"Otter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... learned it in my mother's bower, I learned it for my better, That whan I come to broad water, I can swim like any otter.' ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... Macleod's, that is not much below your habitation at Brighthelmstone. In the mountains there are stags and roebucks, but no hares, and few rabbits; nor have I seen anything that interested me as a zoologist, except an otter, bigger than I thought an otter ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... marine species include the dugong, sea lion, sea otter, seals, turtles, and whales; oil pollution in Philippine Sea and South China Sea; dotted with low coral islands and rugged volcanic islands in the southwestern Pacific Ocean; subject to tropical cyclones (typhoons) in southeast and east ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... easier going to Bridge Street, but the evening seemed 'otter than ever, and by the time I got to the 'ouse I was pretty near done up. A nice, tidy-looking woman opened the door, but she was a' most stone deaf, and I 'ad to shout the name pretty near a dozen ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... return to these objects when dislodged; it will actively absorb food. Higher up in the animal scale, "Rats run about, smell, dig, or gnaw, without real reference to the business in hand. In the same way Jack (a dog) scrabbles and jumps, the kitten wanders and picks, the otter slips about everywhere like ground lightning, the elephant fumbles ceaselessly, the monkey pulls things about."[2] "The most casual notice of the activities of a young child reveals a ceaseless display of exploring and testing activity. Objects are ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... crossed Hagadorn's sun of expectancy was the knowledge that Marie Beaujeu's father had money, and that Marie lived in a house with two stories to it, and wore otter skin about her throat and little satin-lined mink boots on her feet when she went sledding. Moreover, in the locket in which she treasured a bit of her dead mother's hair, there was a black pearl as big as a pea. These things made it difficult—perhaps impossible—for Ralph ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... the otter-trappers found me, Before the break of day, With my dark hair blanched and whitened As the snow in which ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... spraints, his seal, or the remains of fish (for in whatever place he eats his plunder he always leaves the tail or hinder parts of the fish undevoured). The trap must be set in and covered with mud to prevent his seeing it; the instant the trap "strikes," the otter plunges into the water with it, when its weight, preventing his rising to the surface, soon destroys him. The trap will seldom be drawn more than twenty yards from the spot, and with a grappling iron is soon recovered. If the place where he comes out of the water cannot ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... comets seen. 6. Gentlemen, this, then, is your verdict. 7. God said, "Let there be light." 8. Nelson's signal was, "England expects every man to do his duty." 9. Rubbers, or overshoes, are worn to keep the feet dry. 10. The sable, the seal, and the otter furnish us rich furs. 11. His dark eye flashed, his proud breast heaved, his cheek's hue came and went. 12. Flights of birds darken the air, and tempt the traveler with the promise of ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... they were out of food. Captain Brady shot an old otter, but the flesh was so musty that they could not eat it. Now the charge in his reloaded gun was the only ammunition they had. He found a fresh deer track in a narrow trail, and left them eating strawberries while he followed ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... time; they are warm, and, nevertheless, well ventilated. As to the beavers, which are endowed, as known, with a most sympathetic character, their astounding dams and villages, in which generations live and die without knowing of any enemies but the otter and man, so wonderfully illustrate what mutual aid can achieve for the security of the species, the development of social habits, and the evolution of intelligence, that they are familiar to all interested in animal life. Let me only remark that with the ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... were her words, and the rest of Saltash wasn't scarcely more helpful. But, as luck would have it, while I was searchin', Bill Adams went for a shave, and inside of the barber's shop what should he see but a fair-sized otter in a glass case? Bill began to admire it, and it turned out the barber had stuffed the thing. Maybe your Reverence knows the man?—'A. Grigg and Son,' ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the Bride-streams, The Axe, and the Otter I passed, to the gate of the city Where Exe ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... the same objects, were traversing the watery wastes of the Pacific and skirting the northwest coast of America. The last voyage of that renowned but unfortunate discoverer, Captain Cook, had made known the vast quantities of the sea-otter to be found along that coast, and the immense prices to be obtained for its fur in China. It was as if a new gold coast had been discovered. Individuals from various countries dashed into this lucrative traffic, so that in the year 1792, there were twenty-one vessels under different ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... friends to the English, nor yet the French, but strive for barter with those tribes that come up from the Blackfeet Hills and down from the frozen regions of the North with bearskins, the one, and seal and sea-otter, the other. ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... own judgement agreed with that of his friends. 