"Flat-topped" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... drawn up in line of battle. Moreover, Jackson's position was not only strong in itself but well adapted for giving attackers a shattering surprise. The left rested on Bull Run at Sudley Ford. The center occupied the edge of the flat-topped Stony Ridge. A quarter-mile in front of it, and some way lower down, were the embankments and cuttings of an unfinished railroad. On the right was Stuart's Hill, where Lee was to join by sending Longstreet in. The approaches in rear were hidden from the eyes of an enemy in front. The ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... odd yards north of the drift was a flat-topped, rocky mountain, and about a mile to the northeast appeared the usual sugar-loaf kopje, covered with bushes and boulders—steep on the south, but gently falling to the north; this had a farm on the near side ...
— The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Ernest Dunlop Swinton
... how you do it," replied Tim. "Click-click," forward and back went Tim's sharp shining instrument, leaving a single plant standing shyly alone where had boldly bunched a score or more a moment before. "Click-click-click," and the flat-topped drill stood free of weeds and superfluous turnip plants and trimmed to its proper ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... what had happened. Just about the centre of the reef is a large flat-topped rock—it may be twenty feet in the square—known to the Bryngelly fishermen as Table Rock. In ordinary weather, even at high tide, the waters scarcely cover this rock, but when there is any sea they wash over it with great violence. On to this rock Geoffrey and Beatrice had been hurled by ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... see what they were up to; and hiding her approach by keeping to a hedge-side or by means of the furze-bushes, she would sometimes come upon them with disconcerting suddenness. On this occasion just where the boys had been playing there was a low, stout furze-bush, so dense and flat-topped that one could use it as a seat, and his mother taking off and folding her shawl placed it on the bush, and sat down on it to rest herself after her long walk. "I can see her now," said Caleb, "sitting on that furze-bush, in her smock and leggings, with a big hat like a man's ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... he presently chanced a leap. It was error. As the meager light disclosed the path a chasm of fifteen feet intervened between the edge of the upturned pan upon which he stood and a flat-topped hummock of Arctic ice to which he was bound. There was footing for the tip of his gaff midway below. He felt for this footing to entertain himself while the moon delayed. It was there. He was tempted. The chasm was ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... occupied a large unfinished room, obviously makeshift, that had previously been used for the storage of stage properties. There were two flat-topped desks, placed so that their swivel chairs faced across a considerable expanse of surface, two bookkeepers' perches also rigged up to meet the exigencies of run-away affairs, and her own little table with its ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... into the water that looked like it was the beginning of a ford. For a fact, it was where the Mexican women come to do their clothes-washing, and just back from the river was a little 'dobe house—flat-topped, and the size and shape of a twelve-foot-square dry-goods box—the women kept their washing things in. But them was particulars the Hen didn't happen to mention ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... and watery, spineless, the cushions distant, and sometimes bearing a few very short bristles. Flowers at the extremities of the branches, 11/2 in. long, composed of numerous imbricating, scale-like petals, curving inwards, and coloured crimson. Fruit flat-topped, 2 in. long, red; pulp reddish; seeds black. It is a native of tropical South America, whence it was introduced in 1688. It requires stove treatment, and blossoms in August. This is one of the most useful of the genus, on account of its being the kind ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... she begged for the stories than at any other time. After each meal, it was his custom to take what he called "four draws" in his study. Kit found at these times that he was in his best humor. Relaxed and thoughtful, he would lean back in the deep Morris chair between the flat-topped desk and the fireplace, and smoke leisurely. Even his pipe had come from Persia, its amber stem very slender and beautifully curved, its bowl a ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... plants growing upon them; whilst their surface, whether stony or sandy, is quite smooth and even, as if washed so by the action of the water. Throughout this level tract of country were interspersed, in various directions, many small flat-topped elevations, varying in height from 50 to 300 feet, and almost invariably exhibiting precipitous banks. These elevations are composed almost wholly of a chalky substance, coated over on the upper surface ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... a sharpened stick. There were strips of crisp bacon garnishing a trout browned to the last painstaking turn. There were fried potatoes, cut by King's pocket-knife into thin strips and turned into gold by the alchemy of cooking. He set out his dishes upon a flat-topped rock, replenished his fire, threw on some fresh-cut green cedar boughs for their delightful fragrance, and went to ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... hundred miles, was then, in succeeding millenniums, subjected to the denuding forces of air and water, until gradually huge tracts of it were worn away, forming beds of conglomerate, gravel, and clay. The flat-topped hills have been carved out of the basaltic surface by the agencies which wore away the massive sheet of lava. The basaltic cappings of the hills certainly cannot have 'formed part of continued flat beds of great lakes'. See the notes to Chapter 14, ante. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... hand to the left. She beheld a clearing—an avenue, that ran like a broad ribbon to the summit of a flat-topped rise. ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Egypt. Beside it rises a huge castle with arched gateway, turrets, watch-towers, ramparts, etc., and to right and left palaces, obelisks, and pyramids fairly fill the gulf, all colossal and all lavishly painted and carved. Here and there a flat-topped structure may be seen, or one imperfectly domed; but the prevailing style is ornate Gothic, with many ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... he drew out what looked like a flat-topped stand, about the height of his waist, with a curious box-like arrangement on it, in which was a powerful light. For several minutes, he occupied himself with the adjustment of this machine, switching the light off and on ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... straight as a lance, went the footprints of a man, in long, unhesitating stride, to a point immediately underneath the closed blinds of the window behind which his wife now lay placidly sleeping. Davies stood and studied the tracks a moment, then went to the point of meeting of the front fence,—a flat-topped affair,—with its picketed offshoot. Beyond doubt the maker of those tracks had swung himself over the fence at that point, dropped lightly to the ground inside and gone straightway to that side window. There he must have stood a moment or two, for the snow was trampled. Thence the tracks ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... Joe; let's have a little talk about this business," the Cross-Triangle man said in a matter-of-fact tone, as he seated himself on a large, flat-topped stone near the little fire. "You know you can't get away, so ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... the "rise" of a submarine "tread" in the form of fringing reef which surrounds the island and is never uncovered, even at low water, except in Flying Fish Cove, where the only landing-place exists. The central plateau is a plain whose surface presents "rounded, flat-topped hills and low ridges and reefs of limestone," with narrow intervening valleys. On its northern aspect this plateau has a raised rim having all the appearances of being once the margin of an atoll. On these rounded hills occurs the deposit of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... variable in relative length, often becoming almost equal, while sometimes the upper radials are very much reduced. The figure referred to in Cact. Mex. Bound. is not satisfactory as to the general habit of the plant, which is flat-topped ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter
... on with him and they presently stopped beneath the alder branches by a sparkling shallow. Tall brush grew up the shady bank and briars trailed in the stream. A row of flat-topped stones ran across, but there were gaps where the current foamed over some that were lower than the rest. Grace's foot was getting worse, and sitting down on a slab of the slate stile, she glanced ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... few weeks after Sir John's fierce ultimatum, a young baker, carrying a large flat-topped basket, called at his house, from which he soon emerged, touching his cap to the merchant as he passed him in the garden, and giving him a respectful "good day." "A civil young man," Sir John said to himself, as he continued ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... room, however, was but cursory. She was interested only in the flat-topped desk in front of her. She stepped quickly around it—and stopped-and a low cry of dismay came from her as she stared at the floor. The lower drawer had been completely removed, and now lay upturned beside the swivel chair, its contents ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... problems, including the rapid moving of a ray of light and the long years of its travel between star and star, and smiled incredulously. Why, the stars were just above our heads, were not much higher than the flat-topped hills that barred the horizons. Venus was a yellow lamp hung in a tree; Mars a red ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... deg. 30' from bearings, and longitude by time-keeper 142(? illegible in book) 181/2' east; but I was altogether at a loss to know what islands these were, under which we had anchored. Supposing the flat-topped island to have been the easternmost York Isle, the land we had in sight to the southward should have been Cape York; but no such isles as those around us were laid down by captain Cook, to the north of that cape. On consulting ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... circular conveyer room was crowded, as it had been every minute of every day for the past ten thousand years. At the great circular desk in the center, departing or returning police officers were checking in or out with the flat-topped cylindrical robot clerks, or talking to human attendants. Some were in the regulation green uniform; others, like himself, were in civilian clothes; more were in outtime costumes from all over paratime. Fringed robes and cloth-of-gold sashes and conical ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... and from the forest I cast many a wistful look at a solitary flat-topped hill, almost a mountain in height, which stood two or three miles from the house, north of it, on the other side of the river. From its summit I felt sure that a very extensive view of the surrounding country might ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... the victory at Jerusalem. The most significant of all the signs was the attitude of Moslems. The Turks had preached the Holy War, but they knew the hollowness of the cry, and the natives, abandoning their natural reserve, joined in loud expression of welcome. From flat-topped roofs, balconies, and streets there were cries of 'Bravo!' and 'Hurrah!' uttered by men and women who probably never spoke the words before, and quite close to the Jaffa Gate I saw three old Mahomedans ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... a deep, broad ravine that had caused us much delay and difficulty, we caught sight of an attractive town situated on a steep, flat-topped hill. Upon drawing near, a fine-looking, white-bearded Arab rode up on a small gray mare. He said that he was the head man of the town; that he hated the Turks, and would like to be of any assistance possible to us. I asked him if the enemy had ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... of meeting was Marudi (Claudetown), the headquarters of the government of the district. There the river, still nearly a hundred miles from the sea, winds round the foot of a low flat-topped hill, on which stand the small wooden fort and court-house and the Resident's bungalow. Some days before that fixed for the great meeting by the tokens we had sent out, parties of men began to arrive, ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... hands, and are often multiple, occurring in clusters or in successive crops. Multiple warts appear to result from some contagion, the nature of which is unknown; they sometimes occur in an epidemic form among school-children, and show a remarkable tendency to disappear spontaneously. The solitary flat-topped wart which occurs on the face of old people may, if irritated, become the seat of epithelioma. A warty growth of the epidermis is a frequent accompaniment of moles and of that variety of lupus known as ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... day of toil. They had to climb over the mountain divide, a long, flat-topped range of broken rocks. Joan spared her horse to the limit of her own endurance. If there were a trail Smith alone knew it, for none was in evidence to the others. They climbed out of the notched head of the canon, and up a long slope of weathered shale that ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... truncated peak, which gives its name to the mass (koro "cut off at the top"; puna "a cold, snowy height"), was the highest point of the range, and higher than all the eastern peaks. Yet behind the flat-topped dome we could just make out a northerly peak. Tucker wondered whether or not that might prove to be higher than the western peak which we decided to climb. No one knew anything about the mountain. There were no native guides to be had. The wildest opinions were expressed ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... and in groups until there were fully fifty of the great brutes gathered there in the moonlight. Among them were young apes and several little ones clinging tightly to their mothers' shaggy shoulders. Presently the group parted to form a circle about what appeared to be a small, flat-topped mound of earth in the center of the clearing. Squatting close about this mound were three old females armed with short, heavy clubs with which they presently began to pound upon the flat top of the earth mound which gave forth a dull, booming sound, and almost immediately ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... prominent proportions, they were still at some distance, and it was not until the third morning that the little party stood on the reedy shores of a long narrow winding lake, one end of which they had to skirt before they could ride up to the foot of the flat-topped mountain which looked as if it had been suddenly thrust by some wondrous volcanic action right from the plain to form what appeared to be a huge castle, some seven or eight hundred feet high, and with no ravine or rift in the wall by ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... This low, flat-topped mountain, as I say, was grassy and quite treeless, although it rose like a truncated sugar-cone out of a wilderness of trees which stretched for miles