walked till evening. The trees literally bent under their loads of fruit, and innumerable ruddy apples lay scattered upon the ground
The valley in front, shaded by the willows and the ash which adorn the little islands of the lake, and winding its way in the distance among the hills; the castle projecting boldly from the eminence on the left; the steep acclivities on each hand, clothed to their summit with luxuriant forest trees ... present a scene in whose presence the lapse of centuries will be easily forgotten."
This salient spur of the lofty elevations that encompassed the bay, rose with sharp angle from the valleys at its base, and presented, with the exception of a few steep acclivities, the appearance of a vast inclined plane, sweeping down towards the sea from the heights in the distance.
Behind the masts, along the barbican, the cottages stand close and thick, then clamber and straggle up the acclivities behind, decreasing in their numbers as they ascend. Smoke trails inland on the wind black as a thin crepe veil, from the funnel of a coal "tramp" about to leave the harbor, blue from the dry wood burning on a hundred cottage hearths.
The transition was too complete, too ironical, from those rich glades and Titianesque acclivities to the brick hovels and fissured sidewalks of the Point. This impression was confirmed when Don Egidio, in response to my urgent invitation, paid his first visit to my modest lodgings.
He even took Hermann's advice, and decided to march on the revolted tribe by a shorter than the usual route, oblivious to the fact that it led through difficult mountain passes, shrouded in forests and bordered by steep and rocky acclivities. The treacherous plans of the patriotic German had fully succeeded.
Word Of The Day