'What you say about my "Ergon" being poetry is quite true. I could not write Uncle Tom's Cabin and I can write poetry:... there is no denying it: I do feel a different being when I get into metre: I feel like an otter in the water instead of an otter ashore.' The value of his novels is in their spirit rather than in their artistic form or truth; but it is foolish to disparage their worth, since they have exercised so marked ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... Dante and his guide, and were going to seize them, when Virgil resorted to his usual holy rebuke. For a while they let him alone; and Dante saw one of them haul a sinner out of the pitch by the clotted locks, and hold him up sprawling like an otter. The rest then fell upon him and ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... trout from a glass-clear pool with a dry fly like Alan Campbell. He knew the weather, when it would storm and when it would clear, and from what point the wind would blow to-morrow. He could nurse along the difficult flax and knew the lair of the otter and had a great eye for hunting fox and a better eye for a horse than a Gipsy. Might there not be things in nature, as he said, that none knew of? And mightn't there be explanations for them, as Uncle Robin, who had read every book, claimed there were? Mightn't ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... merrily. They build great towns; they rob far and wide; they never quarrel with each other: they must have some one to teach them, to lead them—they must have a king. And so he gets the fancy of a Wasp-King; as the western Irish still believe in the Master Otter; as the Red Men believe in the King of the Buffaloes, and find the bones of his ancestors in the Mammoth remains of Big-bone Lick; as the Philistines of Ekron—to quote a notorious instance—actually worshipped Baal-zebub, lord of ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... squire's hall, or the ale-house. Some of these redressers of the inequalities of fortune were of excellent houses,—younger sons, who having no profession—trade would have been disgraceful in their eyes—grew weary of an unvarying round of shooting, fishing, otter-hunting, and badger-baiting, and aspired, like their common ancestor Nimrod, to be hunters of men. Others had found the discipline of a regiment unpleasant, or had been unjust serving men. In short, the road, about a century and ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... so large, by far, as the lions, but rather larger than a common seal. They have none of that long hair which distinguishes the lion. Theirs is all of an equal length, and finer than that of the lion, something like an otter's, and the general colour is that of an iron-grey. This is the kind which the French call sea-wolfs, and the English seals; they are, however, different from the seals we have in Europe and North America. The lions may, too, without any great impropriety, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... young fellow and out of a place, I always made it a rule to take the first job that offered, and to use it for bait. You can catch a minnow with a worm, and a bass will take your minnow. A good fat bass will tempt an otter, and then you've got something worth skinning. Of course, there's no danger of your not being able to get a job with the house—in fact, there is no real way in which you can escape getting one; but I don't ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... was speedily dispatcht away, being laden with good clapbord as full as she could stowe, and 2. hoggsheads of beaver and otter skins, which they gott with a few trifling comodities brought with them at first, being alltogeather unprovided for trade; neither was ther any amongst them that ever saw a beaver skin till they came hear, and were informed by Squanto. The fraight was estimated to be worth near 500^li. M^r. ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... high-quartered shoes. Each of the young men carried a stick in his hand, rather, as it appeared, from habit, or for purposes of defence, than as a support, and each of them had a cloak of coarse black serge folded and strapped upon his otter-skin knapsack. With their costume, however, the similarity in their appearance ceased; nothing could be more widely different than their style of person and countenance. The taller of the two, who was also apparently the elder, was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... stood the Indian hamlet, there the lake Spread its blue sheet that flashed with many an oar, Where the brown otter plunged him from the brake, And the deer drank: as the light gale flew o'er, The twinkling maize-field rustled on the shore; And while that spot, so wild, and lone, and fair, A look of glad and guiltless beauty wore, ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... Indians. When the flood came and destroyed the world, they say that a very great man, called Waesackoochack, made a large raft, and embarked with otters, beavers, deer, and other kinds of animals. After it had floated upon the waters for some time, he put out an otter, with a long piece of shagganappy or leathern cord tied to its leg, and it dived very deep without finding any bottom, and was drowned. He then put out a beaver, which was equally unsuccessful, and shared the same fate. At length ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... were, bales of them—seal, sea-otter, beaver, skunk, marten, and a few bear, the sight of all raising up in our hearts endless ideas of sport and adventure possibly ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... razor-back clatters his tusks, and his dull and furry ears stand forward and his dull eyes redden. Then the silver mullet leap in the moonlight, and the tiger-owl floats soundlessly to his plunging perch, and his daring yellow glare flashes even when an otter splashes or ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... and the upper portions of their bodies were painted red—the color of peace. They wore mantles of otter skins, and from their ears depended strings of pearl and bits of copper. To the earring of the half king were attached two small, green snakes that twisted and writhed about his neck; his body had been oiled and then plastered with small feathers of a brilliant ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... "But next unto Otter my brother he gave the snare and the net, And the longing to wend through the wild-wood, and wade the highways wet: And the foot that never resteth, while aught be left alive That hath cunning to match man's cunning or might with his might ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... about the lowering clouds having frightened her from the terrace, and Sir Joseph and Oswald talked a little of their sport, and of their having seen an otter; but there was, or at least there seemed to Coningsby, a tone of general embarrassment which distressed him. The fact is, keeping people from dinner under any circumstances is distressing. They are obliged to talk at the very moment when they wish to use their powers ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... to have a grand otter hunt up the little Wantage stream with the dogs; and for a few moments a feeling of bitter disappointment came over the boy, for he had looked forward to the day when ...
