"Impassable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... beautiful city. It reminds me of Genoa, but that most of its streets are so steep as to be impassable for wheeled vehicles, and some of them are merely grand flights of stairs, arched over by dense foliaged trees, so as to look like some tropical, colored, deep colonnades. It has covered green balconies with festoons of ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... 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 |
