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Cavern   Listen
noun
Cavern  n.  A large, deep, hollow place in the earth; a large cave.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cavern" Quotes from Famous Books



... pestilent green-worm which hides it self in the earth, and gets into pots and cases, eating our seedlings, and gnawing the very roots, which should be searched out: And now we mention roots, over-grown toads will sometimes nestle at the roots of trees, when they make a cavern, which they infect with a poysonous vapour, of which the leaves famish'd and flagging give notice, and the enemy dug out with the spade: But this chiefly concerns the gardners mural fruit-trees; though I question not but that even our forest-trees ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... his part, which, in fact, constitutes the theme of the play; and it must be admitted that the whole underplot of Isidore and Alhadra is lively and affecting in the highest degree. We particularly refer to the last scene between Ordonio and Isidore in the cavern, which we think genuine Shakespeare; and Alhadra's narrative of her discovery of her husband's murder is not surpassed in truth and force by anything of the ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... gathered, in their season, when the sun beamed on the earth like a maiden that loves and is beloved, a great deal to serve her for food when the snows hid the earth from her sight, and the cold winds from the fields of eternal frost obliged her to remain in her rude cavern. Though alone, she was happy. In the summer it was her amusement to watch the juniper and the alders, as they put forth, first their leaves, and then their buds, and when the latter became blossoms, promising to supply the fruit ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... the curious phenomenon. All agreed that it was out of the question that so large a quantity of water had accumulated in any old workings, for the plan of the pit had been repeatedly inspected by them all. Some inclined to the belief that there must have been some immense natural cavern above the workings, and that when the fire in the pit burned away the pillars left to support the roof, this must have fallen in, and let the water in the cavern into the mine; others pointed out that there was no example whatever of a cavern of such dimensions as this must have been, ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty

... the root-world with me, and then listened to a high, sweet tone, which came forth in swinging rhythm. It took some time for my eyes to become accustomed to the semi-darkness, and then I saw what the gecko saw—a big yellow-bodied fly humming in this cavern, and swinging in a small orbit as she sang. Now and then she dashed out past me and hovered in mid-air, when her note sank to a low, dull hum. Back again, and the sound rose and fell, and gained ten times in volume from the echo or reverberations. Each time she passed, the little lizard ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... about six feet in diameter, the excavations being carried down an inclined plane to the depth of about twenty yards. A considerable width of rock lay between each tunnel, but at the bottom they were all united by a connecting horizontal avenue or cavern, sufficiently capacious to enable the workmen to fix the strong iron frames, composed principally of thick flat cast iron plates, which were engrafted deeply into the rock, and strongly bound together by the iron work passing along the horizontal avenue; so that, if the iron held, the chains ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... time have been discovered associated with those of extinct hyenas and cavern-bears, and specimens of them were in the Museum of the Garden of Plants in Paris as long ago as 1829; but there was then a doubt among geologists as to the human bones being coeval with the bones with which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... house, tavern or inn was in sight; so into a cavern went Bruce, in sore plight. By enemies hunted, a price on his head, and all his schemes shunted, he wished he was dead. "In vain my endeavor, repulsed my demands; I'll try again never—I throw up my hands!" And so he lay sighing and cussing ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason

... himself clear of these considerations, he found the keys and advanced towards the open door of the shop. Outside, it had begun to rain smartly; and the sound of the shower upon the roof had banished silence. Like some dripping cavern, the chambers of the house were haunted by an incessant echoing, which filled the ear and mingled with the ticking of the clocks. And, as Markheim approached the door, he seemed to hear, in answer to his own cautious tread, ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... activity, made him take physic, applied blisters to him, went back and forth in the house, while old Amable remained at the edge of his loft, watching at a distance the gloomy cavern where his son lay dying. He did not come near him, through hatred of the wife, sulking ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... he is of brass far as to the fork. From there downward he is all of chosen iron, save that his right foot is of baked clay, and he stands erect on that more than on the other.[1] Every part except the gold is cleft with a fissure that trickles tears, which collected perforate that cavern. Their course falls from rock to rock into this valley; they form Acheron, Styx, and Phlegethon; then it goes down through this narrow channel far as where there is no more descending. They form Cocytus, and what that pool is, thou shalt see; ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri

... dark hole in the rock, a few feet above the level of the ledge. This hole was about as big as an ordinary doorway, and upon closer examination, Karl perceived that it was the mouth of a cave. He noticed, moreover, that it appeared to grow wider beyond the entrance, and was no doubt a cavern of large dimensions. He had no further curiosity in relation to it; only that the reflection crossed his mind that he might be compelled to pass the night there. This was probable enough; unless, indeed, Ossaroo ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... is so large that that three sky-scrapers a half-mile apart could be built in the largest of its innumerable "rooms," according to Mr. Nicholson, who was there once before, about a year ago. Only 22 miles of the cavern's apparently limitless tunnels have been explored, revealing such natural beauties that President Coolidge established it as ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... was a deathly stillness in the chamber. The lamp had sunk low and the fire was a gold cavern. Dusk stole on stealthy feet from wall to wall. Aunt Anne did not, it seemed, breathe. Her hands had dropped from Maggie's and her arms lay straight upon the sheet. Her ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... is, also, not uncommon to find near them mines of salt and nitre; and caverns sending forth pestilential exhalations. The Elysian plain, near the Catacombs in Egypt, stood upon the foul Charonian canal; which was so noisome, that every fetid ditch and cavern was from it called Charonian. Asia Proper comprehended little more than Phrygia, and a part of Lydia; and was bounded by the river Halys. It was of a most inflammable soil; and there were many fiery eruptions ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant

... certain gifted beings who possess the secret of bringing order out of chaos; for them the total depravity of inanimate objects has no terrors; inanimate objects become docile to their will. Such a one was Mary Magdalen. In two days she had transformed a sooty cavern into a clean and orderly kitchen. For she was a singing and a scourful woman, and her Sign was the speretual and the scrubbing-brush. It is true that she put a precious old Spode tea-pot on the stove and ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... steadying his craft against the bank with one hand, holding his stub pipe out in the other. His blowzy face was blowzier than ever. Down it, from his closed lids, ran the teardrops, chasing one another into the black-notched cavern of his mouth. ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... as the blackness settled down, the gale seemed to increase in fury. It howled through the slender wire rigging of the WHIZZER, and sent the craft careening from side to side, and sometimes thrust her down into a cavern of the air, only to lift her high again, almost like a ship on the ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton

... and began to think of the Divorce Court. It did not present itself to him, notwithstanding his respect for law and usage, as a proper refuge for dignified grief. It appeared rather as an unclean and sinister cavern where men and women are haled by adverse fate to writhe ridiculously in the presence of uncompromising truth. It should not be allowed. That woman! Five . . . years . . . married five years . . . and never to see anything. Not to the very last day . . . not till she coolly went off. ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... After the strain of the day, a day spent either in the toil of a developing business or under a difficult pressure of thought, this light girl's voice brought a gay, relaxed note into life. The spring was in the air, and his youth stirred again in that cavern where grief ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... miles, who have seen the water flowing in caves and subterraneous streams, and the fact that the whole country is cavernous, can easily imagine the possibility of a stream acting upon its cretaceous bed, and eventually wearing a channel, to connect with some immense cavern, and disappearing at once from the surface beyond all reach ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier

... eighty-four persons congregated in an underground cavern near the river Perevozinka, and began to fast and to pray. The peasants gathered round their improvised camp, built of straw and wood, ready to die when the signal was given. But one woman, taking fright ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot

... in comparative safety along the limited tracts which these eyries overlooked. The narrow foothold afforded by many of these elevated cliff-shelves or shelters would force the fugitives to construct house over house; that is, build a second or upper story around the roof of the cavern. What more natural than that this upper room should take a name most descriptive of its situation—as that portion built around the cavern-shelter or osh ten—or that, when the intervention of peace made return to the abandoned farms of the plains or ...
— A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuni Culture Growth. • Frank Hamilton Cushing

... is broken and his teeth fall out, apparently with scurvy. But his thoughts turn to God as they have never turned before. He gets a Bible, which he reads during the one hour in the twenty-four in which a wandering ray of daylight penetrates his cavern. He has religious visions. He sings psalms to himself, and composes hymns. And thinking, on the last day of July, of the festivities customary on the morrow in Rome, he says to himself: "All these past years I celebrated ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... to stretch his cramped limbs. When he turned to the little cavern the girl's eyes were wide open. All the darkness, the shadow, the beauty, and the thought of the past night, lay in their blue depths. He looked away across the valley where the sky was reddening and a pale rim of gold appeared above ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey

... to the observation of all, and apart from determined spiritual conditions. In order to be sensible of the action of God, we must draw near to Him. In order to draw near to Him, we must, if not believe with firm faith in His existence, at least not deny Him. The captives of Plato's cavern can have no experience of light, so long as they heap their raillery on those who speak to them of the sun. I grant again that God cannot possibly be the object of a demonstration such as the science ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... in induction and deduction, &c.; and with your facts—as to the amount of space which it occupies in Mathematical Journals; I entirely agree. And if men, after leaving Cambridge, were designed to shut themselves up in a cavern, they could have nothing better for their subjective amusement. They might have other things as good; enormous complication and probably beautiful investigation might be found in varying the game of billiards with novel islands on a newly shaped billiard table. ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... see very little of its interior, which was only partly lighted by the torch which the Tamil still carried affixed to his spear. He left us there for a few minutes, during which we rested on the limestone floor, and, being unable to distinguish any part of the cavern around us, we watched the entry closely, fearing attack. The shadows of many spears were flung before us by the torch, and, concluding that we were being carefully guarded, we decided to await quietly the Tamil's return. The much-needed food was at length brought to us, and consisted of charred ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... these recesses and on the weighty volume of the main sheet of falling water, but at its verge the fitful gusts diverted its downward course, tossing slender jets aslant, and sending now and again a shower of spray into the cavern. Nehemiah remembered his rheumatism with a shiver. The shadows of the men, instead of an unintelligible comminglement with the dusk, were now sharp and distinct, and the light grotesquely duplicated them till the cave seemed full of beings who were ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... the frightful shrinkings that suffering, despair, and rage can produce upon human muscles are rendered in this group with a realism that would make the most callous shudder. To the left of this bark you see the gaping mouth of a cavern; this is the entrance to Purgatory, where several demons are in despair because they have no more ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... our hunting train, Stilly or noisily the aim is ta'en, Forth the shaft speedeth all athirst for blood, Whilst the string rattleth sharp against the wood; The stags we scatter, in the plain which browse, Or from his cavern the rough boar uprouse; We scare the bokoin to the highest steeps, Hunt down the hare, along the plain which leaps. But though we slaughter, nor the work resign When stiff and wearied are each hand and spine, On field and mountain still the beasts are spied Plenteous as grasses in the ...
— Targum • George Borrow

... roll high created the impression of mightiness of creation; the impression of mountains rising magic like at the side of the vessel. Suddenly the ship rises to the crest of the wave and the recedence leaves one looking down into what appears like a deep cavern. ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman

... Shark, who, thinking he was going to lose the coveted morsel, at once sheered alongside of it, turning over on his back and opening his terrible-looking cavern of a mouth in the same way I had seen him do when he tried to catch poor Jackson. The recollection of that ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... under the canopy of a lovely sky; one believes in anarchy, the other doesn't—the one who does invites the one who does not to come with him and see what anarchy is. This he does, and, after a good supper of lobster mayonnaise, the two get down to a subterranean cavern where are assembled half the anarchists of the world, precisely six; they call themselves by the names of the week, with a leader, who is met with ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... first imagined it to be; for, looking inward, he was able to follow the rough walls for a few yards, as they receded inward, when he lost sight of them in the gloom. Also he became aware of a curious charnel-house kind of stench that now and then issued from the cavern. It was just the kind of odour that one would expect to meet with in the den of a carnivorous beast, and Phil peered keenly into the darkness, more than half-expecting to see the shining eyes of a jaguar or puma glaring at ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... poorly chronicle, and he sang us wonderful Gaelic songs that had all of that same wisdom he bragged of—no worse, I'll allow, than the wisdom of print; not all love-songs, laments, or such naughty ballads as you will hear to-day, but the poetry of the more cunning bards. Our cavern, in its inner recesses, filled with the low rich chiming of his voice; his face, and hands, and whole body took part in the music. In those hours his character borrowed just that touch of sincerity it was in want of at ordinary times, for he was one of those who need trial ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... and gone, What Elysium have ye known, Happy field or mossy cavern, Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern? Have ye tippled drink more fine Than mine host's Canary wine? Or are fruits of Paradise Sweeter than those dainty pies Of venison? O generous food! Drest as though ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... handkerchief was removed, and he found himself in what seemed a rocky cavern. At any rate it was a large room, of irregular shape, but the stone floor had been made smooth, and was covered by a soft carpet. It was furnished like a sitting-room in a private house. There were comfortable chairs, including a rocking-chair, and ...
— The Young Bank Messenger • Horatio Alger