— The King's Sons • George Manville Fenn
... sea-otter, John Davies, that destroyed more fish than any sealch upon Ailsa Craig?' exclaimed a third voice. 'I have an old crow to pluck with him, and a pock to put the ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... kinswoman, Net-no-kwa, who, notwithstanding her sex, was then regarded as principal chief of the Ottawwaws. This woman had lost her son, of about my age, by death; and, having heard of me, she wished to purchase me to supply his place. My old Indian mother, the Otter woman, when she heard of this, protested vehemently against it. I heard her say, 'My son has been dead once, and has been restored to me; I cannot lose him again.' But these remonstrances had little influence when Net-no-kwa arrived with plenty of whisky and other presents. She brought ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... in a single haul, off Killisnoo. But the number of canneries on this coast is increasing at a rapid rate, and five or six years hence large fortunes will be a thing of the past. The now priceless sea-otter was once abundant along the south-eastern coast of Alaska, the value of skins taken up to 1890 being thirty-six million dollars, but the wholesale slaughter of this valuable animal by the Russians, and later on by the Americans, has driven it away, and almost the only grounds where ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... started with the fight at Duck Lake, the Government dispatched General Middleton from Ottawa to the West. The plan of campaign outlined had three objectives. General Middleton was to attack Riel at Batoche, where the rebel headquarters were; Colonel Otter was to march from Swift Current to the relief of Battleford, where Poundmaker's band was in arms; and General Strange, a veteran of many years' service, was to mobilize at Calgary whatever forces he could muster and go northward into ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... of Captain Cook had brought to the notice of the fur dealers of the world the sea otter of the northern Pacific, and the announcement made upon the return of the expedition drew large numbers of adventurers to the west coast of America, in search of the valuable skins of these animals. In 1792, there were ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... and appeared rather like a pleasure yacht than a trader; yet, in connection with the Loriotte, Clementine, Bolivar, Convoy, and other small vessels, belonging to sundry Americans at Oahu, she carried on a considerable trade,— legal and illegal, in otter-skins, silks, teas, &c., as well ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... The Name of the Sound, and Directions for Sailing into it. Account of the adjacent Country. Weather. Climate. Trees. Other Vegetable Productions. Quadrupeds, whose Skins were brought for Sale. Sea Animals. Description of a Sea-Otter. Birds. Water Fowl. Fish. Shell-fish, &c. Reptiles. Insects. Stones, &c. Persons of the Inhabitants. Their Colour. Common Dress and Ornaments. Occasional Dresses, and monstrous Decorations of wooden ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... principal street the old women with nose and chin nearly meeting at the extremity, the bare-pated children with ragged hair, the men in their otter-skin caps, and silver-chained pipes in their mouths, all gaze upon me, and respectfully ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... him, running. And he saw her, and changed himself into a hare and fled. But she changed herself into a greyhound and turned him. And he ran towards a river, and became a fish. And she in the form of an otter-bitch chased him under the water, until he was fain to turn himself into a bird of the air. She, as a hawk, followed him and gave him no rest in the sky. And just as she was about to stoop upon him, and he was in fear of death, he espied a heap of winnowed wheat on the floor of a barn, ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... the shadow of the Peaks of Otter, whose lofty summits tower in magnificent grandeur far above the wooded heights and billowy green hills of the surrounding country, it is little wonder that the subject of this sketch should have been early imbued with the spirit of ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... canoe done and loaded, and embarked on the brook down stream. We found it rather difficult work, but the stream grew larger and we got along very well. We came to one place where otter signs seemed fresh, and stopped to set a trap for them. Our dog sat on the bank and watched the operation, and when we started on we could not get him to ride or follow. Soon we heard him cry and went back ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... me?' 