It was like disturbing the one small stone which starts the avalanche, which eventually smashes the far-off forest.

The Congress at once dispersed, forgetting all its differences, while the great monarchs united once more in pouring such an avalanche of troops into France and Belgium that Napoleon stood no chance of retaining his throne, whatever military genius he might display.

Simultaneously the German Government set in motion an avalanche of racial feeling to play off against the just and moderate measures taken by other powers to checkmate Austrian aggression.

With these magnificent ice-characters so vividly before us it is not easy to realize that the old glacier that made them vanished tens of centuries ago; for, excepting the vegetation that has sprung up, and the changes effected by an earthquake that hurled rock-avalanches from the weaker headlands, the basin as a whole presents the same appearance that it did when first brought to light.

They went up and up, and down and down, and that other party, Carnehan, was imploring of Dravot not to sing and whistle so loud, for fear of bringing down the tremenjus avalanches.

Had the German Press been unanimous, it might have stopped the avalanche.

And, as darkness fell, Tallow Dick was cautiously picking his way alongside the steep wall of the Gap toward freedom, and picking it with stealthy caution, foot by foot; for up there, to this day, big loose rocks mount halfway to the jagged points of the black cliffs, and a careless step would have detached one and sent an avalanche of rumbling stones down to betray him.

They had held back that avalanche long enough, these Belgians, and one felt as one would to see lost children get home again or some one dragged from under the wheels.

Everyone knows the avalanches on the Jungfrau, and the curiously disproportionate appearance of the little puffs of white smoke, which are said to be the cause of the thunder; but the disproportion ceases to an eye that has learnt really to measure distance, and to know that these smoke-puffs, represent a cataract of crashing blocks of ice.

We leaped fissures, we loosened avalanches, rolling them to crash and roar below, and send long, rumbling echoes out into the canyon.

I outfooted the avalanches and wherever I came to a scaly slope or bank or decayed rock, I leaped down in sheer delight.

Is it a Christian duty to permit an avalanche of evils to overwhelm the Church on the plea of toleration?

At last the Irusian Mountains came in sight, nursing the villages of Pen-Kai and Blut, and the wandering streets of Mlo, where priests propitiate the avalanche with wine and maize.

In about twenty years from planting, you can make your first, box-board cutting of pine, and every ten years thereafter" Arnold had received this avalanche of figures and species with an astonished blink, and now protested energetically that he had had not the slightest intention of precipitating any such flood.

But it seemed as if an infinite tenderness, trembling with fraternal pity, awoke within him, now that he was about to plunge into the painful truths of existence; and it was something emanating from himself, something very great and very good which was to render innocuous the terrible avalanche of facts which was impending.

The slipperiness, sir, of one staggering parson, has set rolling this very avalanche, which gathers size every moment, and threatens to overwhelm me now, unless that idle dog Lancelot will condescend to bestir himself, and help me.'

They shake down avalanches of splinters from sky-line pinnacles and raise up sudden floods like battle fronts in the cañons against towns, trees, and boulders.

They can flirt vigorously in a torrid atmosphere of dinner, dust, and din; can smile with hot coffee running down their backs, small avalanches of ice-cream descending upon their best bonnets, and sandwiches, butter-side down, reposing on their delicate silks.

He thinks, however, he can fix things so as to split large avalanches into little ones.

From the latter end of the second century until the last of the Western Caesars, in A.D. 476, it is, with the exception of a short interval when the strong hand of the great Theodosius stayed the avalanche of Rome's invaders, one long story of the defeat and humiliation of the citizens of the greatest power the world has ever known.

The marks that are scored in delicate lines, such as might be ruled by a diamond on glass, have been cut by innumerable streams trickling in hot weather from the everlasting snow, or ploughed by succeeding avalanches that have slipped from the huge upper snowfields above.

Doors and windows flew open, and new voices were added to the delirious uproar, while at every crossing recruits would come to swell the on-rushing avalanche headed for the Ayuntamiento.

Mountains of drifted snow were to be seen in places, all along the shore; and wreaths that threatened fearful avalanches were suspended from the cliffs, waiting only for the increase of the warmth, to come down upon the rocks beneath.

I had some talk with a youngish man whose business it was to train avalanches to jump clear of his section of the track.

A pebble may stop a log, the branch of a tree turn aside an avalanche.