below us, north, south, east, and west, bordered on the horizon by towering blue mountains, their distant ranges enclosing ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... carried them by the south west near the head of it, where the stream, passing through a rocky swamp, permitted them to wade over it. Thence they steered between N 50 degrees and 60 degrees West, getting a sight of the flat-topped peak at times, which, appearing to be considerably nearer than the highest Glass-House, was that which he first meant to visit; but observing that one of the round mounts with sloping sides was still nearer, he altered his course for it; and, after walking about nine ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... he washed down the front steps with a bucket of water and the garden hose. Grocery and delivery wagons came and went, rattling over the cobbles and car-tracks, while occasionally a whistle blew very far off. At the corner of the street by a livery-stable a little boy in a flat-topped leather cap was calling incessantly for some unseen dog, whistling and slapping his knees. An ex press-wagon stopped a few doors below the white house and the driver pulled down the back-board with a strident rattle of chains; the cable in ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... large stone fireplace; in a corner stood a grand piano; the center was dominated by a simple, flat-topped desk, across which much of the traffic ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... who read this will think it a strange thing, but, though I had been busy all that morning handling beautiful little pippins, long, rosy, and flat-topped, I had never even thought of ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... a very steep hillside, up which the half-obliterated trail zigzagged toward the crest of a flat-topped hill. Barney went ahead, taking the girl's hand in his to help her, and thus they came to the top, to stand hand in hand, breathing ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... At a flat-topped desk over which was a sign with the words "City Editor" sat a fat, bald-headed man wearing a green eye-shade, who spoke over his shoulder to a younger man at another desk close to his. This younger man wore a telephone headgear, receivers over both ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... smooth, grassy lawns thickly dotted with flower beds cut into graceful and fanciful shapes, with trees growing only where they would afford a grateful shade either to the wayfarer or to the gardens arranged upon the flat-topped roofs of the houses. The roads were so cunningly planned that, by means of their serpentine windings, an easy gradient was everywhere maintained; and, lastly, the entire island was encompassed by a lofty and immensely solid ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... saw whole families, men, women, and children, weeding amongst the maize. A few showers had fallen during the night and given them some hopes of saving their crops. We passed a village called Apanas and then struck across the plains, and on the other side reached low flat-topped ranges covered with small trees and brushwood, amongst which were many clearings well fenced and planted with maize. Passing over an undulating country, the hills covered with oak forests, the lowlands well grassed, we reached about two o'clock San Rafael, a small town ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... start pleased Romer. The brush and cactus-lined road was rough, up hill and down, with ever increasing indications that it was seldom used. From the tops of high points I could see black foothills, round, cone-shaped, flat-topped, all leading the gaze toward the great yellow and red wall of the mesa, with its ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... and Tolto slowly walked about in widening circles, and when they were sufficiently far away Murray and Tuman closed in. They had no expectation of finding the ship unlocked, and wasted no time trying to get it. Instead they climbed a flat-topped block of stone about ten feet high. From this position they could command, with Murray's neuro, anyone who might seek to ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... rowed up its fiord and landed to make a slight examination of its grand frontal wall. The berg-producing portion we found to be about a mile and a half wide, and broken into an imposing array of jagged spires and pyramids, and flat-topped towers and battlements, of many shades of blue, from pale, shimmering, limpid tones in the crevasses and hollows, to the most startling, chilling, almost shrieking vitriol blue on the plain mural spaces from which bergs had just been discharged. Back from the front for a few miles ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... of a guard, they were marched rapidly up the street to where a few larger flat-topped houses stood on slightly higher ground. Through an open door they were driven along a passage and out into a courtyard open to the sky, with ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... water," the agent said. "Play 'King of the Castle' on a flat-topped rock for hours together. One seal pushes the other off the coveted post, only to be dislodged himself a minute after. And I have never once seen any sign of ill-humor. They never bite. They never injure one another. They ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... on Friday morning Katje's dog-team romped up; but, instead of the old vrouw, a lean, leather-faced man with a long coat reaching to his heels and a flat-topped peak cap strode ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... his eye down his slim legs with fatuous complacency and fingered the fur fringe of his doublet and pushed his steep flat-topped cap over to a different angle. Abner looked at him with contemptuous amazement ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... old form now have not, however, all continuously retained it. At the time of the erection of the Perpendicular clerestory to the nave, the northern gable turret was rebuilt in the curiously plain, octagonal, flat-topped form, which the oldest engravings of the front illustrate. It has only quite recently been altered again to the earlier shape of its fellow on the south; and is the only feature in which there is any conspicuous difference between the front as now ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... which was full of sandhills. The country continued hilly and the northernmost land, the same we had seen from the lagoon island, appeared like downs, sloping towards the sea. Nearly abreast of us was a flat-topped hill which on account of its shape I called Pudding-pan hill; and a little to the northward were two other hills which we called the Paps; and here was a small tract of country without sand, the eastern part of which forms a cape whence the coast inclines ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... is already familiar with the general aspect of this singular region, and I need only remind him that the mainland is that district of Prussia which is known as East Friesland. It is a [See Map B] short, flat-topped peninsula, bounded on the west by the Ems estuary and beyond that by Holland, and on the east by the Jade estuary; a low-lying country, containing great tracts of marsh and heath, and few towns of any size; on the north side none. Seven islands lie off the coast. All, except ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... almost soundless, save where the wind harped his wild anthem upon the heathery waste, and where roaring streams filled the lonely cloughs with drowsy uproar. It was a striking scene, and it was an impressive hour. The bold, round, flat-topped height of Musbury Tor stood gloomily proud, on the opposite side, girdled off from the rest of the hills by a green vale. The lofty outlines of Aviside and Holcombe were glowing with the gorgeous hues of a cloudless October sunset. Along ...