'No; your partner, him priest, Pastilik, long time ago. Him ask me if I see you, Malemute Kid. Him give me grub. I no stop long. You hear him speak 'bout me?' 'Oh! you're the fellow that traded the otter skins for the dogs?' The man nodded, knocked out his pipe, and signified his disinclination for conversation by rolling up in his furs. Malemute Kid blew out the slush lamp and crawled ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... direction a faint regular sound in the water, as if some animal were swimming. I could not see anything, but as the sounds grew stronger I knew that it must be approaching. I did not know much of the aquatic animals in this region; perhaps it might be an otter, a muskrat, I knew not what. But, whatever it was, I wanted to see it, and, putting down my cigar, I slipped softly behind the tree at whose foot I had ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... wee brown otter's track, Otter's track, otter's track; I've found the wee brown otter's track, But cannot ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... wantoned in the shade beneath, or wild swine munched the acorns. Here were slow sedgy streams, now illumined, as by a ray of light, when some monster of the inland waters flashed along after his scaly prey, or stirred by a sudden plunge as the otter sprang from the bank. Sometimes the brock took an airing abroad, and the wolf came to look after his interests and see what ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... one thousand deer-skins; his honor, the chief justice, five hundred do. do.; the attorney-general, five hundred do. do.; secretary to his excellency the governor, five hundred raccoon do.; the treasurer of the State, four hundred and fifty otter do.; each county clerk, three hundred beaver do.; clerk of the house of commons, two hundred raccoon do.; members of assembly, per diem, three do. do.; justice's fee for signing a warrant, one muskrat do.; to the constable, for serving ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... the otter family; and Mr. Hornaday, whose book I hope you will all read when you return to the ship, thought it might be called the otter-cat. I wish we could have taken him alive, for it would have made a very nice specimen to set up in the cabin of ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... ascended a river flowing from the north-east, which discharges itself into Michigama Lake, Pellican taking the lead, being the only one acquainted with this part of the country. The Indians shot an otter. No wood to be seen, but miserably small pine, thinly scattered over the country. Encamped at Gull Lake. ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... summer," he said, turning to Phil, "I was only two years old, and that Otter punished me so severely that but for Mother Beaver there, who came to my rescue in the nick of time, I should have been done for. But now—well, he will never ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... stuff, I guess, it will carry double this hitch; and she sings 'I wish I was a butterfly.' Heavens and airth! the fust time I heard one of these hugeaceous critters come out with that queer idee, I thought I should a dropt right off of the otter man on the floor, and rolled over and over a-laughin', it tickled me so, it makes me larf now only to think of it. Well, the wings don't come, such big butterflies have to grub it in spite of Old Nick, and after wishin' and wishin' ever so long in vain, one ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... territory. Thus came the strait of Red Dog. A new post had been decided upon, but there was doubt at company headquarters as to whether it should be at Red Dog's point or a hundred miles to the westward, where, it was asserted by Little Peter, head man of a tribe there, the creeks were fairly clogged with otter, the woods were swarming with silver foxes and sable, and as for moose, they were thick as were once the buffalo to the south. Red Dog had told his own story as well, but the factor at the post toward Fort Defiance was still undecided. He had told Red Dog and his rival ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... Nearly every one showed marks of the teeth of rodents. According to Prof. F.A. Lucas, of the National Museum, they all belong to modern species except one tooth, which is that of the cave tapir, and (possibly) the jaw of an otter. ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... after marching one or two leagues we arrived at a kill that, as the savages told me, ran into the land of the Minquaass, and after another mile we met another kill that runs into the South River, as the savages told me, and here a good many otter and beaver are caught. This day we went over many high hills. The wood was full of great trees, mostly birches; and after seven or eight leagues' marching we did the same as mentioned above. It was ...
— Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664 • Various
... fox is equally relished. During my stay among them I ceased to ask of what the mess was composed; each dish was worse than the former. Among the first dishes I had were mandioca root, a black carrion bird, goat's meat, and fox's head. The puma, otter, ant-bear, deer, armadillo, and ostrich are alike eaten, as is also the jaguar, a ferocious beast of immense size. I brought away from those regions some beautiful skins of this animal, the largest of which measures nearly nine ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... actions all the day after. This is the hook that hangs under water to choke the fish, and his sergeant is the quill above water, which pops down so soon as ever the bait is swallowed. It is indeed an otter, and the more terrible destroyer of the two. This counter-rat hath a tail as long as his fellows, but his teeth are more sharp and he more hungry, because he does but snap, and hath not his full half-share ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... Dovey Board of Conservators at Barmouth it was decided to ask Major Dd. Davies to hunt the district with his otter hounds, and failing this the water bailiffs themselves should attempt ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... hour: the girl was accurate in taps and footsteps. Some one was shown in; a man's voice was heard greeting "Dr. Bower," before the study door was closed. Leslie started up with pleased surprise,—"Hector Garret of Otter! he will come upstairs to see us; he will tell us how the country is looking; he will bring news from Ferndean," and for the next hour she ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... Indian girls, whose bodies were all stained with puccoon and painted with gay colors, while such garments as they wore were made of brilliant green leaves. "Pocahontas, as leader, wore a head-dress of buck's horns and girdle of otter-skin; across her shoulder was slung a quiver filled with arrows, and she carried a bow. Her companions all carried rattles made of dried gourds, or clubs, or wooden swords as they rushed out of the forest yelling and ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... spear Stuck still into Sir Talbart's geir; Then every man into that stead[7] Did all believe that he was dead. The Squier leap'd right hastily From his courser deliverly,[8] And to Sir Talbart made support, And humillie[9] did him comfort. When Talbart saw into his shield An otter in a silver field, 'This race,' said he, 'I sore may rue, For I see well my dream was true; Methought yon otter gart[10] me bleed, And bore me backward from my steed; But here I vow to God soverain, That I shall never joust again.' And ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... mud-turtles, some of great size, basking in the sun like so many boarders at a country hotel. They crowd upon the rocks as thickly as they can, and blink there all day long unless disturbed by the approach of a boat, when they dive clumsily but quickly. Occasionally, one sees an otter, with seal-like head above the surface of the water, swimming swiftly from haunt to haunt in pursuit of the bass; and small coteries of summer ducks fly swiftly from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... wilderness. Their old stocks still remain. He culled the graceful elm from out the woods and from the river-side, and so refined and smoothed his village plot. He rudely bridged the stream, and drove his team afield into the river meadows, cut the wild grass, and laid bare the homes of beaver, otter, muskrat, and with the whetting of his scythe scared off the deer and bear. He set up a mill, and fields of English grain sprang in the virgin soil. And with his grain he scattered the seeds of the dandelion ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... heavy upon him. We two stooped to haul Fleete up, and the temple was filling and filling with folk who seemed to spring from the earth, when the Silver Man ran in under our arms, making a noise exactly like the mewing of an otter, caught Fleete round the body and dropped his head on Fleete's breast before we could wrench him away. Then he retired to a corner and sat mewing while the crowd blocked all ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... shouting. Then presently ... thirty young women came out of the woods ... their bodies painted some white, some red, some black, some particolor, but all differing. Their leader had a fair pair of buck's horns on her head, and an otter's skin at her girdle, and another at her arm, a quiver of arrows at her back, a bow and arrows in her hand. The next had in her hand a sword, another a club ... all horned alike.... These fiends with ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... I believe the latter, in consequence of some quarrel between me and my brother, in the first week in October, I ran away from fear of being whipped, and passed the whole night, a night of rain and storm, on the bleak side of a hill on the Otter, and was there found at daybreak, without the power of using my limbs, about six yards from the ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... Fort Clatsop to see the captains. He had on a robe made of two sea-otter skins. The skins were the most beautiful the captains had yet seen. They wanted the chief to sell the robe. He did not want to sell it, as sea-otters are hard to get. They said they would give him anything they had for it. Still he would not sell it. Sacajawea saw him ...
