So many are the rivers of note with which the Scythians are provided: and for cattle the grass which comes up in the land of Scythia is the most productive of bile of any grass which we know; and that this is so you may judge when you open the bodies of the cattle.
— from The History of Herodotus — Volume 1 by Herodotus

After this, forming the boundary-line between Africa and Æthiopia, its banks, though not immediately peopled by man, are the resort of numbers of wild beasts and animals of various kinds.
— from The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 1 (of 6) by the Elder Pliny

The stream was very strong, and our progress was correspondingly slow, but we felt that we were travelling in a dignified manner, and therefore repressed our natural impatience.
— from A Diplomat in Japan The inner history of the critical years in the evolution of Japan when the ports were opened and the monarchy restored, recorded by a diplomatist who took an active part in the events of the time, with an account of his personal experiences during that period by Ernest Mason Satow

Pierre saw that there was a bridge in front of him and that soldiers were doing something on both sides of it and in the meadow, among the rows of new-mown hay which he had taken no notice of amid the smoke of the campfires the day before; but despite the incessant firing going on there he had no idea that this was the field of battle.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

This was the only voyage which I may say was successful in all my adventures, which I owe to the integrity and honesty of my friend the captain; under whom also I got a competent knowledge of the mathematics and the rules of navigation, learned how to keep an account of the ship’s course, take an observation, and, in short, to understand some things that were needful to be understood by a sailor; for, as he took delight to instruct me, I took delight to learn; and, in a word, this voyage made me both a sailor and a merchant; for I brought home five pounds nine ounces of gold-dust for my adventure, which yielded me in London, at my return, almost £300; and this filled me with those aspiring thoughts which have since so completed my ruin.
— from The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

In the twelfth it was full of monasteries, and the ruins of no less than seven of these buildings remain, without counting the chapels on Kŭrŭntŭl, or the Templars’ church in the fortress on the summit of the same mountain.
— from Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure by C. R. (Claude Reignier) Conder

Such is its velocity, that the earth, moving at the rate of nineteen miles in a second, would take two months to pass through a distance which a ray of light would dart over in eight minutes.
— from On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences by Mary Somerville

Besides this, she had a fancy to pass through Alencon so elegantly equipped that no one could recognize her; to put her mother above the reach of necessity, and also to send to poor Athanase, in a delicate manner, a sum of money,—which in our age is to genius what in the middle ages was the charger and the coat of mail that Rebecca conveyed to Ivanhoe.
— from The Works of Balzac: A linked index to all Project Gutenberg editions by Honoré de Balzac

As the procession generally lasts two or three days, and as they appear to move at the rate of nearly two miles and a half an hour, some idea may be formed of their enormous number.
— from The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. by Various

The chief materials used by the Alexandrine writers in their poetry were the tales and fancies of the old mythology and the results of natural science; the modes of human feeling to which they mainly gave expression were the passion of love and the sensibility to the beauty of Nature.
— from The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil by W. Y. (William Young) Sellar

Whilst this state of things existed, that great movement ascribed to Romulus occurred, namely: the concentration of a hundred Latin gentes on the banks of the Tiber, which was followed by a like gathering of Sabine, Latin and Etruscan and other gentes, to the additional number of two hundred, ending [Pg 302] in their final coalescence into one people.
— from Ancient Society Or, Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery, through Barbarism to Civilization by Lewis Henry Morgan

Of the earlier and more difficult part of the work I saw nothing, for when I joined the association it had an assured position, and had behind it two great outstanding successes—the abolition of white phosphorus in the making of matches, and the regulation of nightwork for women.
— from The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Volume 2 by Stephen Lucius Gwynn

Indeed, this is the true way to travel in Greece; the country is mountainous, and the road or narrow horse-path so rough and precipitous that the traveller is often obliged to dismount and walk.
— from Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland, Vol. 1 (of 2) by John L. Stephens

He says: "In an age where needles are threaded by machinery at the rate of nearly one per second; where embroideries are produced by a machine process which reverses the old method in moving the cloth up to fixed needles; where Sunlight Soap is shaped, cut, boxed, packed into cases, nailed up, labelled, and even sent to the lighters by machinery, so that hand labour is almost entirely superseded; it seems odd and, in fact, quite out of date and uncommercial to print wall-papers entirely by hand process.
— from Old Time Wall Papers An Account of the Pictorial Papers on Our Forefathers' Walls with a Study of the Historical Development of Wall Paper Making and Decoration by Kate Sanborn