adjective
definition
Calm, peaceful.
definition
Preferring peace by nature; avoiding violence.
synonyms
Examples of pacific in a Sentence
There was a crude map to the Pacific Crest Inn.
This fell into the hands of the Northern Pacific railway, but was purchased by the promoters of the Canadian Northern railway.
He introduced the Thurman Bill, for which he was chiefly responsible, which became law in May 1878, and readjusted the government's relations with the bond-aided Pacific railways.
The fleet is divided into the Mediterranean squadron, the Northern squadron, the Atlantic division, the Far Eastern division, the Pacific division, the Indian Ocean division, the Cochin China division.
Evidence of this is to be found in the altitudes of the stations on the Buenos Aires and Pacific railway running a little north of west across the pampas to Mendoza.
It is the western terminus of the Canadian Pacific railway.
After successfully observing the transit from the island of Tahiti, or Otaheite, as Cook wrote it, the " Endeavour's " head was turned south, and then north-west, beating about the Pacific in search of the eastern coast of the great continent whose western shores had been so long known to the Dutch.
Even the sailor on the Atlantic and Pacific is awakened by his voice; but its shrill sound never roused me from my slumbers.
The narrow coastal zone on the Pacific is only for m.
In 1903 the Gould lines determined to enter this Pacific territory.
Thus he came at length to stand on the verge of the Indian Ocean; " gazing upon it," a writer has said, " with as much delight as Balboa, when he crossed the Isthmus of Darien from the Atlantic to the Pacific."
All voyagers agree that for varied beauty of form and colour the Society Islands are unsurpassed in the Pacific. Innumerable rills gather in lovely streams, and, after heavy rains, torrents precipitate themselves in grand cascades from the mountain cliffs - a feature so striking as to have attracted the attention of all voyagers, from Wallis downwards.
There is communication both south and north by rail, and regular steamers serve the ports of the colony, the principal Pacific Islands, Australia, &c. From 1853 to 1876 Auckland was the seat of the provincial government, and until 1865 that of the central government, which was then transferred to Wellington.
Broadly speaking, the American portion of the sub-region consists of an Atlantic and Pacific forest area and an intervening non-forest one, partly occupied by the Rocky Mountains, partly by intervening plains.
All these are wanting in the Pacific area, though there are indications in its gold-bearing gravels that it once possessed them.
For this purpose Juan Diaz de Solis was despatched in October 1515, and in Pacific January 1516 he discovered the mouth of the Rio de la ocean.
Reaching the Pacific through the Strait of Magellan, Drake proceeded northward along the west coast of America, resolved to attempt the discovery of a northern passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic. The coast from the southern extremity of the Californian peninsula to Cape Mendocino had been discovered by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo and Francisco de Ulloa in 1539.
The voyage of Drake across the Pacific was preceded by that of Alvaro de Mendana, who was despatched from Peru in 1567 to discover the great Antarctic continent which was believed to extend far northward into the South sea, the search In Pacific. for which now became one of the leading motives of Pacific. exploration.
After a voyage of eighty days across the Pacific, Mendana discovered the Solomon Islands; and the expedition returned in safety to Callao.
In September 1599 the fleet had entered the Pacific. The ships were then steered direct for Japan, and anchored off Bungo in April 1600.
After plundering Payta and making requisitions at Acapulco, the Dutch fleet crossed the Pacific and reached the Moluccas in March 1616.
The Dutch now resolved to discover a passage into the Pacific to the south of Tierra del Fuego, the insular nature of which had been ascertained by Sir Francis Drake.
The voyage of Lord Anson to the Pacific in 1740-1744 was of a predatory character, and he lost more than half his men from scurvy; while it is not pleasant to reflect that at the very time when the French and Spaniards were measuring an arc of the meridian at Quito, the British under Anson were pillaging along the coast of the Pacific and burning the town of Payta.
The expedition, consisting of the " Dolphin " commanded by Wallis, and the " Swallow " under Captain Philip Carteret, sailed in September 1766, but the ships were separated on entering the Pacific from the Strait of Magellan.
He then entered the Pacific, and reached Tahiti in April 1768.
The third voyage was intended to attempt the passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic by the north-east.
He then crossed the Pacific to Macao, and in July 1787 he proceeded to explore the Gulf of Tartary and the shores of Sakhalin, remaining some time at Castries Bay, so named after the French minister of marine.
The broad Pacific depression seems to answer to the broad elevation of the Old World - the narrow trough of the Atlantic to the narrow continent of America."