— The Bird-Woman of the Lewis and Clark Expedition • Katherine Chandler
... the hides and tallow derived from the annual matanzas may be estimated at 372,000 dollars. These two commodities, with the exception of some beaver, sea-otter, and other furs, comprise the most important part of the exportations, which in addition, would augment the value of exports ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... over Police Headquarters in the middle of the summer night. It was like the sighing of the north wind in the branches of the tall firs and in the reeds along lonely river-banks where the otter dips from the brink for its prey. The doorman, who yawned in the hall, and to whom reed-grown river banks have been strangers so long that he has forgotten they ever were, ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... word for the Thames otter? The list of really wild animals now existing in the home counties is so very, very short, that the extermination of one of them seems a serious loss. Every effort is made to exterminate the otter. No sooner does one venture down the river ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... an otter or a fox is gifted even more than the best dog you ever saw," Paul continued, "and on that account it's always up to the trapper to conceal the fact that a human being has been around, because these animals seem to know by instinct that man is their ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... permanent post at Otter Tail Lake. G. Bonga had gone with a small assortment of goods to build and pass the summer there. The Indians are divided in opinion and feeling with regard to the measure. Those who belong to this lake, or who make ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... golden goblet of a singular and antique appearance, moulded into the shape of a rampant bear, which the owner regarded with a look of mingled reverence, pride, and delight, that irresistibly reminded Waverley of Ben Jonson's Tom Otter, with his Bull, Horse, and Dog, as that wag wittily denominated his chief carousing cups. But Mr. Bradwardine, fuming towards him with complacency, requested him to observe this curious ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... not the worst of it,' I went on quick, keeping him hot and not giving him time to think. 'We thought you was from a nice, well-to-do family. Here's Mr. Little Bear, a chief of the Cherokees, entitled to wear nine otter tails on his Sunday blanket, and Professor Binkly, who plays Shakespeare and the banjo, and me, that's got hundreds of dollars in that black tin box in the wagon, and we've got to be careful about the company we keep. That man tells me your folks live 'way ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... dull besides, and needed something to cheer me. . . Since my talk about natural history does not bore you, I want to tell you various other things about it, and also to ask you to do me a favor. I have stuffed a superb otter lately; next week I shall receive a beaver, and I have exchanged all my little toads from Neuchatel for reptiles from Brazil and Java. One of our professors here, who is publishing a natural history of reptiles, will introduce in his work ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... before it could disengage itself. Walton was assured by his friend Mr. Segrave, who kept tame otters, that he had known a pike, in extreme hunger, fight with one of his otters for a carp that the otter had caught and was then bringing out of the water. A woman in Poland had her foot seized by a pike as she was washing clothes in a pond." Mr. Jesse tells the story of a gentleman, who, as he was one day walking by the side of the river Wey, saw a large pike in a shallow creek. ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... royally. It may be that one day he came on a visit to Bodo's masters and stopped at the big house on his way to Paris, and then Bodo saw him plain; for Charlemagne would come riding along the road in his jerkin of otter skin, and his plain blue cloak (Einhard tells us that he hated grand clothes and on ordinary days dressed like the common people);[19] and after him would come his three sons and his bodyguard, and then his five daughters. Einhard has also told ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... following the adventure with the wolves, good fortune smiled upon the young hunters. More martens were captured, increasing the number of marten pelts to nine, and Toby shot an otter. ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... shadder sweep de water, Pine tree an' cloud, how dey come an' go; Careful now, an' you 'll see de otter Slidin' into de pool below— Look at de loon w'en de breeze is ketch heem Shakin' hese'f as he cock de eye! Takes a nice leetle win' to fetch heem, So he 's gettin' ...
— The Voyageur and Other Poems • William Henry Drummond
... a month's time; and after consultation with the clergy, Mr. Dudley and Mr. Ludlow, the Governor and Deputy-Governor, decided on making a treaty with them, on condition of their delivering up the murderers of the Englishmen, and paying down forty beaver and thirty otter skins, besides 400 fathoms of wampum, i.e. strings of the small whelks and Venus-shells that served as current coin, a fathom being worth ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... "Oh! mink, otter, muskrats, raccoons, and perhaps fisher. All these used to be plentiful through these parts in years gone by. I've heard of men trapping them, but of late it's been lost sight of, so I reckon they've increased at ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie
... probable. The water swirled near to him. All his will power was required not to leap frantically for the bank. Yet a crocodile would be far more merciful than those black devils. Again a swirl and something passed close to him at high speed. Probably an otter scared by the firing; at any rate it was not a crocodile. The lights and ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... The Otter—this nickname had been given to my new acquaintance by those who were jealous of his fishing skill—when he was out in his boat never wore anything finer than corduroy trousers, a short blue jacket of ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... surface, swam like an otter to the shore, and, clambering up the bank, ran into the woods, seemingly none ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... Aleutians who hunt for the Company are those of the otter, the beaver, the fox, and the souslic. The natives also hunt the walrus, seal, and whale, not to speak of the herring, the cod, salmon, turbot, lote, perch, and tsouklis, a shell fish found in Queen Charlotte's Islands, used by the Company as ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... southern lowlands there is no resemblance to eastern types at all. Once the streams everywhere had thousands of happy beaver, with their homes in the river banks, or in waters deepened by their clever dams. Otter, too, were there. The larger rivers are not favourable for fish on account of the vast amount of sediment, but in the smaller, especially in the mountain streams, trout were abundant. In Green River occurs a salmon-trout attaining a length ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... round its neck like a ferret, and was attached by it to the bows of a sampan, which was rowed by a woman, while the fisherman, standing on the fore part, gathered in his hands a net, circular in shape and having a hole in the centre large enough to admit the otter. ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... in any one act of able or successful enterprise, unless his leading on (or his following) the allied army of Amazonian and male cannibal Parisians to Versailles, on the famous 6th of October, 1789, is to make his glory. Any otter exploit of his, as a general, I never heard of. But the triumph of general fraternity was but the more signalized by the total want of particular claims in that case,—and by postponing all such claims in a case where ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... know without words spoken of the assembling of the tribe. To the distant village at the isthmus they hurried, and to the cove on the western coast, some twenty miles away, to which a band of warriors had gone several days before to hunt the otter. That no one among his people might remain in ignorance of his command, Torquam even caused signal fires to be kindled on each of the twin peaks, extinct volcanoes, near the center of the island. Smoke rising there ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... Simard, and others who had come a long road by sleigh, fastened their long fur coats as they left the church, drawing them in at the waist with scarlet sashes. The young folk of the village, very smart in coats with otter collars, gave deferential greeting to old Nazaire Larouche; a tall man with gray hair and huge bony shoulders who had in no wise altered for the mass his everyday garb: short jacket of brown cloth lined with sheepskin, patched trousers, and thick ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... that the one now barring their onward progress is too deep to be waded; and if it be possible to pass over it, this must be by swimming. Little would they regard that, nor any more would their animals; since the pampas horse can swim like an otter, or capivara. But, unfortunately, this particular riacho is of a kind which forbids even their swimming it; as almost at the same glance, the gaucho observes, with a grunt expressing his discontent. On the stream's further shore, the bank, instead ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... shingles, lumber, corn, peas, pork, and beef; tobacco, deer skins, indigo, wheat, rice, bee's-wax, tallow, bacon, and hog's-lard, cotton, and squared timber; live cattle, with the skins of beaver, racoon, fox, minx, wild-cat, and otter. South Carolina is much better cultivated; the people are more civilized, and the commerce more important. The capital of this province, called Charles Town, is finely situated at the confluence of two navigable rivers, having the advantage of a commodious ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... who assuredly had been an out-and-out scamp, made good Bertie's creed; he "stuck to him" devoutly, and no terrier was ever more alive to an otter than he was to the Guardsman's interests. It was that very vigilance which made him, as he rode back from the Zu-Zu's in the twilight, notice what would have escaped any save one who had been practiced as a trapper in the red Canadian woods; namely, the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... from the mountain-tops, and the twilight creeping over the waters of the lake, and it chanced that once when he was so engaged he heard a rustle in a clump of sedge that grew close to one side of the hut. He turned to where the sound came from, and what should he see but an otter swimming towards him, with a little trout in his mouth. When the otter came up to where Enda was lying, he lifted his head and half his body from the water, and flung the trout on the platform, almost at Enda's feet, ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... twenty inches; of the tail itself twenty-two inches, at the base quite light, increasing gradually to black at the end: the width across the loins sixteen inches: the ears are large and erect: the coat or fur is of a much richer texture or more delicate than the sea-otter of Cook's River: on the upper parts of the body, at first sight, appearing of a glossy black, but on a nicer inspection, is really what the French call petit gris, or minever, being mixed with grey; the under parts are white, and on each hip may be observed a tan-coloured ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... instance, there's the beaver and the otter. They seem to have had a declaration of war from the very beginning same as cats and dogs. I see a beaver house one day las' winter standin' right in the middle o' the pond which the beavers had made. You know they ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson
... "was in a terrible frizz wi' the hook gnawing his vitals, and he swum about among the reeds near the bank in a manner to harrer your feelings. The line got tangled in the growing stuff, and I, so quick as an otter, pounced on him, and had him on the bank afore 'ee could say 'scat,' and there he lies breathing his last, and blessing me no doubt for relieving him in ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... trip and got back to Fort Laramie about November 1st. I then quit the employ of Russell, Majors & Waddell, and joined a party of trappers who were sent out by the post trader, Mr. Ward, to trap on the streams of the Chugwater and Laramie for beaver, otter, and other fur animals, and also to poison wolves for their pelts. We were out two months, but as the expedition did not prove very profitable, and was rather dangerous on account of the Indians, we abandoned the enterprise and came into Fort Laramie ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... constitutional ability to endure they excel. While these qualities distinguish, with a few exceptions, the men of the whole tribe, they are particularly characteristic of the two most widely spread of the families of which the tribe is composed. These are the Tiger and Otter clans, which, proud of their lines of descent, have been preserved through a long and tragic past with exceptional freedom from admixture with degrading blood. Today their men might be taken as types of physical excellence. The physique of every Tiger ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... wild-ox, the aurochs or European bison, the hippopotamus, the horse, the wild boar, the beaver, the water rat, the lion, sometimes spoken of as the cave-lion and being the same species as the Felis leo of to-day, the lynx, the panther or leopard, the wild cat, the spotted hyena, the otter, the musk sheep, and the marmot. No animal was domesticated ...
