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Examples
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At five miles from our camp we ascended some high ridges of an oolitic limestone formation, which were partially covered by drift-sand, and in the distance looked like the ridge of a sea shore.
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We endured for some hours, without variety except at times when the camels plunged and strained a little and the saddles creaked: indications that the soft plain had merged into beds of drift-sand, dotted with tiny scrub, and therefore uneven going, since the plants collected little mounds about their roots, and the eddies of the sea-winds scooped hollows in the intervening spaces.
Seven Pillars of Wisdom Thomas Edward 2003
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I fell in with Lieutenant Fabius Stanley, United States Navy, and we rode into Yerba Buena together about an hour before sundown, there being nothing but a path from the Mission into the town, deep and heavy with drift-sand.
Memoirs of the Union's Three Great Civil War Generals David Widger
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Quantities of drift-sand pass before the high winds into the swamp behind, and, weighing down the flags and willow branches, prepare a fit soil for succeeding crops.
The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 Various
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In some places were high, steep banks, in others drift-sand fields, where the sand lay heaped in banks and hills.
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The enclosure is filling up with drift-sand; the inscriptions on the tombs, often a mere charcoal scrawl of some unlettered friend or parent, is soon effaced by winds and rain.
Fountains in the Sand Rambles Among the Oases of Tunisia Norman Douglas 1910
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The Chinese call it the "grass country," but very large parts of it are waterless desert, where drift-sand is piled up into dunes, and caravan routes and wells are far apart.
From Pole to Pole A Book for Young People Sven Anders Hedin 1908
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Here and there it disappears altogether, and the Nile runs between black and sun-cracked hills, with the orange drift-sand lying like glaciers in their valleys.
A Desert Drama Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" Arthur Conan Doyle 1894
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The explorations of Francis Gregory to the eastward from Nickol Bay, and of the Surveyor-General to the south from the Victoria River, were both arrested by wastes of drift-sand, whilst those from the western seaboard have not been extended further inland than to more than an average of 3 degrees of longitude.
Narrative of the Overland Expedition of the Messrs. Jardine from Rockhampton to Cape York, Northern Queensland Frank Jardine 1880
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Time, accumulating the drift-sand from the desert and particles of fertile earth, does the rest, and clothes the mounds with the verdant and flowery garment which is the delight of the Arab's eyes.
Gammerstang commented on the word drift-sand
An accumulation of sand that drifts down wind in the lee of some obstruction and is usually smaller than a dune.
January 13, 2018