At first the plains are desert, with mountains skirting our view; the scenery is less interesting than the Arizona desert, because there are no cacti.

Plains and cattle grazing thereon were the only objects, for they take care to build the farms and houses at a considerable distance from the banks, on account of the inundations.

The plain also is really a succession of what may be described as waves running parallel with the nullah, which afford very excellent shelter to any attacking force.

Do spirits go in steel, Roger?" said Beltane, stooping for his sword; for indeed, plain and loud upon the prevailing quiet was the ring and clash of heavy armour, what time from the bushes that clothed the steep a tall figure strode, and the moon made a glory in polished shield, it gleamed upon close-vizored helm, it flashed upon brassart, vanbrace and plastron.

The plain and the lower hills were pasture land, and, not far from the road, on a grassy slope, the Brothers saw the red glow of an almost spent shepherds' fire.

The wonderful plain, covering more than two hundred thousand square miles, and forming the basin of the gigantic Orinoco, is a study in itself.

But the plains of Guiana and tropical America, which the Spaniards called Llanos, are also pampas.

The vast plain, walled with mountains, was an endless city of domed green temples, richly decorated with the gold of the late orange crop.

The Plain of Esdraelon was the strongest centre of the Canaanite civilization.

The plain between the frontier and Trebinje is a waste of limestone crags and blocks, scattered as if after a combat of Titans, a miserable stunted vegetation springing between the rocks, capable of hiding thousands of men within a rifle-shot from the road, and, as we found, actually hiding a good many.

The plain, usually dotted with flocks of sheep, was now a solitude.

Her vast forests have been cut down, giving place to sterile and malarious ground: the plains and shores formerly covered with wealthy and populous cities are now deserted marshes: Sardinia and other ancient granaries of the Roman Empire are empty and unproductive: two-thirds of the Kingdom are occupied by mountains impossible of cultivation, and the remainder is to a large extent ill-farmed and unremunerative.

At 1.15 the plain became grassy, and the soil good (with the exception of a few patches of York gum, the only trees were wattles), and by a rough estimate contained about 8,000 acres of good grassy land; on the north bank of the Greenough River, which we reached at 3.15, the channel was about seventy yards wide, but dry and sandy; nor did we observe any sign of its having run during the past winter.

The fertile plain of Mesopotamia had been from immemorial antiquity the seat of great enterprises.

When factious rage to cruel exile drove The queen of beauty, and the court of love, The Muses droop'd, with their forsaken arts, And the sad Cupids broke their useless darts: Our fruitful plains to wilds and deserts turn'd Like Eden's face, when banish'd man it mourn'd, Love was no more, when loyalty was gone, The great supporter of his awful throne.

This high spreading plain, which before the war was one scene of rural plenty and industrious peace, with its farm lands and orchards dropping gently from the forest country of Chantilly, Compiègne, and Ermenonville, down to the Ourcq and the Marne, will be a place of pilgrimage for generations to come.

The flood plains of the Ganges in India, and the Hoang in China, are the most extensive in the world, and in modern times the most populous.

We'll have the prairies for our garden, and the high plains will be our front yard, with the buffalo-grass thicker than hair on a dog's back.

The old fourteenth- century bridge over the river, with its central tower, could tell some tales too, if we could discover "sermons in stones"; and the plain below the town was the scene of one of Wellington's many victories in 1814.

The plain was an archipelago of a million islands each about a yard square or less, and everyone of them was red with heather.

The plain gradually became a meadow, covered with shrub cypress, flags, reeds, and wild water-plants.

The whole surface of the Philippines is essentially mountainous, the only plains that occur being alluvial districts at the river mouths and the spaces left by the intersection of the ranges.

The broad plains of soft mud, by the aid of the sun, the rains, the guano, and the plough, had now been some years converted into meadows and arable lands; and those which still lay remote from the peopled parts of the group, still nine-tenths of its surface, were fast getting the character of rich pastures, where cattle, and horses, and hogs were allowed to roam at pleasure.

1. Write out and learn: A plain is a wide tract of low-lying and nearly level country.

"A high plain," in Irish, would be, not Ardmagh, or Ardmoy (as it would have been anglicised), but Magh-ard (Anglice Moyard).