— Th' Barrel Organ • Edwin Waugh
... the noted book-thief Libri. This manuscript is attributed to the tenth century by Merrill, and by Chatelain in his description of the book. But Chatelain labels his facsimile page "Saec. IX."[20] The latter seems the more probable date. The free use of a flat-topped a, along with the general appearance of the script, reminds me of the style in vogue at Fleury and its environs about the middle of the ninth century. A good specimen is accessible in a codex ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand
... evening was astonishing. The old priest appeared more accustomed to these copious libations than his younger assistant, who before he left the table showed unmistakable signs of being 'well on.' Both vicar and curate wore moustachios, and the flat-topped red fez, which distinguishes their profession. The curate had received a certain amount of education at one of the Bosnian convents, whence he had been sent to Rome, where he had, at any rate, attained a tolerable proficiency in Italian, and a few words of French. Another occupant of the ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... which we usually visited while waiting for the ferryman on our return journey after the summer's absence, the plantation could be seen stretching away into the distance, hemmed in by the flat-topped cypresses. From there we had a view of our distant dwelling, gleaming white in the sunlight and standing in a green oasis of trees and grass, all looking wonderfully small amid the expanse of flat fields around it. ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... depths, while his companion set about his share of camp tasks. It was still early in the summer—too early to expect to find ripe fruit. But Dalgard rummaged in his voyager's bag and brought out a half-dozen crystal beads. He laid these out on a flat-topped stone by the stream, seating himself ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... undulating sandy plain was like a frozen sea that had no end, and so far as eye could see was only bounded by the dark orb of heaven. Here and there, grey, cleft, cone-shaped rocks and blunt-cornered stone boulders or blocks and flat-topped stones not unlike a table rose out of the sand-ocean. Two such stones were situated close together; one was partly covered by the yellow quicksand, the other stood higher out of the ground. On each of them lay a man stretched at full length. One, strong and sinewy, lay on his face, supporting ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... him. She was a small athletic looking woman with black hair, square shoulders, cheeks browned by the sun and wind, and quiet grey eyes. She stood facing Sam's desk and pulled off a glove while she looked down at him with amused, quizzical eyes. Sam rose, and leaning over the flat-topped desk, took her hand, wondering ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... the room the teacher, Miss Scattergood, sat at her flat-topped desk. "That old maid," as Marty had called her, was not at all the sort of a person—in appearance, at least—that Janice expected her to be. Somehow, a spinster lady who had taught school—and such a school as Poketown's—for twenty years, should have ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... happened to have been present not long ago at a meeting of an archaeological society when its origin and purpose were discussed. I remember that one learned but somewhat eccentric gentleman read a short paper upon a rude, hooded bust and head that are cut within the chamber of a tall, flat-topped cromlech, or dolmen, which stands alone in ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... formation known as Island Rock. This was a large rock that stood abruptly up out of the water. Below, about the usual water-line, it was seamed and fissured, but its summit rose up in a narrow, flat-topped peak. At low tide twenty feet of it was above water, but at high tide it was six feet and often more ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... them, and there painted in the air they saw the picture of a great mountain, standing by itself upon a plain, but with other mountains visible to the north and south of it. This mountain was flat-topped, with precipices of red rock, and down its eastern slope ran five ridges shaped like the thumb and fingers of a mighty hand, while between the thumb and the first finger, as it were, a stream gushed out, upon the banks of which grew flat-topped trees ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... should each also devise one and send it in. At these words, the four of them left the room with hasty step, and adjourned into dowager lady Chia's drawing room, where they discovered a young eunuch, holding a four-cornered, flat-topped lantern, of white gauze, which had been specially fabricated for lantern riddles. On the front side, there was already a conundrum, and the whole company were vying with each other in looking at it and making wild guesses; when ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the tent and presently I could see the sheep, a small one about four years old. We went up toward it, and I saw the sheep moving about. It went out to a little flat place on the slide rock, where the slide rock had pushed out a little further, making a little low butte, or flat-topped table; it was loose rock, with snow. ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... narrow strip between the sea and the more open forest and meadow of the interior. Farther back there was a range of low but apparently very rocky hills, and here and there all about were visible flat-topped masses of rock—small mountains, in fact—which reminded me of pictures I had seen of landscapes in New Mexico. Altogether, the country was very much broken and very beautiful. From where I stood I counted ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... three hundred yards apart, and fall almost vertically thousands of feet, representing an erosion of hard rock of many millions of cubic feet. One result of the action of the water has been the formation of numerous isolated flat-topped hills or small plateaus, known as ambas, with nearly perpendicular sides. The highest peaks are found in the Simen (or Semien) and Gojam ranges. The Simen Mountains he N.E. of Lake Tsana and culminate in the snow-covered peak of Daschan (Dajan), which ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... was a beautiful still grey day, such as she loved, and she longed to be alone with the sea. The tide was going out, and she had a fancy for following it from rock to rock as it went. Some of the bigger rocks were flat-topped islands, separated from the last halting-place of the tide by narrow straits, across which she sprang; and on these she would lie her length, peering down into the clear depths on the farther side, where the healthy happy sea-creatures disported themselves, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... villages on hillsides clustering round graceful campaniles (a word I've practised lately with several other difficult ones); green-black cypresses (which Maida says seem like sharp notes in music); and wonderful, flat-topped trees that Mr. ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... wasn't the sergeant,' replied Dick. 'The man had a cloth cap on, and the sergeant had a flat-topped soldier's cap.' ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... victorias rattled through the streets of Jaffa, past the low, flat-topped Oriental houses, the queer little open shops, the orange-groves in full bloom, the palm-trees waving their plumes over garden-walls, and rolled out upon the broad highroad across the fertile, gently undulating Plain of Sharon. On each side were the neat, well-cultivated fields and vegetable-gardens ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... absorbing its streets and shops. The season is fairly afloat, and all sail is set. At the angle of two thoroughfares, a stretch of ground has been brushed together for a park or promenade, and this, sprinkled with low, flat-topped trees and a band-stand, naturally attracts us first. Booths and cafes and nicknack stalls reach around its sides, and across from us stands a fine official-looking structure of marble, which we learn ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... a mile from it, is a ledge of rocks on which the sea constantly breaks. We passed close round the reef, and hauled into a very considerable opening about six or seven miles wide, and at least five or six leagues deep. At the bottom of this inlet was some higher land than usual, and among it two flat-topped hills were very conspicuous. The eastern shore of the port, for such it proved to be, is formed by a succession of rocky points, between which were ranges of red cliffs, much higher than any we had yet ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... Astrolabe, a series of long flat-topped ridges parallel with the coast, but were unable clearly to identify the Cape Passy of D'Urville where his running survey terminated, and where the Astrolabe and Zelee bore away to the ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... trade had freshened up, and we steered S. W. by compass, in soundings from 13 to 11 fathoms, soft ground. Some of the small woody isles before laid down, were seen to the north-westward, but nothing else till four o'clock; the high flat-topped York Isle then came in sight, and at six ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... well-beaten trail which he knew ran in that direction. He found it and let the mustang drop back to a steady dogtrot; for, if the journey to Sour Creek was now a short distance, there would be a hard ride back to the flat-topped mountain if he wished to accomplish his business and return before the full dawn. He must be there by that time, for who could tell what the girl might do when she found herself alone. Therefore he saved the cattle pony ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... flat-topped cone of metal, upon the top of which was situated the power plant. Twelve massive pillars supported a flat roof, but permitted the air to circulate freely throughout the one great room which housed ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... the lady not at all disturbed, the colonel did not interrupt them for a while. But when the lady at length rose, holding Phil by the hand, the colonel, fearing that the boy, who was a child of strong impulses, prone to sudden friendships, might be proving troublesome, left his seat on the flat-topped tomb of his Revolutionary ancestor ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... me in the pool and breakfasted with my companion on what remained of our goat's-flesh, I set to work to build me a fireplace in a fissure of the rock over against the little valley and close beside a great stone, smooth and flat-topped, that should make me an anvil, what time my companion collected a pile of kindling-wood. Soon we had the fire going merrily, and whilst my iron was heating, I chose a likely piece of wood, and splitting it with the hatchet, fell to carving it with ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... of the boy. To Akut it was a familiar one; but to Korak it was all new. His nerves tingled at the savage sight. The great bulls were dancing in the moonlight, leaping in an irregular circle about the flat-topped earthen drum about which three old females sat beating its resounding top with sticks worn smooth by ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the gas, this, according to Pole, is a deduction of h(1 - d)/828 where d is the specific gravity of the gas and h the height (in inches) of the top of the gasholder above the water level. This strictly applies only to a flat-topped bell, and hence if the bell has a crown with a rise equal to about 1/20 of the diameter of the bell, the value of h here must be taken as equal to the height of the top of the sides above the water-level ( h'), plus the height of a cylinder having ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... by the warm bright air. Seen at a distance of a couple of hundred yards, the appearance was that of a beautiful pearly-white cloud resting upon the earth. Many fogs had I seen, but never one like this, so substantial-looking, so sharply defined, standing like a vast white wall or flat-topped hill at the foot of the green sunlit slope! I had the fancy that if I had been an artist in sculpture, and rapid modeller, by using the edge of my hand as a knife I could have roughly carved out a human figure, then drawing it gently out of the ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... said, his chin still in his hands and eyes gazing away to the Bar—"earth and pebbles banked up into a flat-topped mound, upon which stood your shoes filled with sprays of hedge fruit and yellow button-chrysanthemums—stolen too, I suppose, from one of the gardens at Lampit. They grow freely there. Your silk stockings hung round her neck, a posy of flowers twisted into them.—When ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... appliances which stood about the room, the uses of which she did not know. Her inspection of the room, however, was but momentary, for two figures, brightly illuminated by an overhanging cluster of electric lights, at once attracted her attention. One of these was Dr. Hartmann. He sat at a large, flat-topped desk, his profile toward the door, examining with great care a mass of papers which lay on the desk before him. His forehead was wrinkled with thought, and an expression of ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... minister in state, coming to do him honour. First marched a Malay, with a staff and a large flag waving above his head; then came two spearmen with their shields; and next the minister, another man holding above his head a canopy of state, a huge flat-topped umbrella, of scarlet silk, fringed with gold. Next followed a band of musicians, two with drums, and two with pipes; and last, a large body of spearmen, all ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... so ago I witnessed a Sokol display on that flat-topped height called Letna; it is, as it were, an eastward prolongation of the Castle Hill. Here is a large recreation ground for the use of such bodies as Sokol societies. In the arena, before a large and appreciative but critical public, the Socialist Sokols gave their display ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... the river which was spating from the recent rains, but great flat-topped rocks made it always possible to cross; she ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... the officer. The police station was but a half-block distant on a side street and their captor ushered them up the steps and into a room where a tall, bushy-whiskered man with much gold on his shoulders sat writing at a flat-topped desk. ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... some thirty thousand acres of very rich, low-lying soil, almost treeless and clothed with luxuriant grasses where game was extraordinarily numerous. At the head of it rose a flat-topped hill, from the crest of which, oddly enough, flowed a plentiful stream of water fed by a strong spring. Half-way down this hill, facing to the east, and irrigable by the stream, was a plateau several acres in extent, which furnished about the best site ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... on the flat-topped division of the seat, a pistol lay; but the fingers of the small white hand which held it were nerveless. In his bearing was no menace—only the ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... was bare of carpet but spotlessly clean; shades, but no curtains, were over the windows; in the center stood a large flat-topped reading table; at one end of the table was a Morris chair upholstered in brown Spanish leather; a wolf-skin rug was thrown on the floor before an old-fashioned Mexican fire-place built into one corner of the room; in ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... monument to his memory. Has the reader ever sailed up the Thames, beyond Westminster? And does he remember a little spot of garden-ground, walled in by dingy houses, that lies upon the right bank of the river near to Chelsea Hospital? If he can recall two gaunt, flat-topped cedars which sentinel the walk leading to the river-gate, he will have the spot in his mind, where, nearly two hundred years ago, and a full century before the Kew parterres were laid down, the Chelsea Garden of the Apothecaries Company ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... weather conditions the fall strikes on flat-topped slabs, forming a kind of ledge about two-thirds of the way down from the top, and as the fall sways back and forth with great variety of motions among these flat-topped pillars, kissing and plashing notes as well as thunder-like ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... stepped across the lawn together. It was to Dong-Yung as if she stepped into an unknown land. She walked on flat green grass. Flowers in stiff and ordered rows went sedately round and round beneath a lurid red brick wall. A strange, square-cornered, flat-topped house squatted in the midst of the flat green grass. On the lawn at one side was a white-covered table, with a man and a woman sitting beside it. The four corners of the table-cloth dripped downward to the flat green grass. It was all very strange and ugly. Perhaps it was a garden, but no one would ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... valley. Descending a sunny mountainside, they crossed some water meadows, and mounted the hill beyond, to a spot that Mary had marked in her walks. Beside a little tumbling stream and beneath a thicket of holly, lay a flat-topped rock commanding all the spectacle of flood and fell. Mary guided him there; and then stood silent and flushed, conscious that she herself had brought the supreme moment to its birth. The same perception rushed upon ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... just before it became dark. They wore high flat-topped fur caps, a dress something like a long loose blouse, and trousers of fine leather tucked into boots that came up to the knee. Most of them had bows and arrows in addition to their fishing gear. Godfrey felt no uneasiness among these men ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... said then for some minutes, during which the glass was passed from one to the other, and long, excited looks taken at the strong body of bronze, half-nude warriors seated upon their ponies close to the edge of the flat-topped range of cliffs, some four or five hundred feet above the ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... I immediately set out, with a man carrying my theodolite, for Mount Red Cap, distant from our camp about six miles. This little red cone had a very singular appearance, as we approached it from the east. A dark tinted scrub of flat-topped trees enveloped its base, on the outside of which the light and graceful Acacia pendula also grew on the grassy plain. I found the red rock to be the common one of the country, in a state of decomposition. It was hollowed ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... and gold, and darkened here and there into shadows of porphyrine amber. Amidst the grey and green of the olive and acacia foliage there will arise the low pale roofs and flat-topped towers of innumerable villages. ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... lately saw only the variance from silken cylinders to the different types of derbies and fedoras, there was now the glisten of every shape of panama, tuscan, and chip head-gear, with a prevalence of the low, flat-topped hard-brimmed things that mocked with the rigidity of sheet-iron the conception of straw as a light and yielding material. Men with as yet only one foot in the grave can easily remember when the American picked himself out in the London crowd by his summer hat, but ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... you get into the house, go straight through the vestibule and hall to the door at the end. On the big, flat-topped desk in the middle of the room you'll find a telephone. Do you know how to ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... I slipped out of my quilt, cloak and tunic, and, groaning, I crawled to the flat-topped stone. Face down on it I lay, my chest against it, my knees on the ground, my arms outstretched, my fingers gripping the far ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... into the room and sat down in deep leather armchairs, while Mr. Temple sat back in a swinging chair by his broad, flat-topped desk. Selecting a cigar from the humidor at his elbow, he lighted it and puffed thoughtfully several moments ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... Alpine glacier; but as the light increased it assumed a brilliant but delicate translucent green of purer quality, contrasting finely with the scarlet flush in the east which heralded the rising, but still hidden, sun. On our right, as we entered the wide, spacious harbor, were two or three flat-topped, table-like islands, or "keys," which, in general outline and appearance, suggested dark mesas of foliage floating in a tropical ocean of pale chrysolite-green. Directly ahead was the city of Key West—a long, low, curving silhouette of roofs, spires, masts, lighthouses, cocoanut-palms, ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... white heads of tubular florets only, crowded in a scaly involucre and borne in spreading, flat-topped terminal cymes. Stem: Stout, tall, branching above, hairy, leafy. Leaves: Opposite, often united at their bases, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... hub of which stood bolt-upright a tall, snowy flagstaff, its shred of bunting hanging limp and lifeless from the peak, and in the dull, dirt-colored buildings of adobe, ranged in rigid lines about the dull brown, flat-topped mesa, a thousand yards up stream above the pool, drowsed a little band of martial exiles, stationed here to keep the peace 'twixt scattered settlers and swarthy, swarming Apaches. The fort was their soldier home; the ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... made but slow progress; so that when they rose on the top of a swell, which was still very long and high in consequence of the gale, they could only just discover the distant land, Muckish, a remarkable flat-topped mountain on the northwest coast of Ireland, not very far from the promontory called ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... of several of our batteries. It was Britain's morning salutation to the Boer. I hurried up to a spot on the kopje where a regiment of Worcesters lay amongst the broken ground, and saw that the battle was just about to commence in deadly earnest. It was a huge, flat-topped kopje where I located myself. The outer edges of the hill rose higher than the centre, a little rivulet ran across tiny indentations on the crown of that rampart, and there was ample space for an army to lie concealed from the ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... deep in thought, and made up his mind to see the wise woman again. So he passed down into the valley, crossed the river to the new village built on a small flat-topped hill, and found the chief's mother sitting ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... The mountains of Singgi and Cerambo are plainly discernible, as also the sharp rugged hills of Legora, where the cinnabar and antimony mines are; while farthest away of any on the dim horizon, we can distinguish the island of Burong, at the mouth of the Batang Lupar, and the flat-topped mountain of Lingga, where the Sarawak Mission has established its headquarters. The sky was cloudless, and H. told us that never before had he been able to procure such a ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... ready