we Saw a Great number of Curloos, Some Crains, Ducks, prarie cocks, and Several Species of Sparrows common to the praries.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

" Then, while beyond in the forest bright fires crackled and savory smells of sweetly roasting venison and fat capons filled the glade, and brown pasties warmed beside the blaze, did Robin Hood entertain the Sheriff right royally.
— from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle

It was with what the vicar would doubtless have called a savage sort of smile that she said this.
— from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

Ram’s vetches on Aries, a piece of beef on Taurus, kidneys and lamb’s fry on Gemini, a crown on Cancer, the womb of an unfarrowed sow on Virgo, an African fig on Leo, on Libra a balance, one pan of which held a tart and the other a cake, a small seafish on Scorpio, a bull’s eye on Sagittarius, a sea lobster on Capricornus, a goose on Aquarius and two mullets on Pisces.
— from The Satyricon — Complete by Petronius Arbiter

The latter parted company on the 7th of January, under the care of four frigates, and the following morning the fleet fell in with and captured a Spanish squadron of seven ships-of-war and sixteen supply-ships.
— from The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 by A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

To see moral grandeur rising out of cesspools of iniquity; to rise himself and first glimpse beauty, faint and far, through mud-dripping eyes; to see out of weakness, and frailty, and viciousness, and all abysmal brutishness, arising strength, and truth, and high spiritual endowment— He caught a stray sequence of sentences she was uttering.
— from Martin Eden by Jack London

Behold through each lack-lustre, eyeless hole, The gay recess of Wisdom and of Wit, And Passion's host, that never brooked control: Can all saint, sage, or sophist ever writ, People this lonely tower, this tenement refit? VII.
— from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage by Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron

Sailors, deserting ships at other islands, or in boats at sea anywhere in that vicinity, steered for Charles's Isle, as to their sure home of refuge; while, sated with the life of the isle, numbers from time to time crossed the water to the neighboring ones, and there presenting themselves to strange captains as shipwrecked seamen, often succeeded in getting on board vessels bound to the Spanish coast, and having a compassionate purse made up for them on landing there.
— from The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville

I awoke, it was already day; the train was standing idle; I was in the last carriage, and, seeing some others strolling to and fro about the lines, I opened the door and stepped forth, as from a caravan by the wayside.
— from Across the Plains, with Other Memories and Essays by Robert Louis Stevenson

He was not long in collecting a sufficient supply of sticks to commence a fire.
— from Hendricks the Hunter; Or, The Border Farm: A Tale of Zululand by William Henry Giles Kingston

Our brave and conscientious Britons, whilst taking possession of their territory, have been most careful and anxious to make it universally known, that Australia is not a conquered country; and successive Secretaries of State, who write to their governors in a tone like that in which men of sour tempers address their maladroit domestics, have repeatedly commanded that it must never be forgotten "that our possession of this territory is based on a right of occupancy."
— from The Bushman — Life in a New Country by Edward Wilson Landor

Cucitríce, a she seamster or sewer.
— from Queen Anna's New World of Words; or, Dictionarie of the Italian and English Tongues by John Florio

From the other side of the bushes came a sudden sound of scrambling.
— from Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point; Or, Two Chums in the Cadet Gray by H. Irving (Harrie Irving) Hancock

And yet with the wistfulness came a strange sense of satisfaction that all this new part of her must belong forever to Kut-le.
— from The Heart of the Desert Kut-Le of the Desert by Honoré Morrow

They drew together in homely and cordial friendship, and of an afternoon when dusk fell wove their lace in company in Mère Krebs's mill-house kitchen with the children and the dogs at their feet on the bricks, so that one big fire might serve for all, and all be lighted with one big rush candle, and all be beguiled by chit-chat and songs, stories of spirits, and whispers of ghosts, and now and then when the wind howled at its worst, a paternoster or two said in common for the men toiling in the barges or drifting up the Scheldt.
— from Bébée; Or, Two Little Wooden Shoes by Ouida