The remarkable line of volcanoes around the whole coast of the Pacific and along the margin of the Caribbean and Mediterranean seas is one of the most conspicuous features of the globe.
The percentages of the land surface draining to the different oceans are approximately - Atlantic, 34'3%; Arctic sea, 26.5%; Pacific, 14.4%; Indian Ocean, 12.8%.'
The construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific railway through this district has made it of some importance.
The Maoris are Polynesians, and, in common with the majority of their kinsfolk throughout the Pacific, they have traditions which point to Savaii, originally Savaiki, the largest island of the Samoan group, as their cradleland.
If earlier immigrants from Samoa or other eastern Pacific islands arrived they must have become absorbed into the native Papuan population - arguing from the absence of any distinct tradition earlier than that "of the six canoes."
Their colour is usually a darker brown than that of their kinsfolk of the eastern Pacific, but light-complexioned Maoris, almost European in features, are met with.
Panama is served by regular steamers to San Francisco, Yokohama and other Pacific ports.
In the 16th century the city was the strongest Spanish fortress in the New World, excepting Cartagena, and gold and silver were brought hither by ship from Peru and were carried across the Isthmus to Chagres, but as Spain's fleets even in the Pacific were more and more often attacked in the 17th century, Panama became less important, though it was still the chief Spanish port on the Pacific. In 1671 the city was destroyed by Henry Morgan, the buccaneer; it was rebuilt in 1673 by Alfonzo Mercado de Villacorta about five miles west of the old site and nearer the roadstead.
The picturesque Bureya Mountains above the Amur, the forest-clad Sikhota-alin on the Pacific, and the volcanic chains of Kamchatka belong, however, to quite another orographical construction, being the border-ridges of the terraces by which the great plateau formation descends to the depths of the Pacific Ocean.
The double river-systems of the Volga and Kama, the Ob and Irtysh, the Angara and Yenisei, the Lena and Vitim on the Arctic slope, and the Amur and Sungari on the Pacific slope, are instances.
Kronstadt is the naval headquarters in the Baltic, Sevastopol in the Black Sea and Vladivostok on the Pacific.
The second-class fortresses are Kronstadt and Sveaborg in the Gulf of Finland, Ivangorod in Poland, Libau on the Baltic Sea, Kerch on the Black Sea and Vladivostok on the Pacific. In the third class are Viborg in Finland, Ossovets and Ust Dvinsk (or Dunamunde) in Lithuania, Sevastopol and Ochakov on the Black Sea, and Kars and Batum in Caucasia.
Russian type has thus been maintained from Novgorod to the Pacific, with but minor differentiations on the outskirts - and this notwithstanding the great variety of races with which the Russians have come into contact.
At the Pacific end of the Siberian railway a line connecting Vladivostok with Khabarovsk (479 m.) at the junction of the Amur and the Usuri, was first of all built, following the valley of the Usuri.
Meanwhile the Canadian Pacific, a true transcontinental line, was built from Montreal, on Atlantic tide-water, to the Pacific at Vancouver, 2906 m.
At that time the so-called transcontinental railways, connecting the Pacific coast of the United States with the central portions of the country, and thus with the group of railways reaching the Atlantic seaboard, consisted of five railways within the borders of the United States, and one in Canada.
In Canada the Canadian Pacific was the only transcontinental line, extending from St John, on the bay of Fundy, and from Quebec, on the river St Lawrence, to Vancouver, on the strait of Georgia, the distance from St John to Vancouver being approximately 3379 m.
Next, south of the Great Northern, lay the Northern Pacific railway, starting on the west from Portland, Ore., and from Seattle and Tacoma, Wash., and extending east to Duluth, St Paul and Minneapolis by way of Helena, Mont.
Thus it will be observed that the five great cities of the Pacific coast-Seattle and Tacoma, Wash., Portland, Ore., and San Francisco and Los Angeles, Cal.-were already well supplied with railways; but the growth of the fertile region lying west of the transcontinental divide was most attractive to American railway builders; and railways serving this district, almost all of them in trouble ten years before, were showing great increases in earnings.
Shortly after the plans were announced for building the Western Pacific, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul also decided to extend west.
At the same time that these two extensions were being undertaken by old and well-established railways, a new company-the Kansas City, Mexico && Orient-was engaged in constructing a line almost due south-west from Kansas City, Mo., to the lower part of the gulf of California in Mexico; while an additional independent line was under construction from Denver in a north-westerly direction towards the Pacific coast.
The Union Pacific railroad was a military necessity to the United States if the authority of the national government was to be maintained in the Far West.