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Devastated   Listen
adjective
devastated  adj.  Same as desolated.
Synonyms: blasted, desolate, desolated, ravaged, ruined, wasted.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Devastated" Quotes from Famous Books



... proud of the Sicilian meaning of his title, and so were his sailors, who loved the thrilling effect of anything that conveyed the idea of being associated with a formidable power that devastated every other force that stood in its way. For the most part, Nelson's sailors had great faith in his naval genius. He had led them many times to victory, and they did not forget the glory that attached to themselves. He planned the strategy, but it was they that ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... time a wicked prince whose heart and mind were set upon conquering all the countries of the world, and on frightening the people; he devastated their countries with fire and sword, and his soldiers trod down the crops in the fields and destroyed the peasants' huts by fire, so that the flames licked the green leaves off the branches, and the fruit hung dried up on the singed black trees. Many a poor mother fled, her naked baby ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... of 430 B.C. the Spartans again invaded Attica, and the Athenians shut themselves up in Athens. But here the plague, a calamity more dreadful than war, attacked them and swept away multitudes. This plague, which not only devastated Athens, but other Grecian cities also, is described at considerable length, with a harrowing minuteness of detail, by the Latin poet LUCRETIUS. His description is based upon the account given by ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... from this immense scandal by a frightful calamity—the famous conflagration of Rome, which began the nineteenth of July of the year 64 and devastated almost all quarters of the city for ten days. What was the cause of the great disaster? This very obscure point has much interested historians, who have tried in vain to throw light on the subject. As far as I am concerned, I by no means exclude the hypothesis ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero

... been insupportably hot, the storms which during this year devastated parts of Europe and of France but respected the Limousin, had run their course in the basin of the Loire, and the atmosphere was singularly clear. The sky was so pure that the eye could seize the slightest details on the horizon. What language can render the delightful concert ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... to be a fundamental principle of government that people who have revolted, and who have been overcome and subdued, must either be dealt with so as to induce them voluntarily to become friends, or else they must be held by absolute military power, or devastated so as to prevent them from ever again doing harm as enemies, which last named policy is ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various

... are usually much devastated by the removal of building materials to more recent habitations; or are obscured by modern towns and villages on the same site. All foundations in squared masonry, or composed of unusually large stones, ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various

... like bowls of blood. Then, too, she sought the stocks, the patches of mirabilis, the heliotropes and the lilies. She tore the last blossoming stocks off by the handful, pitilessly crumpling their satin ruches; she devastated the beds of mirabilis, whose flowers were scarcely opening to the evening air; she mowed down the field of heliotropes, piling her harvest of blooms into a heap; and she thrust bundles of lilies under her arms like handles of reeds. When she was again laden with ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... far-reaching aerial programme. Long before her first pursuit squadron could be ready for service, the last of the imperial German air-fleet would, to quote from the article, have "crashed in smouldering ruin on the war-devastated plains of northern France." ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall

... that Albert was devastated or desolate, for these long words have different interpretations and may easily be exaggerated. A German agent might say to you, "Devastated is rather a strong word, and desolate is a matter of opinion." And so you might never know what Albert ...
— Unhappy Far-Off Things • Lord Dunsany

... All the country between the Tees and the Tyne was held by the Bishop of Durham; and he was reputed a count palatine, having a separate government. The other three northern counties were probably so devastated that they were purposely omitted. Let us first see, from the information of Domesday Book, by "what men" the land ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... restraint. Shorn of its trees, as Samson of his long hair, it has pulled down the pillars of man's raising into its own destroying waters. In 1912 a space nearly two and a half times the size of the State of New Jersey was devastated. [Footnote: Seventeen thousand six hundred and five square miles.] In 1913 the loss in a single year was one hundred and sixty million dollars. [Footnote: One hundred and sixty-three million, U. S. Weather Bureau estimate.] ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... them became an actual and awful reality. In the name of Christ, men devastated a Christian country. The spirit of persecution thus aroused became rampant in religion and remained so for over half a thousand years. Rebels against the Church accepted its most evil teaching, and in their brief periods of power became torturers ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... absence of all local government, robbers sprang up in every direction, and, being allowed to organise themselves, devastated and almost ruined the country. Among the most noted of these robber chieftains was Mya Toon. He burned down Donabew, Zaloon, and many other villages. His stronghold was about twenty-five miles inland from Rangoon. In consequence ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... succeed one another. Venesection and harsh purgatives are contra-indicated, and the physician who persists in their employment kills his patient. How grateful are warmth and stimulating medicines! The most powerful, diffusible, and nervous stimulants are required in cholera, when the system is devastated by the disease, as the plain is laid waste by the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... Perce, and a little later entered Gaspe Bay. Roquemont was here informed by the savages that five large English vessels were anchored in Tadousac harbour. It was the fleet of David Kirke,[27] who was going to make an assault on Quebec, after having devastated the Acadian coast. Roquemont at once sent Thierry-Desdames to St. Barnabe Island, where he had intended to go himself. Roquemont left Gaspe on July 15th, 1628, and proceeded up the St. Lawrence, hoping that ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne

... be taken along with the notice of the Alemanni under Eroc. "Valentinian placed Fraomarius as king over the Buccinobantes, a nation of the Alemanni, near Mentz. Soon afterwards, however, an attack upon his people devastated their country (pa- gum, gau). He was then translated to Britain, and placed over the Alemanni, at that time flourishing both in numbers and ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham

... examine the buildings themselves (and this is not quite devoid of danger, since the most interesting are situated in territories forbidden to white men, and occupied by the hostile Indians of Chan-Santa-Cruz, who since 1849 wage war to the knife on the inhabitants of Yucatan, and have devastated the greatest part of that State), or to study my magnificent collection of photographs where they are most faithfully portrayed; that can be done with more ease, without running the ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.

... the practical statesmanship which comes from your ideals and your sentimentalities? You have wasted nearly six hundred millions of treasure. You have sacrificed nearly ten thousand American lives—the flower of our youth. You have devastated provinces. You have slain uncounted thousands of the people you desire to benefit. You have established reconcentration camps. Your generals are coming home from their harvest bringing sheaves with them, in the shape of other thousands of sick ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... Champlain's old warehouse, which, from the hands of the Company (Compagnie de la Nouvelle France), had passed into those of the King (Louis XIV.), had remained in the same state as when left after the great fire which, some years previously, had devastated ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... on the encampment of the animal trappers had evidently been made several days before. The fire had devastated the place. All the animals in cages had been killed or released. And in the blackened ruins and about the clearing, on the rocks, there lay the bodies of more than a dozen Patagonians. Tugg showed real feeling when ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster

... once since they have been over the house and garden and utterly devastated it, so says her nurse. They searched a tool-house and a small conservatory. Madame Bellegarde has been cool enough to go there for flowers, but is in the utmost apprehension. And now ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell

... literature the city has no sense, or indeed only contempt," and I await the promised explanation with interest. For my own part, I often wonder if there will remain any opportunities for literary intelligence to expand at all when the happy (?) faculty of man's ingenuity has devastated all nature's countenance and resources with "improvements," cut down all the trees to make houses of, and turned all the green waterways into horse-power for machinery. Then we shall have cotton-mill epics, phonograph elegies from the tops of tall buildings; and then ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More

... many people from the parishes devastated by M. de Julien had taken refuge in Aussilargues, in the parish of St. Andre. Driven by hunger and misery, they went beyond the prescribed limits in search of means of subsistence. Planque hearing of this, in his burning zeal for the Catholic faith resolved ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... During the 1980s, Honduras proved a haven for anti-Sandinista contras fighting the Marxist Nicaraguan Government and an ally to Salvadoran Government forces fighting leftist guerrillas. The country was devastated by Hurricane Mitch in 1998, which killed about 5,600 people and caused ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... was undertaken by one Robert de Luzarche, in the episcopate of Evrard de Fouilloy, the forty-fifth Bishop of Amiens, whose tomb may be seen just within the western doorway, and occupies the site of other structures which had been variously devastated by fire or invasion in 850, 1019, 1137, and 1218. For fifty years the work went on expeditiously under various bishops and their architects. "Saint" Louis, Blanche of Castille, Philippe the Hardy, and the city fathers all aided the work substantially, ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... had to suffer—to suffer cruelly for our sins. Our enemy forced his way through the dyke that surrounded us, and like a stormy sea he ruined our homes, devastated our fields, and caused us endless suffering. Besides this, the talk of intervention had an enervating effecton the commandos. In our commando, which was largely composed of ignorant men, the strangest stories went round. One was that the Russians had landed somewhere in ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo

... submersion of all the land, except, perhaps, the tops of high mountains, did they then exist. We have in the sacred volume, a record of such a catastrophe, the flood of Noah, and from that time to the present, no convulsion, equally extensive in its influence, has devastated the globe. Have not then the geologists who have seen in these indications the convincing evidence of that occurrence, been warranted in their inference, of the identity of an event pointed out ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... were also hastening from Vienna, from Bohemia, and from other parts of the German empire. Solyman, having devastated the country around him, and being all unprepared for the storms of winter, was compelled to retire. He struck his tents, and slowly and sullenly descended the Danube, wreaking diabolical vengeance upon the helpless peasants, killing, burning and destroying. Leaving a strong garrison ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... Maori village at the foot of the wonderful hills up whose slopes rose the marvellous pink and white terraces which were, a few years later, to be wiped off the face of the earth by the terrible volcanic eruptions that devastated that part of the North Island. Acting upon the advice of our doctor I decided to take a short course of the sulphur mud baths which were scattered here and there over the ground. Having obtained permission from Te-Whiti, the then king, I spent eight days at Ohinemutu. The two chief guides, Maria ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon

... led the snorting pony by the bridle. We went on with some difficulty, trying to find the road in these devastated plains. ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... fearfully avenged the massacre of Hogirano. All were slain who could not escape into the bush; and when the few survivors, after days and nights of hunger, ventured back, they found the dwellings burnt, the fruit trees cut down, the yam and taro grounds devastated, and more than a hundred headless bodies of their kindred ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and shot the lieutenant through the heart. The rebel detail left the meat, and took off the corpse of their commander. The spirit of discontent is manifesting itself in various ways among even the most ultra rebels. They are getting tired of seeing their country devastated by the two armies, and are anxious for a settlement; and it only awaits the daring of a few to inaugurate a "rebellion within a rebellion," which, if once started, will ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett

... the United States of America, India, Afghanistan, Egypt, South Africa, and many besides of less importance, have resisted British authority at different times. Some of these, like the late Republics, were at one time or other laid in ruins and devastated by British arms. For years and years their inhabitants were subjected to awful persecutions. The blood of the best and bravest was spilt like water, whilst millions were spent to conquer whole populations—millions which might have ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald

... the statement of Giraldus, and some other writers, that the Forest of Dean obtained its name from the Danes sheltering themselves in it, secured by its shades and thickets from the retaliation of the neighbouring people, whose country they had devastated?—Or, again, do we "fancy," with Camden, that "by cutting off a syllable it is derived from Arden, which word the Gauls and Britons heretofore seemed to have used for a wood, since two very great forests, the one in Gallia Belgica, the other amongst ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls

... recovering from a wound received at Culloden, and the eldest, though he had kept quiet from motives of prudence, was quite as keen a Jacobite as the other two. Their eagerness to serve the Prince could be relied on, and as the island had been recently devastated by the Government soldiers, it was not likely ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... quite a bow; and then they walked sadly back into the house, where cook's voice could be heard scolding volubly, mingled with Aunt Hannah's milder tones, though the latter could hardly be heard as they entered the devastated kitchen, from which the smoke and dust had now pretty well disappeared, making the damage plain to see. And very plain it was: the new boiler stood in front of the grate, with a hole ripped in one side, the wrought iron being forced out by the power of the steam, just as if it had been composed ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn

... are well satisfied if they can keep warm during the dreary winters, and obtain their usual supplies during the summer. Sometimes a plague sets in among their sheep and reduces them to great distress. Fire, pestilence, and famine have from time to time devastated the island. Still, where their wants are so few, they can bear with great patience the calamities inflicted upon them by an all-wise Providence. Owing perhaps to their isolated mode of life, they are a grave and pious people, simple in their manners, superstitious, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... the khan, in order to save Moscow; he made him presents and in the treaty signed by him, called himself the khan's tributary. When the khan withdrew, he was attacked in Riazan and the treaty was taken away from him. The invasion was, however, a calamity for the grand dukedom, which was devastated by fire, and a host of women and children were carried off, to be sold as slaves at ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen

... wrote Cortes in his despatches to Castile, "and the city, as we approached, was more beautiful than the cities of Spain." Beautiful and gay doubtless Cholula was when the Spaniards entered; drenched with the blood of its inhabitants and devastated by fire it lay before they left it! There had been signs of treachery, even on the road thither, work of the Cholulans; but, lodged in the city, the Spaniards discovered, through the agency of the intelligent Marina, a plot to annihilate them later. Taking the Cholulans unawares as ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... in that ingrata terra into which Uncle Jack had fallen. No squire could be persuaded into the belief that his mother-stone was pregnant with minerals; no farmer talked into weaving straw-plat into a proprietary association. So, even as an ogre, having devastated the surrounding country, begins to cast a hungry eye on his own little ones, Uncle Jack's mouth, long defrauded of juicier and more legitimate morsels, began to water for a bite of my ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... concerning London it vouchsafes us for one hundred and fifty years following the departure of the Romans. The information, scant as it is, serves to show that London had not quite become a deserted city, nor had yet been devastated as others had been by the enemy. Its walls still served to afford shelter to the ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... which were conducted by those states against each other. Great parts of the country were thereby desolated, and the population diminished. An era remarkable in this respect was the great Northern war (1700-1721), at the end of which the population of Finland was reduced to a third, and its devastated land divided between hostile powers. Another division of the country (1743) only contributed still more to weaken the national strength. All that remained of this strength was required to maintain the union with Sweden, which was ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... who collected this revenue, and on the Enterprising capitalists who had put their wealth and energy into the waste places to which they had been invited by the government, and who had given these devastated territories much of the value which they now possessed. Lastly, these enterprising possessors were strongly represented in the senate; the leading members of the nobility had embarked on a new system of agriculture, the results of which were inimical to the interest of the small farmer, and ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... pilferers and plotters at home. For this reason the reader of ancient history so often has occasion to remark what immense prosperity Asiatic provinces enjoyed between the periods when their successive conquerors devastated them. They flourished exceedingly the moment peace and a certain order ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... of this terrible old monarch, who devastated whole districts, and sacrificed uncounted thousands of lives for his ruthless pleasure, that under his administration of his chaotic and turbulent empire "the country rejoiced in the most complete security. A Jew or a woman might travel alone from Oudjda to the Oued Noun without ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... a month to come I should not be able to accomplish half of what is to be done." There were trials enough during this period, but her severest affliction came in its last year, in the loss of an infant son by cholera. That was in 1849, when Cincinnati was devastated; when during the months of June, July and August more than nine thousand persons died of cholera within three miles of her house, and among them she says, "My Charley, my beautiful, loving, gladsome baby, so loving, so ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach

... of Charlotte was struck off from Albany, which was the actual beginning of the present county of Washington. As Charlotte county had been named for the consort of George III. and as his troops had devastated it during the Revolution, the title was not an agreeable one, so the state legislature on April 2, 1784, changed it to Washington, thus giving it the most honored appellation known in the ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... Eri-Aku, the son of the lady Kur... has sat on the throne of royalty," from which it may perhaps be inferred that Eri-Aku was the son of Kudur-Laghghamar's daughter; and in another we read, "Who is Kudur-Laghghamar, the doer of mischief? He has gathered together the Umman Manda, has devastated the land of Bel (Babylonia), and [has marched] at their side." The Umman Manda were the "Barbarian Hordes" of the Kurdish mountains, on the northern frontier of Elam, and the name corresponds with that of the Goyyim or "nations" in the fourteenth chapter of Genesis. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... year that they succeeded in carrying the outer wall, so strongly was the city fortified and so well was it defended. After having forced the outer wall, the Monguls destroyed the suburbs of the town, devastated the cultivated gardens and grounds, and pillaged the villas. They then took up their position around the inner wall, and commenced the siege of the ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott

... turns himself over in his sleep, and becoming as soon as they reach the surface and harden into rock, the great monumental systems of human thought, the huge fetters of our imaginations. The central life-fire which thus forces its path at cataclysmic intervals to the devastated surface is certainly no illusion. It is the one ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... her father and mother. The conception, especially, of Mr. Ingram at lunch, deliciously playful and dominating, and now with the adroit wit crushed out of him and only a naive sentimentality left, was comic—as she had ruthlessly characterized it. She alone towered formidably over the devastated ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... lives—by piecing together professors and scholars, putting up a little playhouse of learning, before the world, to give a few fresh young boys and girls four years with paper books?—a man the very thought of whom has ruined more men and devastated more faiths and created more cowards and brutes and fools in all walks of life than any other influence in the nineteenth century, and who is trying to eke out at last a spoonful of atonement for it all—all ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... evening, a little before sunset, Nicky-Nan took a stroll along the cliff-path towards his devastated holding, to see what progress the military had made with their excavations. The trench, though approaching his boundary fence, had not yet reached it. Somewhat to his surprise he found Mr Latter there, in the very middle of his patch, examining ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... This same composer is also credited with having composed a dramatic piece called Orpheo, which was performed with great splendor in the larger council chamber. Again, in 1577, Zarlino was commissioned to compose a mass for the commemoration of the terrible plague which devastated Italy and carried off Titian, among other great men. His ecclesiastical standing was so good that in 1583 he was elected bishop, but his accession to the see was so strongly opposed by the doge and the senate that he consented to retain ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... B.C.).—The season of prosperity under the twelfth dynasty was followed by anarchy and the downfall of the Theban rule. According to Manetho, it was under a king named Timaos that a horde of invaders—the Hyksos, or "shepherds"—came in from the north, devastated the country, and made themselves its rulers. They were probably of Semitic descent, but nothing more is known as to their origin. In connection with them, Semitic, and in particular Canaanite, elements penetrated into Egypt, and left their ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... suffered himself to be won by the flattery of Philip II. He was reproached with having forgotten the interests of the State when {82} he returned, and was consumed by regrets that were unavailing. The wrath of the people was increasing daily as the cruel persecution devastated the Low Countries. All other subjects were forgotten in the time of agony and expectation. There was talk of resistance that would win death on the battlefield, more merciful than that proceeding from slow torture. In streets, shops, and taverns men ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... nothing now in the whole countryside quite so desolate and forlorn as the chateau of Montorgueil, with its once magnificent park, now overgrown with weeds, its encircling walls broken down, its terraces devastated, and its ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... Edward I. Its decay was gradual. In 1342, in the parish of St. Nicholas, out of three hundred houses only eighteen remained. Only seven out of a hundred houses were standing in the parish of St. Martin. St. Peter's parish was devastated and depopulated. It had a small round church, like that at Cambridge, called the Temple, once the property of the Knights Templars, richly endowed with costly gifts. This was a place of sanctuary, as were the other churches in the city. With the destruction ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... Overview: The economy, devastated during the regime of former President Macias NGUEMA, is based on agriculture, forestry, and fishing, which account for about half of GDP and nearly all exports. Subsistence agriculture predominates, with cocoa, coffee, and wood products providing ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... at first misunderstood, were afterward welcomed in Raratonga, which was devastated with a plague of rats. The missionaries imported a cargo consisting of pigs, ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... lava eruption. