As they looked about them the country showed signs of being inhabited, as fastened to the bank were a number of rafts formed by felled trees tied together by tough vines.
They knew there must be human beings in the vicinity, or they would never have found the rafts as they were.
I shall make a note of this, for it is truly wonderful to find rafts of timber in the heart of this wild country.
Presently they were startled to see one of the timber rafts drifting swiftly down the center of the stream.
There are similar rafts of logs here, are there not?
These ideas were communicated to all the Courts of Europe, and the French, at one time, actually proposed something of the nature of rafts worked by Miller's plan, for the conveyance of troops to England.
In this letter he commences by recapitulating Miller's experiments in propelling vessels or rafts by paddles worked by capstans or by wind, like a windmill.
My advice was approved, and we made rafts capable of carrying three persons on each.
A few of the enemy who had not yet reached the causeway when the retirement was countermanded, rushed along the shore and came level with the rafts as these began the descent of the rapids.
When the rafts were launched and moored to prevent their being carried down by the current, the ivory was conveyed to them.
But they had to run uphill: the speed of the current was at least fifteen miles an hour; before they could gain the summit of the bluff the rafts would be a mile or more downstream.
The men flat on the decks of the rafts were out of harm's way; but the two white men and their assistants were partly exposed to the flying missiles, since they could not manage the clumsy rafts unless they stood nearly upright.
The situation of the rafts was too close to be pleasant to their occupants.
Their course was checked while the men hastily cut loopholes in the breastwork on each side, at which they posted themselves with their weapons; then the white men drove the rafts forward as swiftly as the shallow water permitted.
As the rafts approached, they were assailed with showers of arrows from both sides, mingled with rifle shots from the right bank.
After a delay of nearly an hour, during which the whole party made a meal of the fruits they had brought with them, they strove again to pole the rafts off the rock.
The actual start was hidden from the enemy by the projecting knoll; but as the rafts swept round the curve their appearance was hailed with loud shouts from the hill-top, where the women had now joined the warriors.
Then the safest course would be to unload the rafts when we get to the head of the rapids and make a portage--carry the things along the bank until we come to the pool.
Jones’ V Amphibious Corps Reconnaissance Company had landed by rubber rafts from the transport submarine Nautilus during the night of 20-21 November.
Smith ordered Holmes to land one battalion by rubber rafts on Green Beach, with a second landing team boated in LCVPs prepared to wade ashore in support.
Using tactics developed with the Navy during the Efate rehearsal, the Marines loaded on board LCVPs which towed their rubber rafts to the reef.
There was floating debris on all sides and men and women and children clinging for dear life to deck chairs and rafts which littered the water.
Captain Turner had ordered some lifeboats swung over the side on Wednesday and all swung over on Thursday morning, but the rafts and collapsible boats were not touched, but remained securely fastened.
Soon they reached the opposite shore, where lines were again drawn taut and other men were pulled across on rafts and in boats.
The great rafts of logs and lumber from Stillwater and the upper St. Croix, were pushed to Prescott by towboats from Stillwater, at the head of the lake.
He piloted log and lumber rafts from the Chippewa to Prairie du Chien, and further down, in the days when Jefferson Davis, as a lieutenant in the regular army, was a member of the garrison at Fort Crawford.
Lumbering operations had already begun on the Black, Chippewa, and St. Croix Rivers prior to 1836, and pilots were in demand to run the timber rafts down the river.
He also was of the typical French half-breed voyageur pioneers of the West, and handed down a record as a competent navigator of rafts on the river when it was almost unknown and entirely undeveloped.
Still another was Charles LaPointe, who ran rafts from the Chippewa to lower river ports prior to 1845--how much earlier, it is now impossible to learn.
Some ran the wild canyons of the Fraser in frail canoes and crazy rafts with their gold strapped to their backs or packed in buckskin sacks and carpet-bags.
There had been floods and all the company's rafts had been carried away.
The Indians traded canoes for horses and showed the Overlanders how to put rafts together to run the Fraser.
Two or three men kept guard at night, so that the rafts were delayed for only a few hours during the darkest part of the night.
The canoes sheered out of the way and the rafts were unmoored.
Then the Ottawa and the Niagara and the Huntingdon rafts slipped out on the current.
One of the rafts stranded on a rock and remained for two days before companions came to the rescue.
Where rivers had to be crossed, the men built rude rafts and poled themselves over, with their pack-horses swimming behind.
It was September before the rafts were ready to be launched.
But on the afternoon of the 5th of September the rafts began to bounce and swirl.
Before the other rafts ran the rapids, two of them were first lightened of their loads.
Some of the disappointed Overlanders floated on down to Alexandria, where they sold their rafts and took jobs on the {83} government road which was being constructed along the canyon.
Sweeps made of trees with the branch ends turned down and long, slim poles kept the rafts in mid-current.
When we recall the experiences of Mackenzie and Fraser on this river, it seems almost incredible that these landsmen made {74} the descent on rafts with their few remaining ponies and oxen tied to the railings; yet so they did.
The Scarborough ran the rapid without mishap and the other rafts followed.
On both sides, spar torpedoes fitted to the bows of ships, and also on rafts slung over the bows, were somewhat extensively used, but on no occasion were they the means of injuring or sinking any vessels.
On these rafts the men would build themselves little huts on which they would live, for it is slow work to get the logs from the forests to the mills.
Big bonfires, called kokko, were lit on all the highest points, and also on rafts on the lake in honor of the Sun.
And when they haue discharged their goods, they sel the rafts for fire, and let the wind out of their goats skins, and cary them home againe vpon their asses by land, to make other voyages downe the riuer.
This was one of the greatest naval battles in the war; for, with a few wooden ships, Farragut ran against the current and past the two forts, meeting fire-rafts and fighting with a large fleet above the forts.
The enemy sent five blazing rafts to set fire to his fleet, but Farragut’s men either dodged the burning craft or towed them out of the way.
These grasses are called balsas ["rafts or floats"].
This left the vessel with but one lifeboat, two jolly boats, and two life-rafts which Lieutenant Brown had made on board.
Some were on our rafts and buoys, some on pieces of floating wreckage.
I learned afterward that Wellington's remaining boats were small and that they had been smashed in lowering, and that for some reason their own life-rafts had fouled and could not be gotten clear of the ship.
Our life-rafts and buoys were there, with plenty of calcium torches, but we absolutely could not get a boat in the water.
Sir Edmund Lyons presented one of the rafts to the French--an act of courtesy and consideration which our Allies estimated at its full value.
The wood is floated down the Dnieper to Cherson in rafts firmly clamped and bound together, with strong and substantial huts upon them for the navigators.
Ere we left we discovered two large rafts of wood concealed in the rushes off the mouth of the Dnieper.
The arsenal at Nicholaieff is very extensive, but its principal supplies of timber came from the Dnieper, and the loss of these two rafts will be no inconsiderable injury.
Other adventures and expeditions have disturbed these waters in times past and in the middle of the last century a procession of rafts plowed southward.
Jefferson Davis at Dells In pioneer times, before the day of the tourist, with each returning vernal season a procession of rafts passed through the Dells.
It is said the future president of the Southern Confederacy rode one of the rafts through the surging waters to its destination many miles below.
Here the rivermen recounted their thrilling experiences in piloting their rafts through the Dells and told of the days in the pineries of pioneer Wisconsin.
As there are rapids between Samarra and Bagdad, it was not possible to float the rafts right down to Bagdad, and consequently everything had to be transhipped to the railway.
These rafts carry big loads; they are formed by a skeleton frame of wood on which is placed brushwood, the frame being supported by inflated skins which are tied to it.
The boats and raftswere at once overset by the impetuous fury of their attack, and the occupants thereof were in another instant struggling in the waters.
Rafts were quickly knocked together and the crossing made to the Indian shore.
Feeling his way to my side he gravely informed me: "There's seventy-eight or ninerafts an' a few canoes.
Ere long they manned the rafts in eager wish To quit the island, when the latest glow Still parted day from night.
The leading rafts passed safely, but the third Hung in mid passage, and by ropes was hauled Below o'ershadowing rocks.
Yet let these hostile thousands fear the souls That rage for battle and that welcome death, And know us for invincible, and joy That no more rafts were stayed.
He must have had rafts or canoes on which to cross the Apurimac, which is here very wide and deep.
We did not doubt a good watch would be kept on board the galleon, the which had taken up her present station, as we reckoned, so as to guard against any attempt of ours to cross to Hispaniola on rafts or canoes.
I observed that the penthouse of rafts was still about the door, and was much perplexed as to what was a-doing there.
But in a little I saw their cunning device, for the Irishmen hoisted the rafts upon their shoulders, and employing them in the manner of what the Romans called a testudo, advanced, thus defended, towards the door of the keep.
On a sudden the rafts fell with a clatter upon the ground, and the men whom they had sheltered ran swiftly towards the wall, whither their comrades had retreated so as they might be the farthest possible from our missiles.
It wanted an hour or two of midnight when my man Stubbs came to me from his outpost on the walls, and told me that the fleet of rafts and hide-boats had put forth from the shore, and was approaching in a ghostly silence.
Palmetto trees, which from their soft and spongy texture, were admirably calculated to deprive a ball of its impetus without causing splinters, had been cut in the forest, and the logs in huge rafts lay moored to the beach.
It took four St. Croix raftsto make one Mississippi raft.
I used to take rafts of lumber down the river and bring back a boat for someone loaded with supplies.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "rafts" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word. Other words: batch; deal; heap; lot; mess; mint; oodles; pack; peck; pile; pot; raft; scads; sight; slew; spate; stack; wad
