Word: bleake
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...decades thereafter, Tibet was almost as remote from the world as Mars, and to this day its Buddhist priests look on Everest as the abode of potent gods. Not until 1920 was permission for a climb obtained from the Dalai Lama, religious and temporal monarch who ruled the bleak uplands from Lhasa. The first expedition spotted the rock shoulder zig-zagging down from the peak to the saddle which was later called the North Col, but wasted its time on a heart-breaking approach to the saddle before discovering the more feasible access from East Rongbuk Glacier...
...King Charles II gave the "Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay" a charter two years later for the exclusive trade of all territories watered by streams flowing into Hudson Bay. No gunshot had ever sounded there and caribou and grizzlies roamed the bleak and ragged wastes undisturbed, when Prince Rupert's little company settled down to business, taking as their motto "Pro Pelle Cutem" (Skin for Skin...
With a great scraping of chairs and clearing of throats delegates to the League of Nations Disarmament Conference moved into their bleak hall in Geneva last week after seven months of recess. They and the world knew that they were mourners at a wake, that, with Germany absent and rampant on rearmament, the last chance of doing anything practical about engines of death went glimmering months ago. But they and the world expected a few fine fireworks before the corpse was laid finally to rest. That they...
...command of the Ross was Captain Oscar Nilsen, who began his whaling under the man who saved the industry from extinction. Modern whaling dates back to Christmas Eve, 1904, when Captain Carl Anton Larsen of Sandefjord, Norway, brought the first whale oil of the season into Grytviken, a bleak whaling station on the Island of South Georgia east of Cape Horn. Captain Larsen, already an oldster in the trade, realized that whaling was doomed unless new grounds were discovered. The Arctic, hunted for centuries, was nearing exhaustion. With great difficulty he raised enough capital for an expedition to the Weddell...
...lizards have since been found on a few neighboring islands, but most are on Komodo. Komodo is a volcanic island 22 mi. long and 12 mi. wide, covered with bleak, crumbling mountains, grassy plains, thick jungle. Besides dragon lizards it supports many a deer, boar, water buffalo, bird, snake, insect and a miserable Dutch penal colony. The lizards claw out great caves in the mountains, roam down to prey on deer, boar and smaller animals. They walk with bodies well off the ground, can run fast, swim, stand on their hind legs like dinosaurs. They are keen-eyed, keen-eared...