... on which our story opens, Glyndon was riding alone by the shores of the Neapolitan sea, on the other side of the Cavern of Pausilippo. It was past noon; the sun had lost its early fervor, and a cool breeze sprang voluptuously from the sparkling sea. Bending over a fragment of stone near the roadside, he perceived the form of a man; and when he approached ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... extraordinary intelligence which this quadruped exhibits upon some occasions, upon others he shows himself to be one of the most stupid brutes imaginable. For example, when he has taken possession of a cavern, and the courageous hunter enters with a torch and rifle, it is said he will, instead of forcibly ejecting the intruder, raise himself upon his haunches and cover his eyes with his paws, so as to exclude the light, ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy

... the remaining fragment, I guessed the rest; measuring the length of the lines by those of the paper, and divining the hidden meaning by means of what was in part revealed, as we are guided in a cavern by the small ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... low steps which lead up from the river to the villa, a diminutive figure, then in its prime, (if prime it ever had), is seen moving impatiently forward. By that young-old face, with its large lucid speaking eyes that light it up, as does a rushlight in a cavern—by that twisted figure with its emaciated legs—by the large, sensible mouth, the pointed, marked, well-defined nose—by the wig, or hair pushed off in masses from the broad forehead and falling behind in tresses—by the dress, that loose, single-breasted black coat—by ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... plainly enough that they were in a spot where a vein of some mineral, probably soapstone, had in the course of ages dissolved away; and, convinced that the dog had found his way to some higher cavern, and in the hope that he might find room enough to force his way after, he scrambled and climbed upward, foot by foot, pausing every now and then to shout back to his companions ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn

... tree till our luggage came up. The servants had mistaken the way, and one of the janissaries was obliged to go in search of them. We set forward again at eight, and rode till 1.30 P.M. We then rested near a rivulet, in the shade of a small cavern in the front of the mountain, commanding an extensive view of the rich plain, nearly the whole of which was in a state of cultivation. Almost all the crops were cut. On the mountain above us, Jacob and ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore

... it is a very strange history," answered the doctor. "This blind man was taken in a den in the Champs Elysees, where they arrested a band of robbers and assassins; he was found chained in the middle of a subterranean cavern, alongside of the corpse of a woman, so horribly mutilated that she ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... they were trees, despite their unfamiliar outline. They were like banyans, having dozens of trunks narrow as bamboo. Blue-leafed, they stood like immense bird-cages on the pallid moss. The fog closed in behind the valley and above it. It was like being in a huge sun-lit cavern. ...
— Where the World is Quiet • Henry Kuttner

... answer, and I followed him for the few steps that led to the rock cavern; and there was a tiny oratory with its altar and cross, and wax ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler

... and the sounding wood, The mad prophetic Sibyl you shall find, Dark in a cave, and on a rock reclin'd. She sings the fates, and, in her frantic fits, The notes and names, inscrib'd, to leafs commits. What she commits to leafs, in order laid, Before the cavern's entrance are display'd: Unmov'd they lie; but, if a blast of wind Without, or vapors issue from behind, The leafs are borne aloft in liquid air, And she resumes no more her museful care, Nor gathers from the rocks her scatter'd ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... two parallel gorges, or chasms, which form its lateral boundaries, to mark the limits of the disruption; or else, while the lava was still in a fluid state, its upper surface became solid, and formed a roof beneath, while the mother stream flowing on to lower levels, left a vast cavern into which the upper crust subsequently plumped down "and formed this ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... Three, and at once the copper man in a somewhat stiff and jerky fashion walked out of the rocky cavern, took off his copper hat and bowed politely, and then ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... the pain so loud that all the cavern broke into claps like thunder. They fled, and dispersed into corners. He plucked the burning stake from his eye, and hurled the wood madly about the cave. Then he cried out with a mighty voice for his brethren the Cyclops, that dwelt hard by in caverns upon hills; they, hearing the terrible ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB

... attitudes, some reclined on their spread pilot-coats, some seated on stones or canvas bags, they enter upon a debauch with the wines abstracted from the stores of the abandoned barque—drinking, talking, singing, shouting, and swearing, till the cavern rings with their hellish revelry. It is well their captives are not compelled to take part in, or listen to, it. To them has been appropriated one of the smaller grottoes, the boat-sail fixed in front securing them privacy. Harry Blew has done this. In the breast of the British man-o'-war's ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid

... settled down on the warm room; the brass lamp burned brightly with a faint and reassuring smell of paraffin; the fire presented a radiant cavern of red coals fringed by dancing flames; and Mr. Parker leaned forwards to shake off the ash of ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... disconcerted his aim; and perhaps that was lucky for Macintosh, whom he had got nicely at the end of his fore- sight Kavanagh had hardly fired, however, and had not time to open the breach and put another cartridge into his rifle, before he heard a noise in the cavern-temple behind him, and, turning sharply, saw a figure with a sword in the right-hand and a shield on the left arm, literally bounding ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... TO THE CAVERN.] Passing over the brow of a tolerably high mountain, we found that it declined towards the south into the plain; and thence to the sea by a gentle slope. The ground was covered with myrtle and arbutus, and presented a wild but ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo

... hearing them cry, "score one," "score two," "No, by—, Charlie," "By —, I say it is, Phelps." And yet my only chance of slipping by them unperceived was to wait till they quarrelled more, and came to blows about it. Presently, as I made up my mind to steal along towards them (for the cavern was pretty wide, just there), Charlie, or Charleworth Doone, the younger and taller man, reached forth his hand to seize the money, which he swore he had won that time. Upon this, the other jerked his ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... hide in it. I find it has two openings: This in an ant-heap; that, a bed of nettles. I wait. Your cousin brings her sketch-book, and There in the shadow of the Roman thingummies, She on her camp-stool, I amid the mud, She looking like an English tourist sketching, I whispering from my cavern like a prompter, We plan the means to make ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand

... sure it was the cry of the lambs. He stopped to listen more surely. He was now many score of feet above the level of his home and of Zirl: he was, as nearly as he could judge, halfway as high as where the cross in the cavern marks the spot of the kaiser's peril. The little bleat sounded above him, and it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... suggestion that the hollow is filling up. There is a similar but rather smaller irregularity on the left tibia also. He felt rather weak that day, which he attributed to not having had his usual walk the day before. The nasal cavity consists of a large grey septumless cavern showing dry crusts. The issuing breath is most offensive. Patient had drunk freely of water, he said, to the extent of 4 or 5 quarts a day during the fast but when I said—do you mean that you have been taking over a gallon of water daily?—he rather hesitated, and did not think it was so ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... water falls to feed the subterranean stream, of which he is pretty certain to have heard or read. If he will walk back a mile, against the course of the stream, will cross the main street of Janenne, strike the Montcourtois Road there, and cross the river bridge, he will see a cavern lipped by the flowing water, and in that cavern, only a foot or so below the level of the open-air stream, he will find its subterranean continuation. It has worked back upon itself in this secret way, by what ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray

... descend and investigate the cavern when it occurred to him that it would save effort were he to lure Numa out instead. Acting upon the thought he uttered a low growl. Immediately he was rewarded by the sound of a movement within the cave ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... of Beowulf are. It is two fights, one in a hall and one under a waterfall, with two monsters of one family. The fight with the troll-wife in the hall is a true parallel to Beowulf's fight with Grendel; but the fight with the troll in the cavern under the force is in great essentials and in minute details so identical with Beowulf's underwater adventure, that one may call it a prose version of the same thing under different names. A certain house was haunted. Men that were there alone by night ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle

... door a length of cord was pendant, with a greasy knot at its end. Underneath the knot was chalked "Pull." I pulled. The door opened on a mass of enclosed night. From the street it was hard to see what was there, so I went inside. What was there might have been a cavern—narrow, obscure, and dangerous with dim obstructions. Some of the shadows were darker than others, because the cave ended, far-off, on a port-light, a small square of day framed in black. Empty space was luminous beyond that cave. Becoming used to ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson

... winked at them facetiously. Over by the reedy creek, frogs cr-ek-ek-ekked in a tuneless medley and night-hawks flapped silently through the still air, swooping suddenly with a queer, whooing rush like wind blowing through a cavern. Familiar sounds they were to Weary—so familiar that he scarce heard them; though he would have felt a vague, uneasy sense of something lost had they stilled unexpectedly. Out in the lane which leads to the open range-land between ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower

... Wonderland by leaping from the castle of Drachenfels into the Rhine. Then there was one Snaps, the prince's valet, who did not in the least want to go, but went, and got terribly frightened by the Green Demons of the Chrysolite Cavern, which made us all laugh—it being such a pleasant thing to see somebody else scared nearly to death. Then there were knights in brave tin armor, and armies of fair pre-Raphaelite amazons in all the colors of the rainbow, and troops of unhappy slave-girls, who did nothing ...
— The Little Violinist • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... a chance to coast or skate, an hour after school closed, before it was time to slip down to the grimy building on the river's bank, and peer through the arched doorway into the great, dark, mysterious cavern with its floor of sand marked out in a pattern of trenches that looked as if they had been made by some gigantic double-toothed comb—a sort of right-angled herring-bone pattern. The darkness gathered outside, and deepened ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner

... greatest precaution to a long crack in the side of a hill, scarcely discernible without the closest scrutiny, through which the accents came quite audibly, and they caught sight of the objects below in a grey light. They made out a narrow, oblique cavern, formed by the widening of what geologists call a "fault" in the shaly rock. Eight men, all in rags with one exception, were sitting and lying about. Stretched on the ground, drinking alternately from a bottle, ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... conclusions from the movements in the celestial regions as to human fate." He labored on his island twenty years. He was always versifying, and inscribed a poem over the entrance of his underground observatory expressing the astonishment of Urania at finding in the interior of the earth a cavern devoted to the study of ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... penal laws was passed, but met its death in England.[87] Other Bills followed, and one of them became an Act in 1771. A beginning had thus been made on behalf of religious liberty, as a corollary to political emancipation. It was like a little ray of light piercing its way through the rocks into a cavern and supplying the prisoner at once with guidance and with hope. Resolute action, in withholding or shortening supply, convinced the Executive in Dublin, and the Ministry in London, that serious business was intended. ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.

... or doorway, were employed. In the same category of symbols came a boat or ship, a female date palm bearing fruit, a cow with her calf by her side, a fish, fruits having many seeds, such as the pomegranate, a shell, (concha), a cavern, a garden, a fountain, a bower, a rose, a fig, and other things of ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... perilous journey. Bele at last took his helmet, Shaking two lots therein. Watched by the stars Thorstein saw by their shimmer His was the lot first appearing. A blow from his javelin of iron Cleft the huge bolts and strong locks. He descended. Did any one question What was revealed in the cavern, then was he silent and shuddered. Bele at first heard strange music. It rang like the song of a goblin; Then was a clattering noise, like the clashing of blades in a combat, Lastly a hideous shriek,—then silence. Out staggered Thorstein, Confounded, bewildered, all ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner

... they would follow my example, and make the trial. I have scarcely sat still for the last twenty years. There is not a remarkable spot in Europe that I have not visited, or mountain but what I have climbed, or cavern that I have left unexplored. Three years ago I commenced a pedestrian tour through Great Britain, which I accomplished greatly to my own satisfaction. When I take a fancy to a place, I stay in it until I have explored all the walks in the neighbourhood. Directly I grow ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... a bed of state, Now deeply threaten'd with a dungeon's grate; Till, suffering much, and being tried enough, She shines, triumphant maid!—temptation-proof. Then was I led to vengeful monks, who mix With nymphs and swains, and play unpriestly tricks; Then view'd banditti who in forest wide, And cavern vast, indignant virgins hide; Who, hemm'd with bands of sturdiest rogues about, Find some strange succour, and come virgins out. I've watch'd a wint'ry night on castle-walls, I've stalk'd by moonlight through deserted halls, And when the weary world was sunk to ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... plan had been to get behind the band and to drive it slowly toward the entrance to the cave. This was now seen to be impossible. The cavern was too narrow; its sides at this point too steep, and the animals too thickly congested. Our eyes, becoming accustomed to the twilight, now began to make out dimly the individual bodies of the seals and the general configuration of the rocks. One ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... where the spring was lay a level plateau of moderate extent, and behind it rose a fissured cliff of bare, red-brown porphyry. A vein of diorite of iron-hardness lay at its foot like a green ribbon, and below this there opened a small round cavern, hollowed and arched by the cunning hand of nature. In former times wild beasts, panthers or wolves, had made it their home; it now served as a dwelling for ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... instructed, Thus the orphan child directed: 280 'O my marten, O my birdling, O my fair one, beauteous-hided! Thither go, where I shall bid thee, Where I bid thee, and direct thee, To the Bear's own rocky cavern, Where the forest bears are prowling, Where the bears are always fighting, Where they lurk in all their fierceness. With thy hands scrape foam together, In thy paws the foam then carry, 290 To the maiden's hands convey it, And ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

... her might, and observed that the earth began to stir and crack to some distance around the stem. She gave another pull, but relaxed her hold, fancying that there was a rumbling sound right beneath her feet. Did the roots extend down into some enchanted cavern? Then, laughing at herself for so childish a notion, she made another effort; up came the shrub, and Proserpina staggered back, holding the stem triumphantly in her hand, and gazing at the deep hole which its roots had left ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... within a radius of fifteen feet. The Admiral, when told there had been some remark because he had not occupied the conning-house in the action, walked with me to the tower, the entrance to which is so guarded that it resembles a small cavern of steel—with a heavy cap or lid, under which is a circular slit, through which observations are supposed to be made. "Try it," the Admiral said, "and you find it is hard to get a satisfactory view." He added, when I had attempted to look over the surroundings: "We ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... cavern where the shades of the departed were gathered together. As he came among them, their curiosity was aroused to learn who he was. And he heard many remarks, such as "Whew! what an odor this corpse emits!" "He must ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various

... inseparably with Virgil's Eclogues. Hic corulis mistos inter consedimus ulmos, or something very like that, the passage begins (only I know my short-winded Latinity must have come to grief over even this much of quotation); and here, to a wish, is just such a cavern as Menalcas might shelter himself withal from the bright noon, and, with his lips curled backward, pipe himself blue in the face, while Messieurs les Arcadiens would roll out those cloying hexameters that sing themselves in one's mouth to such a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... time refreshing herself with a yawn of such comprehensiveness that the bulk of her face disappears behind her upper lip and one is able to see how she is constructed inside—then she slowly closes her cavern, brings down her fists and her heels, comes languidly forward, contemplates you contemptuously, draws you a glass of hot water and sets it down where you can get it by reaching for it. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... capite, fronte lata" (Nicolaus Syllacius, De Insulis nuper Inventis, p. 86. Reprint, New York, 1859. This is the extremely rare account of Columbus' second voyage). Six not very perfect skulls were obtained in 1860, by Col. F. S. Heneken, from a cavern 15 miles south-west from Porto Plata. They are all more or less distorted in a discoidal manner, one by pressure over the frontal sinus, reducing the calvaria to a disk. (J. Barnard Davis, Thesaurus Craniorum, p. 236, London, 1867. Mr. Davis erroneously ...
— The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations • Daniel G. Brinton

... love their own nests; the beasts haste to their own lodgings in the brake; the voluptuous fish, roaming the fields of ocean, returns to its own well-known cavern. How much more should Rome ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... carved oak. The church is annexed to the house, and has a curious semicircular doorway. Culver Cliffs, about a mile and a half from Yaverland, may be approached by a footpath across the fields, which will also lead to Hermit's Hole, a cavern of great depth in the side of the cliff. These cliffs were much celebrated for a choice breed of falcons, which were esteemed so highly by Queen Elizabeth, that she procured the birds regularly from the Culver Cliffs, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various

... sight of the genie, fainted; when the lad, who had seen such another phantom in the cavern, snatched the lamp out of his mother's hand, and said to the genie boldly: "I am hungry, bring me something to eat." The genie disappeared immediately, and in an instant returned with a large silver tray, holding twelve covered dishes of the ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown

... explored the ways and wonders of the gods in distant travel in foreign lands, and having thoroughly studied in particular the wisdom of the Egyptian priests and of the Greek Pythagoreans, had returned to his native country to endhis life as a pious hermit in a cavern of the "holy mountain." He remained accessible only to the king and his servants, and gave forth to the king and through him to the people his oracles with reference to every important undertaking. He was regarded by his countrymen at first as priest of the supreme god ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... one more ladder and then turned from the canon into another great chamber, the largest they had entered. The floor was perfectly dry; the air, too, was dry and pure; and, from what seemed to be the opposite side of the huge cavern, a light gleamed like a red eye in the darkness. They were evidently nearing the end of their journey. Drawing closer they found that the light came from the window of a small cabin built partly of ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright

... that I was not mistaken, and pointed out to them the object I had seen. It appeared to me, when I first saw it, as in a sort of shallow cavern under the cliff; but before we could make any progress towards it, the shades of evening completely obscured it, and long before we could reach it we ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... of her white cotton glove, was staring out at the traffic. Like a pale ray of light entering the now dim cavern of the old man's mind, the thought came to Creed that he did not quite understand her. He had in his time had occasion to class many young persons, and the feeling that he did not quite know her class of person was like the sensation a bat might ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... would fain dispel, burdens which you would strive, though ever so little, to lighten, delay, even for things so desirable as complete knowledge and perfect polish, becomes not only absurd, but impossible. Better shoot into the cavern, even if you don't know in what precise part of it the dragon lies coiled. The flash of your powder may reveal his whereabouts to a surer marksman. A transient immortality is of no importance; it is of importance that hearts be purified, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... of yonder cavern. After a while I saw the son of Valdez Rush by with flaring torch: he likewise enter'd. There was another and a longer pause; And once, methought, I heard the clash of swords! And soon the son of Valdez ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... descended into the cavern—or what Keefe had called the Hole—for less than a hundred yards before his strong flashlight sent its lancing beam into a stone wall. At his feet was a crevice which went straight down as though it had been measured by a giant square. He got to his knees ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam

... took him to a certain cavern, and they took three rocks, through each of which they bored a hole. Then they took Loki's sons Vali and Nari, and having changed Vali into a wolf, he tore his brother Nari into pieces. Then the gods took his intestines and bound Loki with ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various

... a landslip on the tall cliffs of Halzaphron—which face upon Mount's Bay, Cornwall, and the Gulf Stream of the Atlantic—brought to light a curiosity. The slip occurred during the night of January 7th to 8th, breaking through the roof of a cavern at the base of the cliff and carrying many hundreds of tons of rock and earth down into deep water. For some weeks what remained of the cavern was obliterated, and in the rough weather then prevailing no one took the trouble to examine it; since ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... caves; therefore gophers were brought into the cavern probably by birds of prey, the remains of which were common in the deposits (Miller, 1943:152-156), or conceivably by carnivorous mammals. Since most of the raptorial predators that would prey on pocket ...
— Pleistocene Pocket Gophers From San Josecito Cave, Nuevo Leon, Mexico • Robert J. Russell

... wrapt his mantle round his manly form, And sighed as on his cavern floor he lay; His bosom heaved with passion's varying storm, While he to melancholy thoughts gave way, And mused on deeds of many a by-gone day. Scenes of the past before his vision rose— The fearless clans o'er whom he once held sway, The bloody battle-field and vanquished ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... to terminate in sharp pinnacles, and have been named "Tissington Spires," from the village close by. About 200 yards beyond the "Church," on the Derbyshire bank, is the entrance to Reynard's Cave, a huge cavern with an entrance 40 feet high by 20 wide, from which the view over ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home

... Pine-trees serviceable for masts. Joined by a merchant brig. Anchor under Cape Grafton, Hope Islands, and Lizard Island. Natives at Lizard Island. Cape Flinders. Visit the Frederick's wreck. Surprised by natives. Mr. Cunningham's description of the drawings of the natives in a cavern on Clack's Island. Anchor in Margaret Bay, and under Cairncross Island. Accident, and loss of anchors. Pass through Torres Strait, and visit Goulburn Island. Affair with the natives. ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... often upon the face of Bigot, and the more she looked the more inscrutable it appeared to her. She tried to sound the depths of his thoughts, but her inquiry was like the dropping of a stone into the bottomless pit of that deep cavern of the dark and bloody ground talked of by adventurous voyageurs ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... protectress of the Roman Catholic religion; the guardian of science and virtue; and, above all these preeminences; more than faithful and obedient to her sovereign prince and lord. The city is now changed to a gloomy cavern, filled with robbers and murderers, enemies of God, the King, and all good subjects." They then proceeded to recite the story of the massacre, whereof the memory shall be abominable so long as the world stands, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... the performance there were calls for the author, he passed through the door that gave access from the auditorium to the stage with a great deal of elation. He was thrust on to the stage by Gidney, and found himself standing between two of the actresses. There was a great black cavern in front of him which, he realised, was the auditorium, and he could hear applause rising out of it. The curtain rose and fell again, and the buzz of voices calling praise to him grew louder. Then the curtain fell again, and this time it remained down. ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine

... I remember how Antaeus heard, Deep in great oak-woods, the mysterious word Which said, "Go forth across the unshaven leas To meet unconquerable Hercules." Leaving his cavern by the cedar-glen, This Titan of the primal race of men, Whom the swart lions feared, and who could tear Huge oaks asunder, to the combat bare Courage undaunted. Full of giant grace, Built up, as 'twere, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... of a narrow, deep cavern in the rock, whose length appeared much extended by the perspective and the nature of the light by which it was seen, was seated the scout, holding a blazing knot of pine. The strong glare of the fire fell full upon his ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... the subaqueous cloud cleared away, and they again looked with peering eyes down into the pellucid depths, there was nothing there, neither dead body of man, nor living form of monster. The zygaena had secured its prey, and carried the skeleton corpse to some dark cavern of the deep! ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid

... dagger is withdrawn. Next to him is Nebuchadnezzar on all fours, eating painted grass, with a huge gold crown on his head, which he bobs for a bite every other bar. In the right-hand corner is a sort of cavern, the abode of some supernatural and mysterious being of the fiend or vampire school, who gives an occasional fitful start, and turns an ominous-looking green glass-eye out upon the spectators. All these are ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various



Words linked to "Cavern" :   Carlsbad Caverns, enclosure, cave, hollow out, core out, natural enclosure, cavernous, cavern out, hollow



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