to begin. He took his position behind the long, flat-topped table which he used for his demonstrations before his classes. "I realize, ladies and gentlemen," he began formally, "that I am about to do a very unusual thing; but, as you all know, the police and the coroner have been completely baffled by this terrible mystery ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... distinguish the interior show in the outer structure. Under the gables the huge clerestory windows above the entrances relieve the great expanse of the end walls. Similar windows open up the walls above the flat-topped wings. In the main entrance, the gables are deepened to form a huge triple vestibule where the row of columns is repeated. The long side walls are relieved by pairs of decorated columns flanking ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... the 9th all preparations were completed for storming the fortress. Theodore had posted his army, consisting of 3000 soldiers armed with percussion guns, a host of spearmen, and several pieces of ordnance, on the flat-topped hill of Fala. Here he had come to conquer, as he thought it possible, with his cherished guns, or to die should he meet with defeat. Between the armies was the plain of Arogye. In front rose, more than 1000 feet above it, ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... on a barren plain, nearly two miles north-west of the town—if we may so call the one straight road of stores and tin-roofed bungalows. Low, flat-topped hills surround it, bare and rocky. But to understand the country it is best to climb into the mountains of the long Drakensberg, which forms the Free State frontier in a series of strangely jagged and precipitous peaks, and at one place, by the junction with ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... terraces and the wide, flat-topped yew walls, and the great peacocks carved out of the yew; and beyond them the lawn, flowing out under banks of clipped yew down to the goldfish pond. They were things that she had seen again and again in sleep and memory; things ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... a loftier hall with an imitation groined ceiling, and into a large room at the back of the house, which by virtue of a case of morocco bound books, clearly not often disturbed, was the library. The young man flung himself into a chair behind an immense flat-topped desk and waved his hand to Evan with an air that seemed to say: "Now tell me the worst!" Between the two, Evan's sympathies were with ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... monuments, to long-dead and long-forgotten warriors, kept company with the old trees under which children were now playing, while nurses wheeled perambulators on the bisecting paths. The Green itself sloped upwards until it became a flat-topped hill, once a British or a Roman camp, and thence the river could be seen between its rocky cliffs and the woods Rose had lately skirted clothing the farther side ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... to the big fence mentioned, which consisted of a broad flat-topped bank between two wide dry ditches; while the horses went the round of the course over four ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... an additional five feet by these interfering Ordnance surveyors. The new maps now read—Walbury Camp 959 feet; Inkpen, 954. But the loss of 18 yards or so does not seem to have altered the glorious view from the flat-topped Down or to have made its air less sparkling. The grand wooded vista down the Kennet valley toward Newbury is a sharp contrast to the bare uplands north and south. Walbury Camp, a fine prehistoric entrenchment, ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... at Government House, not one of them would contain anything like that number, so Lord Minto had an immense canvas Durbar Hall constructed. Here again the useful factor comes in of knowing to a day when the earliest possible shower of rain is due. The tent, a huge flat-topped "Shamyana," was, when finished, roughly paved with bricks, over which were spread priceless Persian and Indian carpets from the "Tosho Khana" or Treasury. The sides and roof were stretched at one end with sulphur-coloured ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... came to, it was with an excruciatingly painful struggle that left him shrinking and nerveless, lying in a corner, blinking at the light of a kerosene lamp. Corrigan sat on the edge of a flat-topped desk watching him with an ugly, appraising, speculative grin. It was as though the man were mentally gambling on his chances to ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... a rude well, hedged in by a little patch of green earth, about which a few camels or goats are quenching their thirst or cropping the scanty herbage. Some Arabs, in picturesque costumes, linger hard by. The tents pitched in the background are of the same low, flat-topped, camel's-hair construction as have been used by these desert tribes for many ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... that the dogwoods and scrub-oaks began to turn up the silvery under-side of their leaves, and all the foliage looked soft and wilted. I carried the lunch-basket to the top of one of the chalk bluffs, where even on the calmest days there was always a breeze. The flat-topped, twisted little oaks threw light shadows on the grass. Below us we could see the windings of the river, and Black Hawk, grouped among its trees, and, beyond, the rolling country, swelling gently until it met the sky. We could recognize familiar farmhouses ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... seaward through the breaches, which occur in front of almost every valley. If the atolls of the larger archipelagoes were upraised, the bed of the ocean being converted into land, they would form flat-topped mountains, varying in diameter from a few miles (the smallest atolls being worn away) to sixty miles; and from being horizontally stratified and of similar composition, they would, as Mr. Lyell has remarked, falsely appear as if they had ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... liking. Piet and I were, as usual, riding forward about a mile ahead of the wagon, on the lookout for ostriches or elephant spoor, when we sighted a troop of the great birds which we were seeking some two miles ahead of us, immediately in line with a range of those curious flat-topped hills which are such a distinctive feature of the South African landscape. Away to our left, about a quarter of a mile distant, was a small kopje, about two hundred feet high, consisting of an outcrop of rock the sides of which, although almost perpendicular, were so rough that I believed they ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... erosion "planed down this range to a surface of comparatively gentle topography." He claims that it must originally have been of great height. Traces of this eroded range (Cretaceous) "still remain in a number of flat-topped hills and ridges that rise above the later tertiary surface. There is reason to believe that this planed-down mountain range had a symmetrical structure, for somewhat to the east of the present divide is a well-marked old crest ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... Good Hope, our young friends strained their eyes in a friendly competition to be first to make it out. Harry was ahead of Ned in discerning the dim outline of Table Mountain, which is well described by its name. It is a flat-topped mountain fronting on the bay on which Cape Town stands. It is about three thousand five hundred feet in height, and is guarded on the left by the Lion's Head, and on the right by the Devil's Berg. The harbor is reached by passing between a small island and the coast, ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... martially against a background of dark broom and hoary rock. Its wearer was, however, very peacefully employed in pulling the silky floss off the heads of the bog-cotton, which lay in a great heap before him on a flat-topped boulder, with a big bunch of many-hued wild flowers beside it. Theresa Joyce, who sat opposite to him, was pulling bog-cotton too, though less diligently, for it might have been noticed that she often ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... a flat-topped mesa eroded to fantastic mockery of some bastioned fort. In the round-topped hills behind it was Noches, fifty miles away. Beyond lay the tangle of hills, rising to the saw-toothed range now painted with orange and mauve and ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... the coldest nerve of any fellow I've ever run up against," he said, looking up from his place across the flat-topped desk. ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... only door in sight. He opened it, and stepped inside. A white-headed, scowling man, clean shaven, and with close-shut, thin, hard lips, looked up over a pile of letters and accounts laid before him on a cheap, flat-topped desk. ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... handling, through the polished crimson sheen, Long streaks of black, the under lacquer, shine out clean. Four desks, adjustable, to suit the heights of players Sitting to viols or standing up to sing, four layers Of music to serve every instrument, are there, And on the apex a large flat-topped golden pear. It burns in red and yellow, dusty, smouldering lights, When the sun flares the old barn-chamber with its flights And skips upon the crystal knobs of dim sideboards, Legless and mouldy, and hops, glint to glint, on hoards Of scythes, and spades, and dinner-horns, so ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... cities sprang from the little human nucleus made up of a Jesuit mission and a Hudson Bay Company depot of the old days. They stand on Thunder Bay, a deep-water sack thrusting out from Lake Superior under the slopes of flat-topped Thunder Cape. The situation is ideal for handling the trade of the great lake highway that swings the traffic through the heart of the ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... office stood open. Sarah walked in, that is, she stepped just inside the doorway and stood there as though glued to the floor. The thin, gray-haired man who was stooping over the flat-topped desk, looking at a card file, glanced up at her and smiled. This ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... but there was no answer. He turned the knob and opened the door. The Dodge library was a large room. In the center stood a big flat-topped desk of heavy mahogany. It ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... backed by flat-topped hills and rugged mountains; dissected upland desert plains in center slope into the desert interior ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of the flat-topped desk, Cynthia tried to resume her work, but the unrest of the early afternoon possessed her and she felt a tear roll down her cheek—the cheek nearest the ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... down upon it in a straight white line. I crept along it cautiously for some two hundred yards, when it opened suddenly into a most beautiful glade some hundred yards or more in width, wherein tall grass grew and flat-topped trees stood singly. With the caution born of long experience I watched for a few moments before I entered the glade, and then I saw why the elephant had trumpeted. There in the middle of the glade stood a large ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... planes he saw a head lifted from the lip of a gully which cut the valley like a trench. It was not the head of a savage, nor yet the head of a Peruvian mountaineer, for it was covered down to the eyebrows by a flat-topped leather automobile cap which was adorned with ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... despair and terror called aloud to him. His shaking hand dropped to his side, and then like some pale ghost, he passed slowly before the eager eyes that were following his every movement to his place behind the flat-topped desk ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... feet of the top. Its length at the base was, roughly, three hundred feet, and its thickness varied from three hundred feet or more at the center, to a few feet at each end. Roughly, then, its basic outline was that of an irregular parallelogram, while its profile was that of a flat-topped cone. For some moments the little group stood in silence as they gazed up at the yellowish-gray walls of ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... cow-ponies who were to draw the hearse. They had never known harness before, and they plunged with the men who held them. Behind the hearse the women followed in a large ranch-wagon, this moment arrived in town. Two mares drew this, and their foals gambolled around them. The great flat-topped dray for hauling poles came last, with its four government mules. The cow-boys had caught sight of it and captured it. Rushing to the post-trader's, they carried the sleeping men from the counter and laid them on the dray. Then, searching ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... the openings in Greek buildings is that they were flat-topped,—covered by a lintel of stone or marble,—and never arched. We have already[17] shown that this circumstance is really of the first importance as determining the architectural character of buildings. Doors and window openings were often a little narrower at ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... how exactly I agree with him on affinities, and especially on extinct forms as illustrated by his flat-topped tree. (259/2. See page 15 of separate copy: "We should then have the present races represented by the countless branchlets forming the flat-topped summit" of a genealogical tree, in which "all we can do is to map out the summit as it were from a bird's-eye view, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... to destroy this clan, but to force it into submission to his marquis. So, when he had persuaded them to throw down their swords, he put off his flat-topped helmet and seated himself ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... to Labu, to give some account of the channel between the reefs; as, from the appearance of the charts, it would seem impossible to navigate the western side of the bay. Having passed Tanjong Labu at a distance of 3 1/2 or 4 miles, get the flat-topped hill called Bulu Tanna ahead. Close to the Bulu Tanna, in the foreground, is another smaller hill, with two remarkable tufts on the top: this hill, just open to the eastward of Bulu Tanna, is the leading mark for Songi, which stands to the westward. This mark ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... like The Sentinels in Yosemite valley. The last cliff before one reaches the level country is known as Cape Sverbef, a bold promontory that projects into the river and is nearly a thousand feet high. Not far from this cliff is a flat-topped mountain remarkable for several crevices on its northern side, from which currents of cold air steadily issue. Ice forms around these fissures in midsummer, and a thermometer suspended in one of them fell in an hour ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... surface is wavy and consists of shallow furrows and slightly raised ridges. But in the leaves of Aristida setacea and Panicum fluitans the furrows are deeper and the ridges are more prominent. In Aristida setacea the ridges are flat-topped and they are rounded with broad ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... of the world were filled with huge, floating, flat-topped battleships, within the capacious interiors of which were packed the parts of aeroplanes as were the soldiers of the Grecian army in their wooden horse at Troy, for assembling and launching them. But the engines of warfare which men had repeatedly ...
— In the Clutch of the War-God • Milo Hastings |