— The Tree-Dwellers • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... filled with all manner of growing and brooding things; a land of fat soil carried thither no one knows whence; a land apart and prepared. So Messasebe, having traveled many miles, came to a country inhabited by the slow snake, by the otter, and the beaver, the panther, the deer, the bear—many children whom he long ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... mythology, Fafnir, the worm, became the owner of the treasure which his father, Hreidmar, had exacted as blood-money from Loki, because he had slain Hreidmar's son Otur, the sea-otter. This treasure Loki had taken by violence from its rightful owner, a dwarf, who in revenge prophesied that the possession of the treasure should henceforward be fraught with dire mischief to every ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... pools. In its chases ranged herds of deer, protected by the terrible forest-laws, then in full force: and the hardier huntsman might follow the wolf to his lair in the mountains; might spear the boar in the oaken glades, or the otter on the river's brink; might unearth the badger or the fox, or smite the fierce cat-a-mountain with a quarrel from his bow. A nobler victim sometimes, also, awaited him in the shape of a wild mountain bull, a denizen of the forest, and a remnant of the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... all That this proud nursery could breed For God's vicegerency and stead? Time out of mind, this forge of ores; Quarry of spars in mountain pores; Old cradle, hunting-ground and bier Of wolf and otter, bear and deer; Well-built abode of many a race; Tower of observance searching space; Factory of river and of rain; Link in the Alps' globe-girding chain; By million changes skilled to tell What in the Eternal standeth well, And ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... were nearly naked,—those of a kindred tribe wholly so, with the sole exception of their moccasins. In winter they were clad in tunics and leggins of skin, and at all seasons, on occasions of ceremony, were wrapped from head to foot in robes of beaver or otter furs, sometimes of the greatest value. On the inner side, these robes were decorated with painted figures and devices, or embroidered with the dyed quills of the Canada hedgehog. In this art of embroidery, however, the Hurons ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... No— they fight for the privilege of dying where the bones of their ancestors lie buried: and yet we, Christians as we call ourselves, deny them that boon, and drive the lords of the soil into the den of the otter. ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the beaver, water rat, and otter, are said to have the foramen ovale of the heart open, which communicates from one cavity of it to the other; and that, during their continuance under water, the blood can thus for a time circulate without passing through the lungs; but as it cannot by these means acquire oxygen either ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... Morris took the form of the story which is most archaic, and bears most birthmarks of its savage origin—the version of the "Volsunga," not the German shape of the "Nibelungenlied." He showed extraordinary skill, especially in making human and intelligible the story of Regin, Otter, Fafnir, and ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... her narrow bed, hoist her white sails, and under British ensign salute the new fort, and shape a course for Portsmouth. That she had stuck fast and in danger so long was simply because the cocked hats were too proud to give ear to the wisdom in an old otter-skin. Now Admiral Darling was baffled and gone; and Captain Tugwell would show the world what he could do, and what stuff his men were made of, if they only had their way. From old Daddy Stakes, the bald father of ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... thoroughbred, ardent. His eyes were sparkling at the prospect of excitement; not only had the Russians, by their nefarious appropriation of the northwestern corner of the continent and a recent piratical excursion in pursuit of otter, inspired the Spanish Government with a profound disapproval and mistrust, but a rumor had run up the coast that made every sea-gull look like the herald of a hostile fleet. This was young Arguello's first taste of command, and life was dull on the northern peninsula; he would ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... watches, tools, beads, and looking-glasses. How great were the proportions that this trade speedily assumed may be judged from the fact that between June, 1800, and January, 1803, there were imported into China, in American vessels, 34,357 sea-otter skins worth on an average $18 to $20 each. Over a million sealskins were imported. In this trade were employed 80 ships and 9 brigs and schooners, more than half of them ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... much narrower and between rocky sides. In the forenoon the first prahu came upon an otter eating a huge fish which the strong animal had dragged up on a rock, and of which the men immediately took possession. It was cut up in bits and distributed among all of them, the otter thus saving the expedition thirty-two ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... very ignorantly and erroneously call the buffalo. They have deer, of several kinds, and plenty of roe-bucks and rabbits. There are bears and wolves, which are small and timorous; and a brown wild-cat, without spots, which is very improperly called a tiger; otter, beavers, foxes, and a species of badger which is called raccoon. There is great abundance of wild fowls, namely, wild-turkey, partridges, doves of various kinds, wild-geese, ducks, teals, cranes, herons of many kinds not known ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris |
