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More "Impassable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this gorge—impassable for wheeled vehicles—the waggon-trace, below its entrance, turns off to the right; and we perceived that the caravan had taken that direction. To get round the heads of the transverse ravines, that run into the canon, a detour ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... surprising that so many of the Sun River and ranch people came, for the night was terrible, even for Montana, and the roads must have been impassable in places. Even here in the post there were great drifts of snow, and the path to the theater was cut through banks higher than our heads. It had been mild and pleasant for weeks, and only two nights before the entertainment we had gone to the hall for rehearsal with fewer ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... and lowest, between the richest and poorest, between the most wise and the most ignorant, between the most gracious and the most ungodly, as there is between the infinite God and a finite angel. Should then the mutual infirmities and failings of Christians, be an insuperable and impassable gulf, as between heaven and hell, that none can pass over by a bridge of love to either? "If God so loved us," should not we love one another? 1 John iv. 11. And besides, when I consider that God hath not only loved me, but my brethren who were worthy of hatred, with an everlasting love, and ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... we have to make it possible that it shall be fulfilled by keeping inside the wall, and trusting to it. As faith dwindles, the fiery wall burns dim, and evil can get across its embers, and can get at us. Keep within the battlements, and they will flame up bright and impassable, with a fire that on the outer side consumes, but to those within is a fire ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... force their passage; again it became clogged with masses of debris, dead branches, and dislodged fragments of stone, across which they were obliged to struggle desperately, while once they completely halted before a sheer smoothness of rock wall that appeared impassable. It was bridged finally by a cedar trunk, which Hampton wrenched from out its rocky foothold, and the two crept cautiously forward, to emerge where the sunlight rested golden at the summit. They sank face downward in ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... comparative calm reigned over the Austro-Russian theatre of war, so far as actual hostilities were concerned. But it was not altogether the variable climatic conditions of alternate frost and thaw—the latter converting road and valley into impassable quagmires—that caused the lull. It was a short winter pause during which the opposing forces—on one side at least—were preparing and gathering the requisite momentum for the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... that they might have the first chance of taking places in the boxes. I saw some take their hats off and put on night-caps. At ten o'clock the next morning the door was opened to them, and at that time the street in front of the theatre was impassable. When the rush took place, I saw a man spring up and catch hold of the iron which supported a lamp on one side of the door, by which he raised himself so as to run over the heads of the crowd into the theatre. Some of these ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... joyful hearts to greet the sunshine. There is, however, no slow transition. Rushing winds from the North-west sweep the sky, the snow vanishes, and after a week or two, during which the prairie trails are impassable, the bleached grass dries and green blades and flowers spring ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... plains as Lithuania, Courland, and Poland, travel in winter is easier than at any other time of year. The rivers, which run sluggishly in their ditch-like beds, are frozen so completely that the bridges are no longer required. The roads, in summer almost impassable—mere ruts across the plain—are for the time ignored, and the traveller strikes a bee-line from place to place across a level of ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... women by seeing around me so many who were self-devoted to celibacy. The thought sometimes occurred to me whether I should not find the best and the only natural solution of the problem of existence, as submitted to myself, in taking upon me the vows which settle the whole question and raise an impassable barrier between the devotee and the object of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Dona Maria said she had seen the child some time before going in the direction of the "shales." These were broad beds of rock to the south of town, much broken and deeply fissured, and so glaringly hot during most of the day as to be impassable. Thither Jose bent his steps, and at length came upon the girl sitting in the shade of a stunted algarroba tree some ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... and swear, partly in fear, and partly through sheer vexation of spirit, at having no means of vengeance against a foe whose audacity was open and outrageous, whose trumpets were for ever sounding a charge, yet who were withal, as impassable as Etna. ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... thinking aloud: "The fact of the matter is, that in this world, the dead weight of the mass bears heavily upon the exceptional natures. It comes home to one vividly, in cases like this. The stupidity and blindness of each individual goes to build up the dead wall, the impassable obstacle, for some other spirit. The burden that we have cast upon the world has to be borne by our fellow man or woman, and perhaps is doomed to crush ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... by creating and perpetuating arbitrary and yet almost impassable lines of social cleavage, must be fatal to the development of a robust body politic which can only be produced by the reasonable intermingling and healthy fusion of the different classes of the community. It was perhaps chief ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... Scott's Mountain.—Good camp at the foot of the mountain. Road passes over the mountains, but is impassable for wagons. ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... great loss and suffering to the two hundred thousand burnt-out people, who were obliged to lie in the fields under the open night sky, or in hastily-made huts of mud and straw, while the lanes and roads were rendered impassable by carts which had broken down as they tried to save their goods. But the Fire was a great blessing to the City afterwards, for it arose from its ruins very much improved—built more regularly, more widely, more ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... impossible to distinguish friend from foe, and who in countless instances used a false appearance of friendship for ambush and assassination. They were obliged to deal with problems of communication and transportation in a country without roads and frequently made impassable by torrential rains. They were weakened by tropical heat and tropical disease. Widely scattered over a great archipelago, extending a thousand miles from north to south, the gravest responsibilities, involving the ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... globe. The air is then hot and oppressive, reminding the geologist of the steaming atmosphere in the carboniferous period; the surrounding plains are flooded with water, and the roads, even some of the streets of the city, become impassable; intolerable musquitoes, huge cockroaches, disgusting centipedes, venomous scorpions, and still more deadly serpents, keep the human species circumspect, and fevers and dysenteries do the work ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... hand and led the way. He knew it well, though it was a rugged and steep one with no track to mark it. Sometimes they seemed to be walking around the mountain, sometimes they were climbing, sometimes they dragged themselves over rocks or fallen trees, or struggled through almost impassable thickets; more than once they descended into ravines and, almost at the risk of their lives, clambered and drew themselves with the aid of the undergrowth up the other side. The Rat was called upon to use all his prowess, ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... rapid descent of its bed, soon changed it into a noisy and dashing stream. About twenty miles above Animas City we were compelled to ascend to the top of the bordering mountains to avoid the narrow canyon below, which was impassable; and in descending from Animas City to visit these pueblos we crossed over to the La Plata Valley, and after passing through this valley we recrossed to the Animas Valley to avoid similar canyons also impassable. The supply of water for irrigation ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... reached the pass they found at its base a rapidly rising river. The melting snow which still lingered on the hilltops had swollen the stream and in places had made the road almost impassable. The two horsemen, by searching for fords, managed to make their way through the pass, and came out into the wide, smiling valley of Virginia, bounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Alleghanies. Here flowed that picturesque river ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... did not get home on leave until the Easter vacation, for they were taking their military training along with their university work. John drove down to Silver Creek Crossing to meet them, for the roads to town were almost impassable. The home-coming of the boys had always been the great event in their family life, but it was a far more wonderful thing this time; it had something of the flavour of heroes returning ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... said, "in a sort of way what you mean; but still the same difficulty recurs which Audubon has already put forward. On your hypothesis there seems to be an impassable gulf between God's conception of Good and ours. To God, as it seems, the world is eternally good; and in its goodness is included that illusion by which it appears to us so bad, that we are continually employed in trying to make it better. The maintenance of this illusion is essential ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... release of the tomahawk. He then held the terrible instrument suspended some moments over his head, during all which time he was seen neither to change his posture, move a muscle, or his countenance to blench. The tomahawk fell, and the impassable warrior ceased ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... instantly disappeared, leaving the young couple, especially Gillian, in much consternation. So earnest was the maiden for instant departure, that Dick was obliged to comply; and as the whole of the thoroughfares about Whitehall were impassable, they proceeded to the river side, and took boat for London Bridge, at a hostel near which old Greenford ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... all sizes, from a moderate grindstone to that of a football. When people had wished to build a new house, they had taken up a few stones to make a foundation; the street was a series of pitfalls filled with mud and filth, including miniature ponds of manure-coloured water. The surface appeared impassable; the projecting water-spouts from the low roofs stuck out like the gnarled boughs of trees. Here was a pretty mess!—all because Georgi's wife was in town. It was impossible for anything larger than a perambulator to turn, and as the springs yielded to the uneven ground, the van bumped against ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... man to whom it may justly be applied is either a master, or at least a lover, of games, that his outlook is what is known as "breezy," that he observes the rules of cricket in every relation to his fellow creatures, and that he is capable of enduring defeat or success with the same impassable calm and good-nature. Now it would be absurd to deny that here we have a very imposing catalogue of highly desirable characteristics; it would, however, be equally absurd to claim that the person in whom they are all happily combined, necessarily displays, side ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... us proceed westward. About a mile from Oystermouth is Newton; where there are several lodging-houses. There have been many instances of great longevity at this village, which is perhaps the healthiest spot on the coast. The road to Caswell Bay, which passes through Newton, is almost impassable for horses; a new one however is talked of. The rocky valley leading to Caswell Bay, which abruptly comes in sight between two projecting rocks, is singularly wild and romantic. The bay is absolutely a mine of the picturesque—the Lullworth Cove of Wales. A ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... practical in the sense in which the New Testament is. It is not always sound sense inpractice. The Brahman never proposes courageously to assault evil, but patiently to starve it out. His active faculties are paralyzed by the idea of cast, of impassable limits, of destiny and the tyranny of time. Kreeshna's argument, it must be allowed, is defective. No sufficient reason is given why Arjoon should fight. Arjoon may be convinced, but the reader is not, for his judgment is not "formed upon the speculative doctrines of the ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... having rendered the road impassable, I am detained here, but trust by the latter end of the week to proceed to Cheltenham, where I shall expect a letter from you to tell me if I am wanted ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... doing so," responded Cleek a little glumly. "We don't know the way out and we might as well try one plan as another. Seems pretty well closed up for the night, doesn't it? It certainly is a passage and if the door at the other end is impassable after all this wandering, I'll, ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... hand of Francis fell upon the Louvre it was but an isolated stronghold—a combined castle, prison and palace, gloomy, foreboding and surrounded by moats and ramparts almost