These afforded good footholds, but the surface curved more and more steeply at the head, and the pits became shallower and less abundant, until I found myself in danger of being shed off like avalanching snow.

It was only about forty-five or fifty feet high, and somewhat roughened by fissures and projections; but these seemed so slight and insecure, as footholds, that I tried hard to avoid the precipice altogether, by scaling the wall of the channel on either side.

He had to safeguard the prisoners and Loyalists while preparing to evacuate the few remaining footholds of British power in the face of an implacable foe.

Tom had long been picking his way cautiously through this treacherous forest, stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and roots, which afforded precarious footholds among deep sloughs, or pacing carefully, like a cat, along the prostrate trunks of trees, startled now and then by the sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking of a wild duck, rising on the wing from some solitary pool.

A band of Danes keep the Isle of Sheppey through the winter; their first foothold in England.

He sat down, took off his snowshoes, strapped them to his back, and began to work his way up the slope, battering out each foothold with the head of his ax.

Vaguely, as he hewed his footholds and worked his way up, he yearned for the cleverness of Harry or the wit of Joe.

Eighteen hundred feet below, it might be more, the Tarn threaded lush bottom-lands, tilled fields, goodly orchards, plantations of walnut and Spanish chestnut, and infrequent, tiny villages that clung to precarious footholds between cliffs and water.

These grooves would be greasy with rain; otherwise one could hardly ask for better footholds.

She had a sudden feeling of uncertainty as if he had kicked away a foothold upon which she had rashly attempted to rest.

Attempts were being made to get the gun mules of the battery through this, but at every step they sank up to their girths, even then not finding firm foothold.

The men, working in unison and in a long row, each armed with a primitive spade or "foot plough," to the handle of which footholds were lashed, would,

In another place the slope was covered with slippery grass where it was hard to find either handholds or footholds.

I swung down on to the crumbling foothold that supported Holman, and breathlessly we began to scramble toward the valley.

" She climbed up to her seat, using the hub of her wheel for a foothold, and springing with surprising agility and strength.

The ledge was covered with loose fragments of soft volcanic stone, and Riggs and I had to be careful in making the ascent to the top of the ridge, for every time we sought a foothold we threatened to bring down an avalanche of debris, and, not knowing what Rajah had seen, or how close the pirates might be, we were afraid of giving the alarm with a crash of loosened rocks.

Whether he be republican, flying from the oppression of thronesor whether he be monarch or monarchist, flying from thrones that crumble and fall under or around him,he feels equal assurance, that if he get foothold on our soil, his person is safe, and his rights will be respected.

Out of these she was only a little elderly thread-paper of a woman, of no apparent account among crowds of other people, and with scarcely enough of bodily bulk or presence to take any positive foothold anywhere.

Within ten years from his getting a foothold on Windermere banks, he had raised periodical literature to a height unknown before in our time, by his contributions to "Blackwood's Magazine"; and he seemed to step naturally into the Moral Philosophy Chair in Edinburgh in 1820.

The creed of the backwoodsman who had a creed at all was Presbyterianism; for the Episcopacy of the tide-water lands obtained no foothold in the mountains, and the Methodists and Baptists had but just begun to appear in the west when the Revolution broke out.

By the end of 1775 the Americans had gained firm foothold in Kentucky.

Where their preachers obtained foothold, it was made a matter of reproach to the Presbyterian clergymen that they had been educated in early life for the ministry as for a profession.

For three hundred years the Portuguese possessed footholds in South Africa; but they left to the English and Dutch the task of building free communities able to hold in fact as well as in name the country south of the Zambesi.

Just when we had about decided that our only chance was to stand on each other's shoulders and try to hack out footholds with a bread knife, some one suggested that we try the effect of college yells on the gentlemen within.

Excessive costs of empire building, including the disastrous losses of military struggle from 1914 to 1945, impoverished and weakened the European overlords to such an extent that they could no longer maintain their footholds in Africa.