United States or China ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


To the eye Ararat presents a gently inclined slope of sand and ashes rising into a belt of green, another zone of black volcanic rocks streaked with snow-beds, and then a glittering crest of silver. From the burning desert at its base to the icy pinnacle above, it rises through a vertical distance of 13,000 feet. Unlike many of the world’s mountains, it stands alone.

But for the character of the vegetation that rimmed the arable land, and the bare green shoulders of the hills, streaked here and there with pink clayey ravines, it might have been a peaceful sunrise in middle America. The homelike atmosphere was accentuated by the roofs of a town and by a church spire, still silvered with mist, half a mile away.

In places, too, the surface was streaked with light yellow patches, probably of sun-gilt tosa or pumice. On our right, or to the north-north-east of the Pike, rose La Fortaleza, alias the Golliada del Cedro.

Here and there a stone was streaked with blood. The grass and smaller bushes were flattened out, and tufts of hair were scattered about upon the ground. Of the two dogs, Lloyd recognised one upon the instant. It was Dan, the "liver'n white" fox-hound of the farmhouse the fighter and terror of the country.

Here was the Dyck Calhoun she had known in days gone by, but not the Dyck she had looked to see; for this man was like one who had come from a hanging, who had seen his dearest swinging at the end of a rope. His face was set in coldness; his hair was streaked with grey; his forehead had a line in the middle; his manner was rigid, almost frigid, indeed.

The sudden passion of tropical rain dies away, leaving an atmosphere of unearthly transparency. Gedeh, carved in amethyst, leans against a primrose sky, streaked by the puff of white smoke from the crater.

The huge beast's fore paws and muzzle were streaked with the unromantic household provision, and heightened the absurd contrast of its incongruous members. The woman, apparently indifferent, had taken that opportunity to partly free one of her wrists. "If we hadn't been cavorting round this yer spot for the last half hour, I'd swear there was a shanty not a hundred yards away," said the sheriff.

The majesty of the Atlantic on tropical nights made Ulysses forget the wrathful storms of its black days. In the moonlight it was an immense plane of vivid silver streaked with serpentine shadows. Its soft doughlike undulations, replete with microscopic life, illuminated the nights. The infusoria, a-tremble with love, glowed with a bluish phosphorescence. The sea was like luminous milk.

Inside, the building was six stories high, with four identical plain walls enclosing the broad central court. The drab walls were corroded by yellowish spots and streaked by drippings from the roof gutters. The walls went straight up to the eaves with no molding or ornament except the angles on the drain pipes at each floor. Here the sink drains added their stains.

The east was streaked lividly, for it was all but sunrise. I rose and stretched, yawning loudly. I suddenly felt a prickling sensation all over me. I knew that the air must be strongly impregnated with electricity. Despite the whining of the wind here beside the dead whale there seemed to have fallen a calm. I scrambled up the side of the whale and turned to look northward. Glory!