impassable. Philippe Auguste built well and made of it an admirable and imposing castle and a place of defence, and a defence it was, ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... passing by the mission of Atures, in the middle of the Raudal. After long waiting, the Indians at length arrived at the close of day. The natural coffer-dam by which they had endeavoured to descend in order to make the circuit of the island, had become impassable owing to the shallowness of the water. The pilot sought long for a more accessible passage in this labyrinth of rocks and islands. Happily our canoe was not damaged and in less than half an hour our instruments, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... was he, and what was he, that he should yield to this overmastering spell which had been thrown over him by the witchery of this young girl? Had he not his wife? Was she not at Chetwynde Castle? That odious wife, forced on him in his boyhood, long since grown abhorrent, and now standing up, an impassable barrier between him and the dearest longings of his heart. So he crushed down desire; and, while assenting to Obed's plans, made no proposal to assist him in any way ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... the famous Kosciuszko on the Pedee and Catawba had a great influence on the further course of the campaign." The campaign was carried on in a wild country of deep, roaring rivers, broken by falls, and often visited by sudden floods. The frequently impassable swamps breathed out poisonous exhalations. Rattle-snakes and other deadly reptiles lurked by the wayside. Great were the hardships that Kosciuszko, together with the rest of the army, endured. There were no regular supplies of food, tents ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... consider the idea of complete disappearance with all its effects upon him and others. What would be the effect upon himself? He would vanish into thin air as far as others were concerned. Whatever of his past the present held would turn into ashes. There would be no further connection with it. An impassable void would be created across which neither he nor those he loved could go. He went over in his mind what he had to give up, and trembled before his chum and his father's sister, two souls that loved him. ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... the only one of its order. But even if the line of gradation were single and perfect, the fact would be of no service to the hypothesis we are now considering; for the interval between two species most nearly allied to each other seems to be quite as impassable as the ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... were sighted, the first we had seen for 260 miles. We saw also petrels, numerous adelies, emperors, crab- eaters, and sea-leopards. The clearer weather of the morning showed us that the pack was solid and impassable from the south-east to the south- west, and at 10 a.m. on the 4th we again passed within five yards of the small berg that we had passed twice on the previous day. We had been steaming and dodging about over an area of twenty square miles for fifty hours, trying to find an ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... this curbing of his affections added to my already high esteem. The effort was doubly wise in Brandon's case. Should love with his intense nature reach its height, his recklessness would in turn assert itself, and these two would inevitably try to span the impassable gulf between them, when Brandon, at least, would go down in the attempt. His trouble, however, did not make a mope of him, and he retained a great deal of his brightness and sparkle undimmed by what must have ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... vessels, or of animals. On the front of the mantelpiece were perversely but brilliantly depicted, with a high degree of finish, two nude, crouching women who gazed longingly at each other across the impassable semicircular abyss of the fireplace; and just above their heads, on a scroll, ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... to pass abreast. It was supported by three arches, the centre one of very considerable size, the others small, and rising out of the shallow water on each side. In many parts the parapet wall was broken, in some even the pathway was almost impassable from the masses of fallen stone, and the dangerous fissures. In the centre of the middle arch was an immense key-stone, on which was sculptured, in high relief, an enormous helmet, which indeed gave, among the people of the country, ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... but continue by a series of offences against the authority of his gaolers to experience and display all the successive severities of Macquarie Harbour, Port Arthur, and Norfolk Island. A fundamental fact to be exhibited was the impassable gulf of misunderstanding that might exist between capricious or incompetent prison officials and a criminal who, for any reason, had once come to be regarded as hopelessly vicious. 'We must treat brutes like brutes,' ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... bright yellow colour with brown specks. Arriving at the termination of the sand hills, we looked down upon an immense shallow basin, extending to the north and south-east further than the range of vision, which must, I should imagine, be wholly impassable during the rainy season. There was scarcely any vegetation, a proof, it struck me, that it retains water on its surface till the summer is so advanced that the sun's rays are too powerful for any plants that may spring up, or that the heat bakes the soil so that nothing ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... at the expiration of two years the steamer was dragged to an utterly impassable series of cataracts south of Lobore. This line of obstruction extended for the short distance of about twelve miles, beyond which the river was navigable into ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... and docks were full of interest to the young tourists. The city, which contains a population of eighty thousand, is built on the summit and slopes of a hill, some of the streets upon whose sides are so steep as to be impassable ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... drive, save from necessity, because it is conceded that the dampness there is enough, even in summer, to "give you your death o' cold;" and as for the young, to them the place wears an eerie look, with its miniature suggestion of impassable gulfs and roaring torrents. Yet no youth reaches his majority without exploring the Gully. He who goes alone is the more a hero; but even he had best leave two or three trusty comrades reasonably near, not only to listen, should he call, but to stand ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... heterogeneous elements—Spaniards, Gauls, Numidians, Moors, Greeks—men of almost every race except his own. We see him cutting loose from his base of supplies, leaving enemies behind him, to force his way through hostile races, through unknown lands bristling with almost impassable mountains and frigid with snow and ice. We see him conquering here, making friends and allies there, and, more wonderful than all, holding his mongrel horde together through hardships and losses by the ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... he stood looking from trap to trap; then turned and surveyed again the impassable walls, the rows of works, few of which were European, some of them bound in vellum, some in pigskin, and one row of huge volumes, ten in number, on the bottom shelf, in ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... Americans hurriedly sent out. At Volshenitsa Captain Donoghue received a message by aeroplane from Col. Guard at Obozerskaya that "D" Force was held up at Tiogra by the Reds. After patrolling the forest five days and finding the trail to Emtsa impassable during the wet season, "K" Company received both the welcome reinforcements of Lieut. Gardner and the twenty men who had been left at Lewis gun School at Bakaritza, and orders to proceed ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... intellectuals, the soldiers unite in showing a contempt which is free from violence but knows no bounds. To them has come "the revelation of the great reality": a difference between human beings, a difference far profounder and with far more impassable barriers than those of race: the sharp, glaring, and inalterable distinction, in the population of every country, between those who profit and those who suffer, those who have been compelled to sacrifice everything, those who give to ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... view, the northern frontier was the most difficult of all. It passed north of Kilimanjaro, to the west of which is a desert belt. East of this desert belt and Kilimanjaro the enemy colony was protected by an almost impassable mountain system, with a very narrow, swampy, dangerous gap between the Usambara and Pare Mountains, and another gap of about four or five miles between the Pare Mountains and Kilimanjaro. It was impossible to move an army through the first gap; the second gap at the foot of ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... himself more than all for having discovered his blindness and his blunder. Thinking thus, he resolved to go away. Yes, he would go away! He would marry Priscilla at once, and have it over. He would put an impassable barrier between ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... well-placed bombs are sufficient to induce the pursuers to cease their activities. Even if the missiles fail to strike the motor-car itself they can wreak disaster in directly by rendering the road impassable or dangerous to negotiate at high speed. On the whole therefore, the "Archibald" is a greatly exaggerated weapon of offence against aircraft, and, so far as is known, has failed to fulfil expectations. In fact, ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... failure of the Peninsular campaign. And what a lesson is here to be learned! The fate of the contending armies was suspended in a balance. The hour when a particular bridge was to be completed, or rendered impassable by the rising floods, was to turn ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... number of ponds, and at certain seasons abound with swans, geese, brandts, cranes, gulls, plover, and other wild-fowl. The shores, too, are low and closely wooded, with such an undergrowth of vines and rushes as to be almost impassable. ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... soil, and growing up a man knoweth not how—at once troubled and united them. The fear of separation had grown, step by step, with the sense of attraction and of yearning. It was because their hearts reached out to each other that they dreaded so to find some impassable gulf ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the class of the artisans (hoi demiourgoi) some can make swords best, others pitchers, so, on the larger survey, there will be found those who can use those swords, or, again, think, teach, pray, or lead an army, a whole body of swordsmen, best, thus defining within impassable barriers three essential species of citizenship—the productive class, the military order, the governing class thirdly, ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... became common, whose name, Kuss or Koos, gives the chief his name, Moenekuss ("Lord of the Parrot"); but the Manyuema pronunciation is Monanjoose. Much reedy grass, fully half an inch in diameter in the stalk on our route, and over the top of the range Moloni, which we ascended: the valleys are impassable. ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... is, an arming of those States to prevent the Union forces passing one way, or the disunion the other, over their soil. This would be disunion completed. Figuratively speaking, it would be the building of an impassable wall along the line of separation—and yet not quite an impassable one, for under the guise of neutrality it would tie the hands of Union men and freely pass supplies from among them to the insurrectionists, which it could not do as an open enemy. At a stroke it would take all the trouble off ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... After a snowfall they would have to scrape the ground when they had selected a place for pitching the tents. After a rain, or one of the occasional thaws, the country (there were no regular roads) would be practically impassable for teams, and they would have to remain in camp until the water disappeared, and the soil would bear the weight of the wagons after it was corduroyed with branches of trees. At one time bad roads caused a halt of two or three weeks. Fuel ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... Resaca. As it was, Thomas should have followed close upon his rear through Snake Creek Gap, with two corps. The distance between the two wings of the army would have been so short and the ground between them so impassable to the enemy as to give us practically a continuous line of battle, and Thomas's two corps in the valley of the Connasauga near Tilton would have been in far better position to strike the retreating enemy when he was compelled to let go of Dalton, than they ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... whole surface of it was beautiful in a high degree. The universal face was clothed with living green. And every part was fertile as well as beautiful. It was no where deformed by rough or ragged rocks: it did not shock the view with horrid precipices, huge chasms, or dreary caverns: with deep, impassable morasses, or deserts of barren sands. We have not any authority to say, with some learned and ingenious authors, that there were no mountains on the original earth, no unevennesses on its surface, yet it is highly ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... headed by Col. Kennett, dashed into the woods, and then occurred a chase the parallel to which has seldom been seen. "Forward!" was the word, and forward it was. The woods became a thicket, sometimes apparently impassable; but the horses, spurred by their riders, dashed at headlong speed through the trees, through the underbrush, under branches—thorns scratching the face and hands, projecting limbs tearing clothes and bruising bodies. ...
