noun
definition
A rugged range of mountains.
definition
The letter S in the ICAO spelling alphabet.
definition
A scombroid fish.
definition
A relatively low-quality grade of Spanish saffron.
Examples of sierra in a Sentence
Its lower course is through the territory of Sierra Leone, and it enters the sea as the Sulima.
Being built midway between the Sierra de Priego and Sierra Parapanda, and commanding the open valley between these ranges, it became one of the chief frontier fortresses of the Moors in the 15th century.
It is picturesquely situated in Eagle valley, near the east base of the Sierra Nevada, at an elevation of 4720 ft.
In 1462 Pedro de Cintra extended Portuguese exploration along the African coast and discovered Sierra Leone.
Indigenous palms grow in the valleys of the Sierra Jose Ignacio, also to some extent in the departments of Minas, Maldonado and Paysandu.
The Liberian coast has few lagoons compared with the adjoining littoral of Sierra Leone or that of the Ivory Coast.
The fauna of Liberia is sufficiently peculiar, at any rate as regards vertebrates, to make it very nearly identical with a "district" or sub-province of the West African province, though in this case the Liberian "district" would not include the northernmost portions of the country and would overlap on the east and west into Sierra Leone and the French Ivory Coast.
Nowhere, perhaps, does the flora of West Africa attain a more wonderful development than in the republic of Liberia and in the adjoining regions of Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast.
In a general way it is supposed that the lands lying between the lower St Paul's river and the Sierra Leone frontier are not much mineralized, except that in the vicinity of river mouths there are indications of bitumen.
Sierra Leone, however, was chosen first on account of its possessing an admirable harbour.
The Sierra Leone-Liberia frontier was demarcated in 1903; then followed the negotiations with France for the exact delimitation of the Ivory Coast-Liberia frontier, with the result that Liberia lost part of the hinterland she had claimed.
There are three custom-houses, or ports of entry on the Sierra Leone land frontier between the Moa river on the north and the Mano on the south, and nine ports of entry along the coast.
In 1675 a court intrigue, conducted by his rivals and supported by the younger Don John of Austria, was so far successful that he was driven from court; but the queen gave him the title of marquis of Villa Sierra, and appointed him ambassador to Venice.
Part of his property, and the title of Villa Sierra, but not the grandeeship, were restored to his wife and children.
In the north it is due to the fact that the winds from the Pacific lose most of their moisture, especially in winter, on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada; in the south it is due to the fact that the region lies in a zone of calms, and light, variable winds.
The Sierra Nevada range, which forms the western rim of the Basin, sends into the state a single lofty spur, the Washoe Mountains.
Large animals, such as the black and the grizzly bear, and deer are found on the slopes of the Sierra Mountains, and antelope, deer and elk visit the northernmost valleys in the winter.
In the Washoe Mountains, as in the rest of the Sierra Nevada range, there is a heavy growth of conifers, extending down to the very valleys; but in many places these mountains have been almost deforested to provide timbers for the mines.
In the central, north-eastern and north-western sections, embracing the counties of Nye, Elko and Humboldt, the average annual rainfall varies from 7 to 8 in.; in the west-central section, at the foot of the Sierra, the average is about 10 in.
Though he was not actually defeated, his death in the pass of Muradel in the Sierra Morena, while on his way back to Toledo, occurred in circumstances which showed that no man could be what he claimed to be - "king of the men of the two religions."
Its territory is divided into two nearly equal parts by the eastern branch of the Sierra Madre Occidental, the northern part belonging to the great central plateau region, and the southern to an extremely broken region formed by the diverging branches of the Sierra Madre, with their wooded terraces and slopes and highly fertile valleys.
In piercing the Sierra Morena it forms a series of foaming rapids, and only begins to be navigable at Mertola, 42 m.
There are soap and flour mills and metallurgic factories in the town, and iron, copper and lead mines in the neighbouring Sierra de Almenara.
In Sierra Leone little success has been met with, but on the Gold Coast some cotton better than middling American has been grown, and the association has concluded an agreement with the government for an extension of its work.
The state occupies an elevated plateau, extending from two spurs of the Sierra Madre, called the Sierra Fria and Sierra de Laurel, eastward to the rolling fertile plains of its eastern and south-eastern districts.
Kilham's wife (Hannah Spurr, 1 77418 3 2), whom he married only a few months before his death, became a Quaker, and worked as a missionary in the Gambia and at Sierra Leone; she reduced to writing several West African vernaculars.
Alora, which is an ancient and picturesque town, with several Moorish ruins, occupies an outlying hill of the Sierra de Tolox, and overlooks a fertile valley where maize, sugar-cane and datepalms are cultivated.
Legislative sanction was, however, given to the establishment of the Sierra Leone Company, for the colonization of a district on the west coast of Africa and the discouragement of the slave trade there.
It was for some time thought that from Sierra Leone as a centre industry and civilization might be diffused amongst the nations of the continent; and in 1822 the colony (which in 1847 became the independent republic) of Liberia had been founded by Americans with a similar object; but in neither case have these expectations been adequately fulfilled.
The Sierra de Cobre, a part of the system in the vicinity of Santiago, has a general elevation of about 3000 ft.
The mountains beyond Guantanamo are locally known by a variety of names, though topographically a continuation of the Sierra Maestra.
Of the almost innumerable river cascades, those of the Sierra Maestra Mountains, and in particular the Moa cascade, have already been mentioned.
The foundation of the island is formed of metamorphic and igneous rocks, which appear in the Sierra Maestra and are exposed in other parts of the island wherever the comparatively thin covering of later beds has been worn away.
Large copper deposits of peculiar richness occur here in the Sierra de Cobre, near the city of Santiago; and both iron and manganese are abundant.
Connorn, newly mated to Sierra.
The surrounding country is a sterile and gloomy wilderness exposed to the cold and blighting blasts of the Sierra.
The Portuguese being in his rear, and Wellesley closing with him, the only good road of retreat available lay through Amarante, but he now learned that Beresford had taken this important point from Silveira; so he was then compelled, abandoning his guns and much baggage, to escape, with a loss of some s000 men, over the mountains of the Sierra Catalina to Salamonde, and thence to Orense.
A little north of Coimbra, the road which Massena followed crossed the Sierra de Bussaco (Busaco), a very strong position where Wellington resolved to offer him battle.
The next day Massena turned the Sierra by the Boyalva Pass and Sardao, which latter place, owing to an error, had not been occupied by the Portuguese, and Wellington then retreated by Coimbra and Leiria to the lines, which he entered on the 11th of October, having within them fully ioo,000 able-bodied men.
Wellington had further organized the Spanish forces - Castanos (40,000), with the guerrilla bands of Mina, Longa and others, was in Galicia, the Asturias and northern Spain; Copons (io,000) in Catalonia; Elio (20,000) in Murcia; Del Parque (12,000) in the Sierra Morena, and O'Donell (15,000) in Andalusia.
The capital of Tamaulipas is Ciudad Victoria (pop. in 1900, 10,086), a small sierra town on the Monterrey and Tampico railway about 120 m.
In 1818 Sir Charles McCarthy, governor of Sierra Leone, obtained the cession of the islands to Great Britain from the chiefs of the Baga country, and in 1882 France recognized them to be a British possession.
They were then the headquarters of several Sierra Leone traders.
It ascends the Parana to the great falls of Guayra, or Sete Quedas, and thence westward along the water-parting of the Sierra de Maracayu to the cerro of that name, thence northerly along the Sierra d'Amambay to the source of the Estrella, a small tributary of the Apa, and thence down those two streams to the Paraguay.
The mining operations are chiefly centred in the Sierra Mojada, Sierra Carmen, and in the Santa Rosa valley.
This branch consists of parallel chains enclosing elevated valleys, in one of which lies the town of Merida at the height of 5410 ft., overlooked by the highest summit of the chain (Picacho de la Sierra, 15,420 ft.).
The sierra contains the water-parting between the basin of the Orinoco and those of the small rivers on the north-west.
West of the Maritime Andes low ranges (3500-5000 ft.) trend northwards from the end of the Sierra de Merida towards the coast on the east side of the Lake of Maracaibo, while the region on the west of that lake consists of lagoon-studded lowlands.
Some of the culminating points in these ranges are the Cerros Yaparana (7175 ft.) and Duida (8120 ft.) in the Parima sierras near the upper Orinoco, the Sierra de Maraguaca (8228 ft.), and the celebrated flat-topped Mt Roraima (8530 ft.) in the Pacaraima sierras on the boundary line with Brazil and British Guiana.
The rocks of Falcon are believed by Sievers to belong to the Andean system; while the outlying peninsula of Paraguana probably belongs, geologically, to the same massif as Goajira and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Maria in Colombia.