Such embankments are usually gently curving or crescent shaped and are composed of sand or shingle which presents a steep landward and a gradual seaward slope.
Because of these natural embankments or levees, tributary streams are often compelled to flow long distances in nearly parallel direction before effecting a junction.
The embankmentswhich hindered the overflow of the Euphrates and Tigris and kept them within carefully regulated channels, the canals which carried off the surplus water and distributed it over the country, needed continual attention.
Large sums have been expended in the construction of dams, embankments and canals to contain the water after the river recedes, allowing the amount thus retained to be drawn off as it is needed.
About eight miles beyond the bridge the embankments suddenly ceased.
We find that the low country on that side was subject to continual inundations from the earliest periods, and that, according to a tradition, Semiramis built embankments to restrain the river.
The Gla is consequently a natural stronghold, above one hundred feet high, furnished on all sides with outworks, resembling the artificial embankments of a modern citadel.
The embankments of the rivers, utterly neglected, have broken away, and the waters have spread over the face of the land.
Each of the finger-like extensions of the delta, shown on the accompanying map, is due to the prolongation of a pair of embankments into the Gulf by each distributary and the growth of a secondary delta at its mouth.
Of less importance is the erosion of the margin of the land by waves and currents and the deposition of material brought from the land by streams, together with the spits, bars, and embankments made by waves and currents.
The embankments were broken, the canals choked up, the fields untilled and overrun by the barbarians from the Sudan or the Bedouin of the eastern desert.
It was, on the contrary, an oasis reclaimed from marsh and water by the wise engineering labours of the kings of the twelfth dynasty and the embankments which they caused to be erected.
Herodotos saw it as the French savans saw it at the beginning of the present century; the embankmentswere broken, and fields and roads were alike submerged.
A hole in the side of one of the embankments told that it was still used as such, for a woodchuck had burrowed in under the roots of a maple where he was safe not only from his enemies but from winter itself.
Why so eager to learn of these crumbling mounds and broken down embankments in our own land?
Wood frequently costs nothing more than the labour of cutting it, and the very level surface of the country renders tunnels, cuttings, and embankments generally unnecessary.
The strain upon the embankments was almost inconceivably great, while the destruction which any break in that long line of earthworks would involve was appalling even to think of.
It is no wonder that the embankments are ablaze with torches and that a thousand men are working ceaselessly by night and by day to build the barriers higher.
As more and more lands were brought under cultivation, more and more of these embankments were built, and the river was more and more restrained.
This intervening space is flooded every year, and by the action of the water new layers of sand and soil are deposited every summer, thus strengthening the embankmentsfrom season to season.
But these are only good where they have been made on embankments and are paved.
The railway embankment had been transformed into a very strong defensive position, and a heavy fire was expected from it when we advanced from the high embankments of the YSER.
Elsewhere the canals had to pass along high embankments or through deep cuttings.
Fort William Henry was an irregular bastioned square, formed by embankments of gravel surmounted by a rampart of heavy logs, laid in tiers crossed one upon another, the interstices filled with earth.
Green mounds and embankments of earth enclose the whole space, and beneath the highest of them yawn arches and caverns of ancient masonry.
Mr. Lewis, prepossessed with the idea that the embankments must have been triangular in shape, drew the line B C as the base of his triangle, bisecting it at M and N, and making the loop M S N touch the brook.
Mr. Sparks drew a map of the embankments which is incorporated in his Writings of Washington (see plate on page 175).
Without its embankments on the south and west sides, two trenches were dug parallel with the embankments, to serve as rifle-pits.
They rushed upon the embankments and passed the abandoned lines with little opposition.
The operation connected with excavations and embankments of earth in preparing foundations of buildings, in constructing canals, railroads, etc.
A mode of facing sea walls and embankments with planks driven as piles and secured by ties.
Of their far-farmed dikes and sluices, of the marsh-lands and downs which their embankments inclosed, much more may be said, for Mr Kohl devotes half his work to their consideration.
Ninety thousand dollars were one summer spent in building embankments around reclaimed land, now valued at one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, thus showing a clear gain of sixty thousand dollars by the undertaking.
The dunes here are high embankments of sand, covered with spear-like grass.
The big trees grew still taller in this higher air, their enormous roots spreading along the embankments in great horizontal lines and stages of buttresses.
There are great walls to the avenue, which are embankments of the mountains.
The dykes or embankments have been made in this way: first of all secure and massive foundations had to be laid, the ground being compressed to make it very solid.
Another of my sons observed, on the inland side of Beachy Head, where the surface sloped at about 25 degrees, many short little embankments like those just mentioned.
If the little embankmentsabove the Corniche road, which Dr.
The same result would assuredly follow with ancient embankments and tumuli; except where they had been formed of gravel or of nearly pure sand, as such matter is unfavourable for worms.
On the upper parts of the slope, these embankments showed no signs of having been trampled on by sheep, but in the lower parts such signs were fairly plain.
He relies chiefly on indirect, but apparently trustworthy, evidence that the slopes of the old embankments are the same as they originally were; and it is obvious that he could know nothing about their original heights.
At the other end of the bank, the slope suddenly became less steep, and here the ledges ceased rather abruptly; but little embankments only a foot or two in length were still present.
When these, too, had piled up, they finally ran the remainder of the rolling stock down the embankments and into the jungle.
But the almost uninjured railway trucks that had run their little race, down embankments into the bush, were saved to run again.
The embankments of the road approaching the river are exceedingly steep, about sixty feet high, and are made of large, rough stone taken from the cuts in the road.
A more jagged or more broken place than theseembankments it would be difficult to imagine.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "embankments" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