— Bugle Blasts - Read before the Ohio Commandery of the Military Order of - the Loyal Legion of the United States • William E. Crane
... always sombre, lowered in great tumbled masses from under the heavy clouds that seldom rose from their summits. Terrible gales kept the sea in torment, and the voice of its rage and pain filled Castletownrock without ceasing. Torrents of rain tore up the roads, and rendered them almost impassable. There was stolid endurance and suffering written on every face out of doors, while within the people cowered over their peat fires, a prey to hunger, cold, and depression. Draughts made merry through the large rooms and passages in Captain Caldwell's house; the wind howled ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... the mountain of Santa Cruz was so dangerous and impassable, that I undertook to repair it; accordingly, I agreed with a Shilluh to make it safe and convenient for transporting goods for shipment; and such was the eager desire of the people for the establishment of the port, that hundreds ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... world at this dead season of the year, especially in those wilder solitudes of the island that extend their long slopes of moor to the west. The vast Atlantic spreads out before us, blackened by tempest, a solitary waste, unenlivened by a single sail, and fenced off from the land by an impassable line of breakers. Even from the elevation where I now write—for my little cottage stands high on the hill-side—I can hear the measured boom of the waves, swelling like the roar of distant artillery, above the melancholy moanings of the wind among ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... in a little bunch at the side of the road. On our left we saw a line of infantry running. The road itself was impassable. So we determined to strike off to the right. I led the way, and though we had not the remotest conception whether we should meet British or German, we eventually found our way to ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... would be very ill before the journey was half- finished. The roads, as George will tell you, are nearly impassable; and the weather after this fog may be intensely cold. For you a journey to Philadelphia would be an arduous undertaking, and one without any ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... leaving it unshielded alike from Polar winds in winter or scorching heat in summer, divesting it of beauty and of charm, and then casting this arid, frigid, torpid land to a branch of the human family as unique as its own habitation; separating it by natural and almost impassable barriers from civilizing influences, and in strange isolation leaving it to work out its own ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... he, with the deep sweet look I had noticed. "Do they never come now, in the way of their duty, to an impassable barrier of danger or difficulty, through which the same hand opens their path? Did you never find that they do, in ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... trying to get the Jaybird up the steep face of the bluff which rose back of the camp, on top of which the trail, such as it was, made off through the shoulders of the mountains in a general course toward the east, the river sweeping in a wide elbow, thirty miles around, through its wild and impassable gorge, far to the south ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... remarked, that even a Russian steppe has tumult and gold ornaments; also many a scene that looks desert and rock-bound from the distance, will unfold itself, when visited, into rare valleys. Nay, in any case, would Criticism erect not only finger-posts and turnpikes, but spiked gates and impassable barriers, for the mind of man? It is written, "Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." Surely the plain rule is, Let each considerate person have his way, and see what it will lead to. For not this man and that man, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... of the rainy season, we accepted of the invitation of our friends the ——-s, to visit the different haciendas, as in a short time the roads will become nearly impassable. The country in May is perhaps at its highest beauty, or even a little earlier, as already the great blow of roses is nearly over; au reste there are roses all the year round, though more in December than in July. And this, by the way, is rather a source of ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... seemed to be neither skill, enterprise, nor money left in the country. What resources it contained were altogether undeveloped. There was little communication between one place and another, and such roads as existed were for the greater part of the year simply impassable. ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... people, unless it be their distrust when once they find themselves betrayed. They may follow for a time the exploiters of their artlessness, but then their friendly humor turns to hate. Doors which stood wide open offer an impassable front of wood, and ears once attentive are deaf. And the pity is that they have closed not to the evil alone, but to the good. This is the crime of those who distort and degrade speech: they shake confidence generally. We consider as a calamity the debasement ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... school that day, for all the thoroughfares were impassable. By twelve o'clock, however, the great snowploughs, each drawn by four yokes of oxen, broke a wagon-path through the principal streets; but the foot-passengers had a hard time of it floundering ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... actions can be completely expressed and accounted for in terms of nervous matter and motion. The laws of the mind, he maintained, are not to be deduced from physiological processes, but with them must be joined the psychical processes of the individual and the social man. He separates man by an impassable barrier from the lower animals, this gulf between them being due to human society and to the social acquisition of language. In the social factor he finds an important element of psychology, and one that must always come in to overturn any mechanical ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... only in Europe that we can trace the relations established between men separated by vast distances, by oceans, and by apparently impassable deserts. The shells of the Atlantic and those of the Pacific, the copper of Lake Superior, the mica of the Alleghanies, and the obsidian of Mexico lie together beneath the tumuli of Ohio, and quite recently Mr. Putnam exhibited to the Society of ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... had been his mistress of body and mind for one short term of life, and who once, and once only, had yielded to him. They were both advanced in years, and Life and Time had taken toll. She was haggard, yet beautiful in a wan way. He did not believe the vanished years had placed between them an impassable barrier. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... would precipitate them into the river. With great difficulty, Wood forced a path through the ruins. It was a work of no slight danger, for every instant a wall, or fragment of a building, came crashing to the ground. Thames Street was wholly impassable. Men were going hither and thither with barrows, and ladders and ropes, removing the rubbish, and trying to support the tottering habitations. Grace-church Street was entirely deserted, except by a few stragglers, whose curiosity got the better of their fears; or who, ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... active and busy in the world as Neckart, would have wasted so much thought on a chance young girl sitting on a log. But women being forbidden fruit to him, he was morbidly curious about them all. Old Chrysostom, barred into his cave by an impassable line, was much more inquisitive about the princess asleep outside than if he had been a hearty young fellow free to go out and kiss and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... Sardis was built in a position naturally strong, and one part of the wall passed over rocky precipices which were considered entirely impassable. There was a sort of glen or rocky gorge in this quarter, outside of the walls, down which dead bodies were thrown on one occasion subsequently, at a time when the city was besieged, and beasts and birds of prey ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... standing still, Drouet rode up and forbade the postilions to proceed. He himself hastened on through the town, collected a few of the towns-people, and with their aid upset a cart or two on the bridge to block up the way; and, having thus made the road impassable, he roused the municipal authorities, for it was nearly midnight, and then, returning to the royal carriage, he compelled the royal family to dismount and follow him to the house of the mayor, a petty grocer, whose name was ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... religion it strove to rescue the ideal religion from the actual, and to discover the one revelation of the Divine ideal amid the great variety of religious traditions and modes of worship. But its invincible dualism, separating by an impassable chasm God from the world, and mind from matter, identifying goodness with the one, evil with the other, prevented belief in a religion like Christianity, which was penetrated by the Hebrew conceptions of the universe, so alien both to dualism ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... its mouth, is the commercial port of Cagayan. The country around is rich in live stock, and is partly under cultivation. During the rainy season, however, the pontoon bridges over the Rio Grande are swept away; the roads become impassable. The raging torrent of the river threatens the inland navigation, while the monsoons on the China Sea make transportation ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... actress; no matter by what course, to this she had attained. This man, Scawthorne, spoke of the theatrical life as one to whom all its details were familiar; acquaintance with him of a sudden bridged over the chasm which had seemed impassable. Would he come again to see her? Had her involuntary reserve put an end to any interest he might have felt in her? Of him personally she thought not at all; she could not have recalled his features; he was a mere abstraction, the representative of ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... with his new-made wife, had {now} come to the rapid waters of {the river} Evenus.[12] The stream was swollen to a greater extent than usual with the winter rains, and was full of whirlpools, and impassable. Nessus came up to him, regardless of himself, {but} feeling anxiety for his wife, both strong of limb,[13] and well acquainted with the fords, and said, "Alcides, she shall be landed on yonder bank through my services, do thou employ thy ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... unbroken sheet of snow; the blue lakes which are interspersed over the level valley at their feet, were frozen over, and undistinguishable from the rest of the dreary expanse, and a boundless mass of snowy peaks arose on all sides, presenting apparently an impassable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... neighbor and started early in the morning to haul the wood. Just as I reached the place, it began to snow hard. The wind blew such a gale that it was impossible to go on with the work. What was I to do? If it kept on snowing, I knew the roads would be impassable by the next day. Besides, that was the only day on which I could get the help of the man or the team. Unless I secured the wood that day it would not be in my power to get the fuel we needed for the rest of the winter. I thought of that sweet promise, 'Call ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... uncomfortable, and we concluded to halt until it should abate a little, at the first convenient and pleasant spot. Leaving the shore, which, besides being unsheltered from the sun, was so rugged with crevices and gullies, and great irregular blocks of coral, as to be almost impassable, we entered the borders of the wood, and took a short cut across the point. Johnny, in imitation of the desert islanders of the story-books, desired to give appropriate names to all the interesting or remarkable localities, with which we became acquainted. ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... carried them in wild bounds across impassable chasms, their laboring lungs checked them in the ascent. The joyous inebriation was wearing off. Winslow met his companion's eyes sheepishly as they stopped where a sheer cliff of basalt above caught and held the warmth of the sun's rays. Behind them it rose a straight hundred feet, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... endeavour to seize the horses, and ransack the waggons. This decided my adopting the least of the two evils, although I fully expected we should have a battle. After penetrating for I should think upwards of two miles, sometimes up to our knees in miry clay, and often stopped by impassable barriers of wild vines and other prehensile plants, which annoyed us greatly, and made me regret a thousand times that I had courted such dangers and inconveniences, the sound of two rifle-shots threw the whole party ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... fashion of the city assembled last night to witness the debut upon metropolitan boards of the young tragedian who has of late been winning such golden opinions in the amphitheatres of the provinces. Some sixty thousand persons were present, and but for the fact that the streets were almost impassable, it is fair to presume that the house would have been full. His august Majesty, the Emperor Aurelius, occupied the imperial box, and was the cynosure of all eyes. Many illustrious nobles and generals of the Empire graced the occasion with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... obstructions that, mountain-like, lay between them; but on its rough sides—flowers on an arid rock—grew the yearning affections, seemingly rootless, yet continuing to bloom in secret, scarce discovered beauty. Of what use was it, he asked himself in bitterness, to brood over these impassable barriers, to cultivate a faith in the power of his own affection strong enough to remove them, to cherish the vain imagination that this incomparably sweet girl and his own plain self were made for each other, and that no earthly obstacle could ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... hardly knew what, had opened his eyes to that glittering life of the world of which he had always been profoundly ignorant, and it seemed to him suddenly that the distance between himself and his wife had broadened to an impassable space in a single night. Connie was no longer the girl whom he remembered under cherry-coloured ribbons. She came in reality no closer to him than did the tired, restless women, with artificially brightened faces, who ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... over ground supposed impassable, was in line of battle behind Bolivar Heights. Lawton and Jones were yet further advanced. All the grey guns were ready—at early dawn they opened. Iron death, iron death!—they rained it down on Harper's Ferry and the fourteen thousand in garrison there. They silenced ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... let the works of nature alone, because they know there is no hope for them, and content themselves with enacting rules in literature and art, which make all the perfection and grace of the past so many impassable barriers to progress in future. Because the ancients kept to unity of idea in their groups, and attained to most beautiful results by doing so, shall no modern make an antithesis in marble? And why has not a man a right ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... first half of the eighteenth century was in many respects uncivilized. London was at that time separated from the country by roads that were often impassable and always dangerous. Travellers had to protect themselves as they best could from the attacks of highwaymen, who infested every thoroughfare leading from the metropolis, while the narrow area of the city was guarded by watchmen scarcely better fitted for its protection than Dogberry and Verges. ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... insolence on Miraudin's part to have addressed him at all without previous introduction. It was true that the famous actor was permitted a license not granted to the ordinary individual,—as indeed most actors are. Even princes, who hedge themselves round with impassable barriers to certain of their subjects who are in all ways great and worthy of notice, unbend to the Mime who today takes the place of the Court-jester, and allow him to enter the royal presence, often bringing his newest wanton with him. And there was not the slightest reason for ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... presently and see. But I'm almost sure it's a deep wide wash, with steep walls. Impassable! And by golly, if ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... no undulations more than a few feet in height. They are intersected every ten to twenty miles by wide shallow river beds, which during the summer months, when the warm nor'-westers melt the snow and ice on the Alps, are often terrific torrents, impassable for days together, while at other times they are shingle interspersed with clear rapid streams, more or less shallow, and generally fordable with ordinary care. Some of the principal rivers such as the Rakaia, Rangatata and Waitaki, are at all ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... day's march was infinitely worse than the first, for it lay along a series of abruptly shaped hills with deep ravines between them; each ravine had its swamp and each swamp its river. This bit of country must be absolutely impassable for any human being, black or white, except during the dry season. There were representatives of the three chief forms of the West African bog. The large deep swamps were best to deal with, because they make a break in the forest, and the sun can come down ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... elevated to be the head of our ancient and honourable family; but I know my own personal unworthiness to occupy that distinguished place, and feel how much better it would be filled by yourself. Although the law has placed a wide and impassable barrier between all of your branch of the family and ourselves, I shall ever be ready to acknowledge the affinity, and to confess that it does us quite as much honour ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... This horrid character in Opuntias, whilst rendering them disagreeable to the gardener, has been turned to good account in many of our colonies, where they are commonly used as fences. A good hedge of such kinds as O. Tuna or O. horrida is absolutely impassable to both man and beast, and as the stems are too watery to be easily destroyed by fire, their usefulness in this way could not be surpassed. As all the Opuntias will grow in the very poorest of soils, and even on bare rocks, and as they grow very rapidly, they have been largely ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... surgeon was there; he had applied a succession of hot cloths to the pit of the stomach, and was trying. to get laudanum down the throat, but the clenched teeth were impassable. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... spice of wild mustard springing in the lower valleys. But, as if by some irony of Nature, this gentle invasion of spring in the wild wood brought only disturbance and discomfort to the haunts and works of man. The ditches were overflowed, the fords of the Fork impassable, the sluicing adrift, and the trails and wagon roads to Rough and Ready knee-deep in mud. The stage-coach from Sacramento, entering the settlement by the mountain highway, its wheels and panels clogged and crusted with an unctuous pigment like mud and blood, ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... he climbed to clearer and clearer vision till the end.[152] Philosophy had made him forget Beatrice; it was Philosophy who was to bring him back to her again, washed clean in that very stream of forgetfulness that had made an impassable barrier between them.[153] Dante had known how to find in her the gift of ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... was really in a state of siege. If the snow had held for a sufficient number of days it might have been in a state of famine. The railway failed between Jerusalem and the nearest station. The roads were impassable between Jerusalem and the nearest village, or even the nearest suburb. In some places the snow drifted deep enough to bury a man, and in some places, alas, it did actually bury little children; poor ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... century before Christ, the corruption of society had become so flagrant under the teachings and government of the Brahmans, that a reform was imperatively needed. "The pride of race had put an impassable barrier between the Aryan-Hindus and the conquered aborigines, while the pride of both had built up an equally impassable barrier between the different classes among the Aryan people themselves." The old childlike joy in life, so manifest in the Vedas, had died away. A funereal gloom hung ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... fine stream of water, with just wood enough on the banks to serve for firewood. From the summit they had a fine view of all the settlements and country eastwards, and of a great extent of country to the westward and south-west. But their progress in both the latter directions was stopped by an impassable barrier of rock, which appeared to divide the interior from the coast as with a stone wall, rising perpendicularly out of the side of the mountain. In the afternoon they left their little camp in the charge of three of the men, and made an attempt to ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... shudder in their parting embrace, half averting her cheek, though Cecil's arms clung round her as though they would never let her go. The saddest feeling of the many that were busy then in the guilty, troubled heart, was a consciousness that in a few hours the gulf between them would be deep and impassable as the chasm ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... passable at all seasons of the year, the country much more favorable for offensive operations than that in front of Washington, much more level, the woods less dense, the soil more sandy" (p. 47). After arriving, we find "the roads impassable," "very dense and extensive forests, the clearings being small and few;" and "the comparative flatness of the country and the alertness of the enemy, everywhere in force, rendered thorough reconnoissances ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... similar fate through being on the summit, so to speak, of the rocky path; but though for the moment safe, we could not tell for how long; while on taking a hasty glance at our position it was this: overhead the shelving rock quite impassable; to left, to right, and in front, the swollen, ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... wrong tack when he had hoped to convince his judges by a fiery speech. In the midst of this cold calm procedure, his words would sound distorted and fantastic, and his eloquent tongue would fail him. The views of these men were separated from his by an impassable gulf. However good a will they might have, they were absolutely incapable of ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... Koulaktche, the Grand Vizier merely assumed the offensive instead of taking up a position in the mountains; and, allowing the unusual rigour of the season to thin the ranks of the enemy, he precipitately advanced. The cold was so excessive, the weather so dreadful, and the roads rendered so impassable by the snow, that only a small portion of the artillery and ammunition could follow the movement, so that they found themselves, as at Horns, without provisions in the presence ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... of the world, which have their portion in this life," to a place of unmitigated suffering. Whatever be the comprehension of the word Hades (rendered in our version by the word hell), there is an impassable gulf between Lazarus in Abraham's bosom and the rich man in torment. The "great gulf fixed" may be a figure; but it represents an awful reality; and that reality is, that there is no transition from the one state ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... that at that point was a deep and sinuous gully, crossing half the field from the enemy's line, its general course at right angles to it. From where we now were it was invisible, and Brayle had evidently not known about it. Clearly, it was impassable. Its salient angles would have afforded him absolute security if he had chosen to be satisfied with the miracle already wrought in his favor and leapt into it. He could not go forward, he would not turn back; he stood awaiting death. It did ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... green, and sometimes a but, or farm-house, shaded by a willow or two, and surrounded by large elder bushes. These insulated dwellings communicated with each other by winding passages through the moss, impassable by any but the natives themselves. The public road, however, was tolerably well made and safe, so that the prospect of being benighted brought with it no real danger. Still it is uncomfortable to travel, alone and in the dark, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... they much shorten their passage by mending the swamps and building of bridges in several places; and there are established ferries at convenient places, over the great rivers." But slight attention was given to keeping the roads in good condition and after each long rain they become almost impassable. The lack of bridges was a great hindrance to traffic and even the poor substitute of ferries was often lacking, forcing travellers to long detours or to the dangerous task ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... a man-god, or of a human being endowed with divine or supernatural powers, belongs essentially to that earlier period of religious history in which gods and men are still viewed as beings of much the same order, and before they are divided by the impassable gulf which, to later thought, opens out between them. Strange, therefore, as may seem to us the idea of a god incarnate in human form, it has nothing very startling for early man, who sees in a man-god or a god-man only a higher degree of the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... most manifest virtues displayed by men, and to despair of the future destiny of the great majority of their fellow-creatures; that instead of binding them to their kind, it divides them from it by a gulf which they themselves proclaim to be impassable and eternal, and unites them only in a gloomy conspiracy of misanthropy with each other; that it is indeed a law-making power, but that the laws it makes are little-minded and vexatious prohibitions of ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... was much happier when distinctions and divisions were impassable. There are no sumptuary laws now. What is the consequence? That your bourgeoise ruins her husband in wearing gowns fit only for a duchess, and your prince imagines it makes him popular to look precisely like a cabman ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... find there is a pathetic, one might almost say a tragic, side to the picture. A shy man means a lonely man—a man cut off from all companionship, all sociability. He moves about the world, but does not mix with it. Between him and his fellow-men there runs ever an impassable barrier—a strong, invisible wall that, trying in vain to scale, he but bruises himself against. He sees the pleasant faces and hears the pleasant voices on the other side, but he cannot stretch his hand across to grasp another hand. He stands watching ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... to the happiness of the children, this winter; and it was felt for a time to be no slight one. They could not go to the kirk at Dunmoor, their father's kirk. The winter rains had made the way over the hills impassable; and the distance by the high-road was too great for them. They learnt in a little while to love the kindly voice of the minister of Kirklands parish, and they soon got many a kindly greeting from the neighbours at the kirk ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... we entered upon a level plain three miles wide, which, with the exception of a patch here and there, was entirely covered with snow. The uncovered parts of this plain were so wet as to be almost impassable for the cart; and we were now as desirous of keeping on the snow as, at the beginning of our journey from Winter Harbour, we had been anxious ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... Odin to slay Ymir, and carry his body into the middle of Ginnungagap, and formed from it the earth and heavens. Of his blood the brothers made all the seas and waters, taking the gore that flowed from his body to form the impassable ocean which is supposed to encircle the earth. Of his bones they made the mountains, using the broken splinters and his teeth for the stones and pebbles. From his skull they made the heavens, at each of the four corners ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... mother of Evelyn. In her thought Evelyn was still a child, in leading-strings, and would be till she was formally launched, and the social gulf between the great heiress and the law clerk and poor writer was simply impassable. All of which goes to show that the most astute women are not ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the mountains, which is impassable for carriages, I passed through vast tracks of forest, where the lofty trees were covered with stout vines reaching to the tree tops, rendering it difficult for man to penetrate those sylvan recesses. Near the highest part of this mountain road, at a height of several ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... the example of its officers, and led by Colonel Changarnier, flung itself on the intrenchments; the redoubts were carried, etc. At the same time, in the other column, Lamoricire led the way with his Zouaves, followed by the other troops. The Zouaves surmounted the almost impassable cliffs, attacked and carried two lines of intrenchment, and, in the teeth of a murderous fire, forced a third; a few moments later the two columns joined, and, rushing up the acclivity, planted the flag of France on the highest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... but there were bad Indians, half-breeds, and outlaws that made the trading-post a venture Withers had long considered precarious, and he wanted to move and intended to some day. His nearest neighbors in New Mexico and Colorado were a hundred miles distant and at some seasons the roads were impassable. To the north, however, twenty miles or so, was situated a Mormon village named Stonebridge. It lay across the Utah line. Withers did some business with this village, but scarcely enough to warrant the risks he had to run. During the last year he had lost ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... into the galleries, which were almost impassable. In the distance Lady Holme caught sight of Miss Schley with Mrs. Wolfstein. They were surrounded by young men. She looked hard at the American's pale face, saying to herself, "Is that like me? Is that like me?" Her conversation with Robin Pierce had ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... punishment, the endless Gehenna, the pitiless angels, the yawning hell, the roaring stream of fire, the unquenchable flame, the dark prison, the rayless darkness, the bed of live coals, the unwearied worm, the indissoluble chains, the bottomless chaos, the impassable wall, the inconsolable cry. And none to stand by me; none to plead for me; none to snatch me out." Now, no Temporary ever possessed anything like that in his own handwriting among his private papers. A meditation like that, written out with his own hand, and hidden away under lock and key, will ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... spiritually closer, had ended by thrusting them to an incalculable distance from each other. Of the nervous reactions which he had suffered she knew nothing. All she saw clearly was that the widening breach between them would soon become impassable unless it could be filled by their new love for the child. The power to hold him must slip from her hands to the child's, and she was more than ready, she was even eager, to relinquish it. In the last few months her feeling for George had altered, and, though she was hardly conscious of the change ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... by the boughs torn from overhanging trees, and here, there, and everywhere turned into a quagmire by the torrents that could find no adequate egress to the northward swamps. For over a mile above the barracks it looked like one vast canal, and by nine o'clock it was utterly impassable. No cars were running on the dilapidated road to the "half-way house," whatever they might be doing beyond. There was only one means of communication between the garrison and the town, and that, on horseback along the crest of the levee, and people in the second-story ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... refreshment as may be, I and my men, taking the guide he hath left for us, join him on foot. There may now be danger: for though Gryffyth himself may be pinned to his heights, he may have met some friends in these parts to start up from crag and combe. The way on horse is impassable: wherefore, master Norman, as our quarrel is not thine nor thine our lord, I commend thee to halt here in peace and in safety, with ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gave it up. He sat down beside the fire, for May in the mountains is cold; he held his empty pipe in his mouth, his rough forehead knitted, and he and the Cat looked at each other across that impassable barrier of silence which has been set between man and beast from the ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... morning Mac had inquired whether he could not be taken on to the dressing-station, but learned that it was impossible as the enemy swept the country between with an impassable hail of bullets. The lower end of the ravine was in Turkish hands, elsewhere there were unscalable cliffs, and the only means of getting back was by crossing a ridge close under the enemy rifles. There was nothing for it but ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... we traversed, were of uniform equality of surface. Water evidently lodges and continues on them long after a fall of rain, and in wet seasons they must, I should imagine, be full of quagmires, and almost impassable. ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... which are not left entirely to the care of Nature. Those which man takes care of—commencing with his own—are more abundant than they would be without his care, yet, as his power of taking this care is limited, the increase which has taken place is also fixed, and has long been restrained within impassable boundaries. Again, though in civilized countries man, and all the animals useful to him, are more numerous than in other places, yet their numbers never become excessive, for the same power which brings them into being destroys them as soon as ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... damage their owner is not liable therefor, if he makes reasonable efforts to remove them as speedily as possible.[79] Likewise, if a traveller bent upon some errand of mercy or business finds the highway impassable by reason of some wash-out, snowdrift, or other defect, he may go round upon adjoining land, without liability, so far as necessary to bring him to the road again, beyond the defect.[80] If a watercourse on adjoining land is allowed by the land-owner to become so obstructed by ice ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... my plans for escape, and we laid our heads together as to the outer stockade, but with all our thinking could not see the way across it. That open space between, with its hedge of sentries, seemed an impassable barrier. ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... shall we find no refuge in the persuasion of our rectitude and of human frailty? Shall we deem ourselves criminal because we do not enjoy the attributes of Deity? Because our power and our knowledge are confined by impassable boundaries? ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... where there are passes of the utmost difficulty. Again, behind this opening in the snowy ridge, at a considerable distance farther north, is another range of hills, not so high and broken as the immense peaks of Emodus, but still so elevated as to be totally impassable in winter, owing to the depth of snow; for the road is said to be tolerable, that is, it will admit of cattle carrying loads. Somewhat similar seems in general to be the nature of the other few passages through these ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... and friendly. But Lucy Audley would not make war. She carried forward the sum of her dislike, and put it out at a steady rate of interest, until the breach between her step-daughter and herself, widening a little every day, became a great gulf, utterly impassable by olive-branch-bearing doves from either side of the abyss. There can be no reconciliation where there is no open warfare. There must be a battle, a brave, boisterous battle, with pennants waving and cannon roaring, ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... to celibacy. The thought sometimes occurred to me whether I should not find the best and the only natural solution of the problem of existence, as submitted to myself, in taking upon me the vows which settle the whole question and raise an impassable barrier between the devotee and the object of ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... attendant on the approaching adjournment of the Legislature; and for my having gone soon after the adjournment to Edwardsville, where I was detained until a few days since by torrents of rain which have deluged the country and rendered the streams and roads impassable. The perusal of your letter afforded me particular pleasure. It breathes the genuine sentiments of a Republican and of a philanthropist; and produced an emotion which was "pleasing though mournful to the soul." Pleasing ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... opportune; Mr. Lincoln himself told me afterward that even he had previously felt in doubt, for the summer was fast passing away; that General Grant seemed to be checkmated about Richmond and Petersburg, and my army seemed to have run up against an impassable barrier, when, suddenly and unexpectedly, came the news that "Atlanta was ours, and fairly won." On this text many a fine speech was made, but none more eloquent than that by Edward Everett, in Boston. A presidential election then agitated the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... a man named James volunteered to carry them. He reached Helston with infinite difficulty, and found the place practically snowed up, all communication broken. Against strong advice he resolved to push on to Falmouth, distant at least fourteen miles by road, the roads almost impassable with snowdrifts. He began his journey by pony, but soon had to leave the animal behind. Once he was near succumbing, but a rest in a wayside cottage restored him; the last two and a half miles he covered by crawling on his hands and knees, being too exhausted to walk. Falmouth ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... flows into a gorge—or rather one gorge after another; and sometime they'll likely be almost as famous as some of the great gorges of your country. The walls are just about straight up on each side, and of course are absolutely impassable. I don't know how many miles the first gorge is—but for nearly two hundred miles the river is considered impassable for boats. Two hundred and fifty miles or so below there is an Indian village—but they never try to go down the river from here. A few white men, however, ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... of. He and his brother, in consequence of a heavy fog, lost their way during a difficult climb and after wandering for a day and a night, were rescued by the heroic sacrifices of Romanus Walch, an engineer, and several guides. It was his love for his parents that made him take the way which was impassable except in a few spots, instead of taking the easier south way. On that day, July 26th, his father was to have charge of the opening celebrations at the Anhalt Shelter, situated on the northern face of the Heiterwand. He felt he had to take the shorter, more ...
— An Aviator's Field Book - Being the field reports of Oswald Boelcke, from August 1, - 1914 to October 28, 1916 • Oswald Boelcke
... the watery waste that sad, sweet, doubtful light, such as Spenser describes in the cathedral wood: 'A little glooming light, most like a shade.'" Drifting about in his boat he might pass Long Island, where in 1776 the ocean herself fought for Charleston, interposing an impassable barrier to the advance ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... daylight increased, the island was recognised as a mere uninhabited rock, from which, therefore, no assistance could be expected, and the terrible turmoil of waters that leaped and seethed between the wreck and the cliffs, seemed to all on board, including the captain himself, to be impassable. ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... went, the father and his two sons, side by side in courteous silence—she noticed Ralph step forward to lift the latch of the garden-gate for the others to pass through—and between them lay an impassable gulf; she found herself wondering whether the other gulf that they had looked into half an hour before ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... Genve. As this was our first experience in the diligence line, we noticed particularly every peculiarity. I had had the idea that a diligence was a ricketty, slow- moulded antediluvian nondescript, toiling patiently along over impassable roads at a snail's pace. Judge of my astonishment at finding it a full-blooded, vigorous monster, of unscrupulous railway momentum and imperturbable equipoise of mind. Down the macadamized slopes we thundered at a prodigious pace; up the hills we trotted, with six horses, three abreast; madly through ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... is hedged up, and made almost impassable by difficulties you little wot of. They cannot be told to you; they are enough to destroy the faith of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... prejudice which had originally instigated such acts as had been perpetrated at Red Wing. The credulous animosity displayed by this woman to whom she had looked for sympathy and encouragement in what she deemed a holy work, revealed to her for the first time how deep and impassable was the channel which time had cut between the people of the North and ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... to swarm with large bears—probably of the huge chocolate-coloured Alaska type; and again a mention was made of "small white buffaloes", which were in all probability the large white mountain goat (Oreamnus). The Amerindians along the river greatly magnified the dangers, predicting impassable rapids between the confluence of the Great Bear River and the sea. But these stories were greatly exaggerated. Every now and then the river would narrow and flow between white precipitous limestone walls of rock, but ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... attention of the naturalist. Many examples of these are to be found in the Pacific Archipelago. Seas and shallows, once navigable, become in the process of time so filled by these living animals, as to become impassable, their stony skeletons forming hard, massy rocks and impenetrable barriers, which, rising from the bottom of the sea and shallows, constitute solid masonry ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... that duller eyes have no skill to see, shows its fair features, hid away among the petals of a rose, or peering out between the wings of a butterfly, or reflected in a bright drop of dew. The material is but a veil for the spiritual; but, then, eyes must be quickened, or the veil becomes an impassable cloud. ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Mohammedans, the rest Latin and Greek Christians. Most of the houses are well built of stone, and appear neat and comfortable. The streets or lanes are narrow and crooked, and after rain are so full of mud and mire as to be almost impassable." At the time of Christ's life the town was not only regarded as unimportant by the Judeans who professed but little respect for Galilee or the Galileans, but as without honor by the Galileans themselves, as appears from the fact that the seemingly contemptuous ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... task none are so well educated. To fit them for this work they have been taught in the true school. They have been in that gulf from which they would teach others the means of escape. They have passed that prison wall which others have long declared impassable; and who that has not shall dare to weigh opinions with them as to the mode ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... of diverse kind, O king, and banners, and axles, and yokes, and wheels of many kinds, were cut off in various ways by Karna, observant of a warrior's vow. There, O Bharata, with elephants and steeds slain by Karna, the earth became impassable and miry with flesh and blood. The uneven and even spots also of the field, in consequence of slain horse and foot and broken cars and dead elephants, could no longer be distinguished. The combatants could not distinguish friends from foes in that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... III. had added a higher story, built by Wren. There are two roads by which coaches could approach the house: 'one,' as the famous John, Lord Hervey, wrote to his mother, 'so convex, the other so concave, that, by this extreme of faults, they agree in the common one of being, like the high road, impassable.' The rumbling coach, with its plethoric steeds, toils slowly on, and reaches the dismal pile, of which no association is so precious as that of its having been the birthplace of our loved Victoria Regina. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... and ill shaped. These when removed by fires or other causes, are generally replaced with handsome brick buildings, which is making a great improvement in the appearance of the city. The streets, likewise, which were formerly nearly impassable from rocks, hills and chasms, are rapidly improving; hollows have been filled up, and rocks cut away; so that although the hills in some parts are still steep, yet carriages drive through most part of the city ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... at the foot of a small levee that ran to the bridge crossing Singing Water. On the left lay the valley through which the stream swept from its hurried rush down the hill, a marshy thicket of vines, shrubs, and bushes, the banks impassable with water growth. Everywhere flamed foxfire and cardinal flower, thousands of wild tiger lilies lifted gorgeous orange-red trumpets, beside pearl-white turtle head and moon daisies, while all the creek bank was a coral line ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... is with destroyed or partially destroyed towns, to realise what the situation will be if a successful offensive movement on the part of the Allies drives the battle line back. Artillery fire leaves no buildings standing. Even the roads become impassable,—masses of broken stone with gaping holes, over ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... have been let in at the porter's lodge, for her strawberries are in a pottle, ready for the ladies at the Hall. Giorgione would have set them, wild and fragrant, among their leaves, in her hand. Between his fairness, and Sir Joshua's May-fairness, there is a strange, impassable limit—as of the white reef that in Pacific isles encircles their inner lakelets, and shuts them from the surf and sound of sea. Clear and calm they rest, reflecting fringed shadows of the palm-trees, and the passing of fretted clouds across their own sweet circle of blue sky. But beyond, and ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... on both sides. Those joining Lindenhoek to Neuve Eglise and Wulverghem were also mostly pave. The remainder were mere field tracks for the most part, rarely metalled, and in wet weather almost impassable for mud. ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... contemplative person before the parlour fire this very March afternoon, a supernatural tendency in that fire to burn all on one side: which signifies that a wedding approaches the house. Why—who shall say? Omens are as impassable as heroes. It may be because in these affairs the fire is thought to be all on one side. Enough that the omen exists, and spoke its solemn warning to the devout woman. Mrs. Berry, in her circle, was known as a certificated lecturer against the snares of matrimony. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... House was at first Sir Charles's headquarters for part of January, but there, 500 feet above the sea, the roads were sometimes impassable from snow. At last Lady Dilke became too delicate to face the mid-winter visit, and, except for elections, Whitsuntide and the autumn were the two occasions for their stay. He went also each year to the miners' demonstration—in 1908 ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face, and ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... England, during the most of the last century, presents a picture of literary ostentation. The Deists had toiled to build up a system of natural religion which would not only be a monument to their genius, but serve as an impassable barrier to all such claims as were urged by the zealous and loud-spoken Puritans. But early Deism lacked an indispensable element of strength,—the power of adapting itself to the people. Its best priests could not leave the tripod, though many of the oracular ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... retreat he found the way blocked, and his messages were intercepted, so that Cornwallis was not aware of the peril. Ferguson, harassed, outnumbered, at last took refuge on King's Mountain, a stony ridge on the western border between the two Carolinas. The north side of the mountain was a sheer impassable cliff and, since the ridge was only half a mile long, Ferguson thought that his force could hold it securely. He was, however, fighting an enemy deadly with the rifle and accustomed to fire from cover. The sides ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... battle array along the Elster, while the vanguard of his rival became visible in the distance. The soldiers of the former were unwearied and invigorated by a night of repose; the troops of Rodolph were jaded with forced marches over roads almost impassable. Rodolph, apprehensive lest fatigue should prove fatal, would have declined an immediate action, but he found it impossible to restrain the ardor of his men. The knights leaped from their sinking steeds and formed themselves on foot, and the infantry, forgetting their ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... in the camp as well as in the Cabinet. Cholera attacked the troops, and stores began to fail. Prince Menschikoff, defeated at Alma, seized the opportunity which the delay gave him to render the harbour of Sebastopol impassable to hostile ships; and General Todleben brought his skill as an engineer to the task of strengthening by earthworks the fortifications of the Russian stronghold. The Allies made the blunder of marching on Sebastopol from the southern instead of the northern side of the harbour, and this gave ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... stranger than that—almost beyond belief!" he replied. "My poor father has for months been imprisoned in a great valley, surrounded by impassable cliffs. Don't you remember something of the sort occurred in one of Captain Mayne Reid's books, where the young plant hunters found themselves prisoners in that way? But here, Frank, look ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... short stretch of comparatively smooth water, in which, however, the current was very strong. Immediately above that there was a rapid of considerable length and strength, which boiled furiously among the rocks, and seemed to be impassable to a canoe. After close inspection of it, however, Redhand and Bounce, who were tacitly recognised as joint leaders of the party, agreed that the canoe could easily enough be hauled up by means of a line. To make a long portage, and so ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... ill, though, as it was not any infectious disease, the brothers probably might have been sent for, had not a heavy fall of snow rendered the roads near Dashwood impassable. ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... were less famous, but they were gods, and assisted Odin to slay Ymir, and carry his body into the middle of Ginnungagap, and formed from it the earth and heavens. Of his blood the brothers made all the seas and waters, taking the gore that flowed from his body to form the impassable ocean which is supposed to encircle the earth. Of his bones they made the mountains, using the broken splinters and his teeth for the stones and pebbles. From his skull they made the heavens, at each of the four corners of which was stationed ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... the stream. Mile after mile he walked, through bottom lands that were well nigh impassable now, never losing sight of the creek until he reached its point of junction with the river. It was still raining, but Sam persisted in the work of exploration until he knew the country thoroughly which lay between his camp and the river. Then he returned, not weary with his four hours' ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston
... Snow"—form the northern boundary of India, and shut out the country from the rest of Asia. Thibet, which lies just over the range, whence we view it, is virtually inaccessible by this route, the wild region between being nearly impassable. Bold parties of traders, wrapped in sheepskins, do sometimes force their way over the mountains at an elevation of eighteen thousand feet, but it is a most hazardous thing to do, and the bones of worn-out mules mark ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... asserting his personal liberty a little, going where he likes, assembling where he likes, bawling as he likes, hustling as he likes.... He sees the rich, the aristocratic class, in occupation of the executive government; and so, if he is stopped from making Hyde Park a bear-garden or the streets impassable, he cries out that he is being butchered ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... Jesus was, and what he did, is separated from what the church and theologians have made of him by a gulf that seems almost impassable, and yet this gulf has already ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... conscious as he felt that it was for no good purpose, watched that worthy gentleman's face with keen but quiet observation, in the hope of being able to draw some inference from its expression. This, however, was a vain task. The face was impassable, inscrutable; no symptom of agitation, alarm, or concealed satisfaction could be read in it, or anything else, in short, but the ordinary expression of the most perfect indifference. Barney knew his man, however, and felt aware, from former observations, of the power ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... the Christians. From this man he received a present of boiled rice and milk. He also met a slave merchant who had resided some years on the Gambia, who informed him about the places which lay in his intended course to the westward. He was told that the road was impassable at this season of the year, and that there was a rapid river to cross. Having, however, no money to maintain himself, Park determined at all risks to push on, and, having obtained a singing man who said he knew the road over the hills, set off the next day. His musical conductor, however, ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... classes. Kildare as a landlord was not popular. Beauty, charm, did not help her with them as it had with their husbands. There was the further barrier, which all aliens in a rural community reach soon or late: the well-nigh impassable barrier of strangeness. They would have none of her. They looked askance at her winning sweetness; they accepted her ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... cloudless beauty, when the glaciers glitter in the sunshine, and the pink flowers of the rhododendron appear as if they were never to be sullied by the tempest. But a storm suddenly comes on; the roads are rendered impassable by drifts of snow; the avalanches, which are huge loosened masses of snow or ice, are swept into the valleys, carrying trees and crags ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... sixty millions of people, spread over half a continent, into one nation, were then unknown. The means of communication and transportation between the colonies were very primitive. Roads were rough, full of steeps and cuts, and in many places, especially near cities, almost impassable with mire. It took seven days to go by stage from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, four days from Boston to New York. The mail service was correspondingly inadequate and slow. At times in winter a letter would be five weeks in going from ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... youth is a reconnoitring and recruiting of the holy fraternity that shall combine for the salvation of men. But so the remoter stars seem a nebula of united light, yet there is no group which a telescope will not resolve, and the dearest friends are separated by impassable gulfs. The cooeperation is involuntary, and is put upon us by the Genius of Life, who reserves this as a part of his prerogative. 'Tis fine for us to talk: we sit and muse, and are serene, and complete; but the moment we meet with anybody, each ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... which our great establishments had just escaped were yet fresh in remembrance, a system of fortifications was begun, which now, though not quite complete, fences in our important points with impassable strength. More than four thousand cannon may at any moment, within strong and permanent works, arranged with all the advantages and appliances that the art affords, be turned to the protection of the ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... spelled with a capital. Well might Miss Corona hate it. It had shut her up into a lonely life for long years. Juliet Gordon and Juliet's father, Meredith Gordon, were the only relations Miss Corona had in the world, and the old family feud divided them by a gulf which now seemed impassable. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... away in these occupations, and my return to Geneva was fixed for the latter end of autumn; but being delayed by several accidents, winter and snow arrived, the roads were deemed impassable, and my journey was retarded until the ensuing spring. I felt this delay very bitterly; for I longed to see my native town and my beloved friends. My return had only been delayed so long, from an unwillingness to leave Clerval in a strange place, before ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... to-morrow for Utrecht, Nimeguen, etc., and shall pursue the course of the Rhine as far as the roads will permit me, not exceeding Strasburg. Whenever they become impassable, or too difficult, if they do become so, I shall turn off to Paris. So also if anything of importance should call for me at Paris sooner, you will be so good as to address to me at Frankfort and Strasburg. I will call at the post office there, and be happy to find news from ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... consisting of broken pedestals and obelisks, which Bruce conjectures to be those of Meroe, the capital of the African Ethiopia, which is described by Herodotus as a great city in his time, namely, four hundred years before Christ; and where, separated from the rest of the world by almost impassable deserts, and enriched by the commercial expeditions of their travelling brethren, the Cushites continued to cultivate, so late as the first century of the Christian era, some portions of those arts and sciences ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... gratitude meant little, nor her passing interest in his army career. All that was the natural result of his having saved her life. He possessed no egotism which permitted him to think otherwise. Years of discipline had drilled into him a consciousness of the impassable gulf between the private and the officer's daughter. The latter might be courteous, kindly disposed, even grateful for services rendered, but it must end there. The Major would see that it did, would resent bitterly any presumption. No, there was nothing else ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... rains and the traffic caused by collecting the heavy engines and machinery and the materials used in the construction of the sheds and buildings, the ground was churned into a quagmire of clay and water, so that in places it was impassable, and some of the exhibits were isolated. Thousands of wattled hurdles were purchased in Hampshire, and laid flat on the mud along the main routes to the tents and sheds, but they were quickly trodden in out of sight. Many ponderous engines were bogged ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... anxiety. League after league was done no faster than a walk; the horse, at every step, sinking into the mud far above fetlock, and coming to the relief station completely exhausted. And all the day the rain poured down without cessation, and the roads grew heavier and more impassable until they were little else than running streams of dirty water pierced, here and there, by the crest of a hill that poked its head ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... many of the Sun River and ranch people came, for the night was terrible, even for Montana, and the roads must have been impassable in places. Even here in the post there were great drifts of snow, and the path to the theater was cut through banks higher than our heads. It had been mild and pleasant for weeks, and only two nights before the entertainment we had gone to the ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... had not felt any cause to modify. He continued to serve him faithfully, to look after his interests in and around Acol Court to the best of his ability; above all he continued to be whole-heartedly grateful. He was so absolutely conscious of the impassable social barrier which existed between himself and the rich daughter of the great Earl of Dover, that he never for a moment resented Sir Marmaduke's sneers when they were directed against his ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... merchant-vessels able to enter the harbour, for it was blocked by the impassable bank. Nay, instead of finding refuge there, many a ship was dashed to pieces by the fury of the breakers, and Stavoren became a place of ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... an impassable gulf yawned between the old Roman religion and modern Roman thought. It was out of the question for an educated Roman, who read Plato and Zeno, who listened to Cicero and Hortensius, to believe in Janus and the Penates. ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... impassable air, as they moved away from the strand, felt her imagination obstinately at work. She was not afraid of any outward dangers—she was afraid of her own wishes which were taking shapes possible and impossible, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... Fergusson. In the retreat the army suffered terribly. It rained for several days without intermission. The soldiers had no tents, and the water was everywhere over their shoes. The continued rains filled the rivers and creeks prodigiously and rendered the roads almost impassable. The climate was most unhealthy, and for many days the troops were without rum. Sometimes the army had beef and no bread, sometimes bread and no beef. For five days it was supported on Indian corn, which was collected in the fields, ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... represents its greatest length I conclude that the lake is three miles long by two miles greatest breadth. The immediate shores of the lake on all sides, for at least fifty feet from the water's edge, is one impassable morass nourishing rank reeds and rushes, where the hippopotamus' ponderous form has crushed into watery trails the soft composition of the morass as he passes from the lake on his nocturnal excursions; the lesser ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... to think of the Rocky Mountains as an impassable barrier, as a wild, dreary solitude, where the storms of winter piled the mountain passes with snow. How different the fact! In 1852-53, from the 28th of November to the 10th of January, there were but twelve inches of snow in the pass. The recorded observations ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... crumbled the rocks down for ages, until what perhaps had been once a deep canyon was now a narrow flat, a mass of debris, terminating at the top of the steep, ragged cliff that pitched downward before us. The high, rocky ridges on both sides were wholly impassable, at least for the teams. A search finally disclosed, at the base of the ridge on our right, a single possible passage. It was narrow, slightly wider than a wagon, and led downward at a steep incline, into the valley below, with rocks protruding from both its side walls, its bottom strewn with ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... for his tobacco and his children's schooling. Fielding's dislike to the romantic makes him rather blind to the elevated. He will not only start from the actual, but does not conceive the possibility of an infusion of loftier principles. The existing standard of sound sense prescribes an impassable limit to his imagination. Parson Adams is an admirable incarnation of certain excellent and honest impulses. He sets forth the wisdom of the heart and the beauty of the simple instincts of an affectionate nature. But we are forced to admit that he is not the highest type conceivable, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Taal to Balayan was impassable for a while on account of the quantity of lava. Taal, once so important as a trading centre, was now gone, and Batangas, on the coast, became the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... desolated wastes of country to traverse—the difficulties to be encountered in the simple movement of troops—the annihilation of any body of troops, when once they reached the unmapped plains cut in twain by gorges and piled high with impassable buttes, he would have stultified himself had not orders been given allowing discretion at the moment of emergency. Custer was strong enough, brave enough, and sufficiently masterful to see and seize the situation. ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... we were off again and moving down to the coast, marched on to el Arish. The going was naturally very heavy, but we thus avoided the almost impassable jumble of high sand-dunes inland. On that day the Anzac cavalry passed us on their way to fight at Rafa, riding down the beach in long lines, and making a very impressive sight. The effect was rather spoilt by the inconsiderate attentions of some Turkish planes but no harm was done. We reached ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... coast, with the exception on some meadows, are generally coarse and thin. Graham Island will support a few hundred cattle, by cutting all its meadows for winter feeding. The grazing of the interior is very limited, owing to the density of the forest growth, its numerous swamps, and almost impassable deadfalls. ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... offences against the authority of his gaolers to experience and display all the successive severities of Macquarie Harbour, Port Arthur, and Norfolk Island. A fundamental fact to be exhibited was the impassable gulf of misunderstanding that might exist between capricious or incompetent prison officials and a criminal who, for any reason, had once come to be regarded as hopelessly vicious. 'We must treat brutes like brutes,' says the prime martinet ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... partial examination which I have given Mr. S. Kirkham's English Grammar, I do not hesitate to recommend it to the public as the best of the class I have ever seen, and as filling up an important and almost impassable chasm in works on ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... ought to be adopted in preference to others, and so on, regardless of sea-depth, currents, winds, shelter, and climatic conditions. In the case of roads for invading armies, such small trifles as hundreds of miles of desert, impassable mountain ranges, lack of water, and no fuel, are never considered! These are only small trifles that do not signify—as they are not marked on the maps—the special fancy of the cartographer for larger or smaller type in the nomenclature making cities and villages more or less ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... out a party under Colonel Claiborne to pursue the Pamunkeys, and induce them, if possible, to return to their reservation. The savages were found entrenched in a strong; position, "encompassed with trees which they had fallen in the branch of an Impassable swamp".[529] Their queen refused to abandon this retreat, declaring that since the Governor had not been able to command the obedience of Bacon, he could not save her people from his violence. But she promised that the Pamunkeys should remain peaceable and should take no part in the raids of the ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... were occupied in traversing this mountainous country. The rain and snow falling almost continuously, made the roads in places impassable. The Regiment all got together at Lexington, about ...
— History of the Seventh Ohio Volunteer Cavalry • R. C. Rankin
... time at a distance, it was long before the news of his colleague's misfortune reached him; and besides, the road lying betwixt the two camps being impassable, it was impossible for him to advance hastily to his assistance. This disastrous accident caused a great consternation in Carthage. The reader may have observed, in the course of this war, a continual ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... find in the Gospels—so long a stumbling-block to unbelievers—are now seen to be the very means which enable men of all ranks, and all shades of opinion, to accept Christ as their ideal; they are like the sea, which from having seemed the most impassable of all objects, turns out to be the greatest highway of communication. To the artisan, for instance, who may have long been out of work, or who may have suffered from the greed and selfishness of his employers, or again, to the farm labourer who has been discharged ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... no country in the world more secure from external invasion than India; but on the west, more especially, nature has interposed between her and the more civilised powers of Europe and Asia a succession of rivers, mountains, and deserts, absolutely impassable by an army of any formidable magnitude. Notwithstanding this, there had been long an uneasy feeling connected with the idea of the territorial aggrandisement of Russia, and of late years, by the desire manifested by that power to interfere in the affairs of Persia. In 1837-38, therefore, when a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... felon, as yet undetected. Between him and his kind there stood but a thought,—a veil air-spun, but impassable, as the veil of the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... four feet high, very narrow, and such as might easily have been beat down by cannon. Two redoubts were also begun but never completed. The Schuylkill was on his left with a bridge across. His rear was mostly covered by an impassable precipice formed by Valley creek, having only a narrow passage near the Schuylkill. On the right his camp was accessible with some difficulty, but the approach on his front was on ground nearly on a level with his camp. It is indeed difficult ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... suffering children go immediately, upon death, to a state of conscious blessedness; and "the men of the world, which have their portion in this life," to a place of unmitigated suffering. Whatever be the comprehension of the word Hades (rendered in our version by the word hell), there is an impassable gulf between Lazarus in Abraham's bosom and the rich man in torment. The "great gulf fixed" may be a figure; but it represents an awful reality; and that reality is, that there is no transition from the one state ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... were impassable because of debris. At several points it comprised outbuildings that had struck more stable buildings and been dashed ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... apprehended are the fordings of the several rivers or watercourses, which, even when the sands are bare, still pour forth a considerable stream to the ocean. These fords are continually changing by reason of the shifting of the sands, so that one day's path may on the morrow prove a dangerous and impassable quicksand. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... land, by certain physical conditions connected with climate, with altitude, with the pressure of the atmosphere, the weight of the water, etc.; and this is true even for animals of migratory habits, for all such migrations are periodical, and have boundaries as definite and impassable as those that limit the permanent homes of animals. There is a certain series established by the relations between different kinds of animals, as thus distributed over the globe, which agrees with the gradation in their rank, their growth, and their succession ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... no connection of any sort whatever, no continuous momentum, no identical passenger, no common aim or agent, can be found on both sides of the shunt or switch which there is moved. The place is an impassable chasm. ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... safely away from weather which, in his delicate state, would very probably have killed their father. I think this was our very first thought when the snow began to fall, only two or three weeks after they left, and went on falling till the roads were almost impassable, and remained lying for I am afraid to say how long, so intense was the frost ...
— My New Home • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... Publique Damage of Our People by reason of their rude and disorderly standing and passing to and fro, in and about our said Cities and Suburbs, the Streets and Highways being thereby pestred and made impassable, the Pavements broken up, and the Common Passages obstructed and become dangerous, Our Peace violated, and sundry other ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... the pools by means of the channels above referred to is generally a matter of difficulty, and often of extreme danger, as the swell of the sea, even in calm weather, bursts over these ledges with such violence as to render the channels at times impassable. The utmost ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... crosses the Semmering Pass from Trieste to Vienna is another example of what man can do if he must. By means of a series of covered galleries it makes its way through the mountains that stretch like a wall between Italy and Austria. In the early days this territory with its many ravines and almost impassable heights would have been considered too difficult to cross. The railroad over the Brenner Pass between Innsbruck and Botzen penetrates the mountains of the Tyrol by means of ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... On his march onwards the prince met a venerable old man, of whom he inquired the route to the territories of Amir bin Naomaun, and was informed that they were at no great distance; but only to be entered by a range of rugged and steep mountains composed of iron-stone, and next to impassable; also, that should he succeed in overcoming this difficulty, it was in vain to hope to attain the princess. The prince inquiring the reason, the old man continued, "Sultan Amir bin Noamaun has resolved that no one shall wed his daughter unless he can perform three tasks which ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... Dear lady: a parable must not be taken literally. The gulf is the difference between the angelic and the diabolic temperament. What more impassable gulf could you have? Think of what you have seen on earth. There is no physical gulf between the philosopher's class room and the bull ring; but the bull fighters do not come to the class room for all that. Have you ever been in the country where I have the largest following—England? There they ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... Confederates the weather, which had been fine and clear during the previous week, changed on the very day that McClellan started. The rain came down in torrents, and the roads became almost impassable. The columns struggled on along the deep and muddy tracks all day, and bivouacked for the night in the forests. The next morning they resumed their march, and on reaching the first line of intrenchments formed by the Confederates found them ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... Colombo. But it was after we left Ratnapoora that I first realised the true wonders of this land. Our road rose almost continuously by narrow tracks, which in some places, owing to the late heavy rains, were almost impassable; but Peter and Paul worked hard, and so reduced the delay. We had not left Ratnapoora far behind when we plunged into a tangled forest, so dense as almost to blot out the light of day. On either hand deep ravines plunged precipitately down, or giant trees enclosed us in black shadow. Where the ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "in a sort of way what you mean; but still the same difficulty recurs which Audubon has already put forward. On your hypothesis there seems to be an impassable gulf between God's conception of Good and ours. To God, as it seems, the world is eternally good; and in its goodness is included that illusion by which it appears to us so bad, that we are continually employed in trying to make ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... is about eight leagues and a half long, but no where exceeds two leagues broad; and at one place the channel between it and the continent is only a quarter of a mile broad. The island is covered all over with impassable woods, except where cleared for the plantations. Even the smallest island about it is covered in like manner with a great variety of trees, between which the ground is entirely covered with thorns and brambles, which hinder all access; and the main land ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... all proved failures. Bayou Sorrel, Lake Chicot, Grand River, and the Plaquemine itself, from both ends of the stream, were thoroughly explored, but only to find the bayous choked with driftwood impossible to remove, and until removed rendering the streams impassable. Two of these drifts in Bayou Sorrel were carefully examined by Captain Henry Cochen, of the 173d New York. The first he reported to be about a mile in length, "composed of one mass of logs, roots, big and small trees, etc., ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... conveniences were provided for the wayfarers. Even in the great and solemn years of the Jubilee the roads were merely patched up, and the bridges temporarily repaired by the Roman government, and only in such places as had become actually impassable. The floating capital of the more commercial of the Italian Republics was employed rather upon their docks and arsenals than upon their roads and causeways. Venice indeed, which for central vigour was the most genuine offspring of Imperial Rome, paved its continental ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... written in the chronicle of St. John's? These achievements inspired me with an extravagant sense of my own superiority; I could not but despise the rich fellows whom I could have blown down with a sneeze. Nevertheless, there was an impassable barrier between me and them—a sizar was not a proper associate for the favourites of fortune! But there was one young man, a year younger myself, of high birth, and the heir to considerable wealth, who did not regard me with the same supercilious ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ravishingly, paint fruits and flowers, and drop to each other, before surrounding savages, mysterious allusions to feats in ballrooms, which, alas! no longer could be achieved. They signified, and in some degree solaced, their intense disgust at their present position by a haughty and amusingly impassable demeanour, which meant to convey their superiority to all surrounding circumstances. One of their favourite modes of asserting this pre-eminence was wearing the Frank dress, which their father only did officially, and which no female member of their family had ever assumed, though ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... water, or gone back again by the way they had approached it: whether the young hero was meditating how it might be passed; or too weary, or unwilling, to retread all his former steps. Who shall pretend to say, that this child, thus sitting, in a state of abstraction, by the side of an impassable piece of water, might not first feel that ardent thirst of nautical knowledge excited, the gratification of which has since led to such glorious consequences! Be this as it may—for even himself, if living, might not now be conscious of the fact—it is perfectly well remembered that, ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... burdens—inspired by enmity, ever ready to revolt—gave no new strength to the confederacy: they were rather an element of weakness. The Spaniards were not slow to take advantage of this state of affairs. The tribes of Vera Cruz, who could have imposed an almost impassable barrier to their advance through that section, were ready to welcome them as deliverers. The Tlascaltecans, though never made tributary to the Mexicans, had to wage almost unceasing war for fifty years preceding the ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... by way of Ximera was now found impassable, and it was determined to march the army round by Tetuan, while the fleet was brought up along the coast. Ferdinand, who was still suffering and unequal to the land journey, was to go by sea, while his elder brother, as chief ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... of the autocar, it is still a fact that between the man in the car and the man on foot is set an impassable gulf. You are walking through a mountainous country, where every bend of the road reveals some new charm; absorbed in silent enjoyment of the scene, you have forgotten the very existence of the machine, when a raucous "honk" jolts you out of your daydream and causes you to jump ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... resemblance of their condition to that of the Israelites. When one considers the remoteness of the field from their native shores, the enormous energy needful to collect the proper elements for a population, and to provide artificers with the means of work; the almost impassable wildness of the woods; the repeated leagues of hostile Indians; the depletions by sickness; and the internal dissensions with which they had to struggle,—one cannot wonder that they invested their own unsurpassed fortitude, and their ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... Sahara does not consist principally of sand dunes, although these, too, are present, and all but impassable even to camels. Traffic, through the millennia, has held to the endless stretches of gravelly plains and the rock ribbed plateaus which cover most of the desert. The great sandy wastes or ergs cover roughly a fifth of the entire Sahara, and possibly ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... feelings lies in the fact of your having become dissatisfied with that pledge. I tremble, lest, in some unguarded moment, under the assurance that old habits are conquered, you may be persuaded to cast aside that impassable barrier, which has protected your home and little ones for so long and ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... was just describing was a fearful trial. Sometimes we had to traverse a wilderness of rocks which stood straight up and projected at sharp angles, presenting at a distance the appearance of a series of stony terraces which were all but impassable. For a long time our charge wore both shirt and trousers, but eventually we had to discard the latter—or perhaps it would be more correct to say, that the garment was literally torn to shreds by the spinifex. At one time I had it in my mind to make him go naked like myself, ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... pierce their way with infinite toil. The mountains of Abibe are said to be twenty leagues broad, and can only be passed over in the months of January, February, March, and April, as from incessant heavy rains at all other times of the year, the rivers are so swelled as to be quite impassable. In these mountains there are many herds of swine, many dantes, lions, tigers, bears, ounces, large wild-cats, monkeys, vast snakes, and other vermin. There are also abundance of partridges, quails, turtle-doves, pigeons, and other birds ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... computed at about one hundred and sixty miles in circumference. From the embouchure of this latter lake commences the Chippawa, better known in Europe from the celebrity of its stupendous falls of Niagara, which form an impassable barrier to the seaman, and, for a short space, sever the otherwise uninterrupted chain connecting the remote fortresses we have described with the Atlantic. At a distance of a few miles from the falls, the Chippawa finally empties itself into ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... parties are pretty sure to be overcrowded. Soon after midnight, it may be, all the world and his wife will just have arrived together, and the abomination of suffocation sets in. The staircase is congested and impassable: the dancing area in the ball-room is encroached upon till a space about as big as a dining-table is all the dancers have to dance in. At which crisis it wants no little skill and practice in a man to steer his partner deftly and without collisions through the intricate ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... Romans in one month than you do in a year; nay, besides what it pays in money, it sends corn to Rome that supports it for four months [in the year]: it is also walled round on all sides, either by almost impassable deserts, or seas that have no havens, or by rivers, or by lakes; yet have none of these things been found too strong for the Roman good fortune; however, two legions that lie in that city are a bridle both for the remoter parts of Egypt, and for the parts inhabited by the more ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... of Beerbhoom the state of affairs was, perhaps, most calamitous. In 1776, four acres out of every seven remained untilled. Though in earlier times this district had been a favourite highway for armies, by the year 1780 it had become an almost impassable jungle. A small company of Sepoys, which in that year by heroic exertions forced its way through, was obliged to traverse 120 miles of trackless forest, swarming with tigers and black shaggy bears. In 1789 this jungle "continued so dense as to shut off all ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... Lancashire, in compliance with a summons from Lady Compton, requesting, in urgent terms, his immediate presence at the castle. It was wild and bitter weather, and the roads were in many places rendered dangerous, and almost impassable, by the drifting snow. Mr. Ferret, however, pressed onwards with his habitual energy and perseverance; and, spite of all elemental and postboy opposition, succeeded in accomplishing his journey in much less time than, under the circumstances, ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... I asked for intelligence reports from all directions, and found it impossible for the enemy to make a frontal attack down the narrow space of the railway, flanked as it was on both sides by impassable marshes. The enemy centre was at Shmakovka, the place from which the Czechs had been forced to retire: that day, however, he had been observed moving a company of about 180 men with three machine guns along the road towards Uspenkie, a small town situated on ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... sandbanks, eight hundred yards from the eastern face of the fort. It would be impossible to construct approaches against the walls; and, should a breach be made, there still remained a wide creek to be crossed, beyond which lay the deep, and in most parts absolutely impassable, swamp. ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... falls form an oblique line quite across the river impassable to the ascending canoe, and you are forced to have it dragged four or five ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... is profound secularity or materialism. The typical town artisan has no religion and no superstitions; he has no ideals beyond the visible and tangible world of the senses. This of course opens an impassable gulf between him and Greek religion, and a still wider gulf between him and Christianity. The attempts which are occasionally made, especially in this country, to dress up the Labour movement as a return to the Palestinian Gospel, are little short of grotesque. The contrast is ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... it to the love interest associated with the beggar. He was, we may imagine, the Alderman Thomas Firris who, as a penniless youth, came to bid farewell to his betrothed, who lived somewhere on the opposite side of the river. Finding the stream impassable, he is said to have determined that if he came back from his travels as a rich man he would put up a bridge on the spot he had been prevented from crossing. It is not a very remarkable story, even if it be true, but it has given the bridge a fame scarcely proportionate ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... pebble-paved streets and its bleak houses with dressings of marble. The old roofs were still all massed on the eastern side of the castle; the Rue de la Grotte, then called the Rue du Bois, was but a deserted and often impassable road; no houses stretched down to the Gave as now, and the scum-laden waters rolled through a perfect solitude of pollard willows and tall grass. On week-days but few people passed across the Place du Marcadal, such as housewives hastening on errands, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... not stop even at man; influenced by modern conceptions of life, it overleaps the line of old supposed to be impassable, and now includes the lower order of living things: animals have come into their own and a Kipling or a London gives us the psychology of brutekind as it has never been drawn before—from the view-point of the animal himself. ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... also made subservient to the means of prolonging human life; but how an art which determines the fate of mortals, and ascertains the impassable limits of the grave, could consistently be made subservient to such a purpose, we are rather at a loss to conceive, unless accounted for as follows. The teachers of divination maintained, that not only men, but all natural bodies, plants, animals, nay even whole countries, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... enemy, and from which they made their fiercest rushes, coming down like furious torrents from the hills and often in company with the streams by whose sides they made their way, but hour by hour grew steeper till they assumed the nature of rugged walls, impassable to any but climbers or the goats that browsed their sterile paths in herds. The mountains here towered up higher and higher in their stern frowning majesty, scantily furnished with growth, save here and there the earth that had been washed down ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... answer the purpose of a palisade; and this purpose they answer most effectually, not only from the great size and strength of the trees themselves, but also from the intervening spaces between them being filled up with strong and impassable ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... His officers advised him to be content with this extraordinary success. Charles urged him to return to Barcelona; but no remonstrances could stop such a spirit in the midst of such a career. It was the depth of winter. The country was mountainous. The roads were almost impassable. The men were ill-clothed. The horses were knocked up. The retreating army was far more numerous than the pursuing army. But difficulties and dangers vanished before the energy of Peterborough. He pushed on, driving ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... mists, that it was impossible to take an observation. At length they came to the conclusion that there was no passage at all along the north shore of America, or that it was so blocked up with ice as to be impassable. They ran in and dropped anchor in a roadstead, since called the ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... precaution that military skill could suggest. His centre extended along a rising ground, uneven in many places, intersected with banks and ditches, joined by lines of communication, and fronted by a large bog almost impassable. His right was fortified with intrenchments, and his left secured by the castle of Aghrim. He harangued his army in the most pathetic strain, conjuring them to exert their courage in defence of their holy religion, in the extirpation of heresy, in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... that this might not happen at once—nor did he wish it to; messages would pass, and Guidobaldo would seek by cajolery to win back his niece. This she would resist, and, in the end her uncle would see the impassable nature of the situation, and agree to her terms that it might be ended. That it should come to arms, and that Guidobaldo should move to besiege Roccaleone, he did not for a moment believe—for what manner of ridicule would he not draw upon himself from the neighbouring ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... been carried on before our eyes. Hence the dining-room is a necessity, but it must be near at hand. If the kitchen cannot go to it, it must come to the kitchen. If this goes to the basement, or to the attic, that must follow, but always with impassable barriers between, protecting each one of our five senses. The confusion usually attending the dinner-hour should be out of sight; the hissing of buttered pans and the sound of rattling dishes we do not wish to hear; our sharpened ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... protection of his friends; and also, since he had arrived the weather had been such that it would have been an event known to all the fishermen if another party had made a journey along the sands. When the snow came the sands were impassable. As soon as the ice on the bay would bear, there would be coming and going, no doubt; but until then Caius had the restful security that she was near him, and that it could not be many days before he saw her. The only flaw in his conclusion was that the fact did not bear it out; ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... sword, and of a Paraguayan woman, who rides her horse man-fashion. A few miles farther on they come to a vast marsh, a common feature of the topography of Paraguay, and one of the great drawbacks to travel in the country, for when the rains fall these marshes become dangerous and impassable, and the traveler is compelled to go miles out of his way to turn them before he can continue his journey. The lagoon which lies before them on this occasion, however, is empty, and they are thus saved the detour of more than ten leagues which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
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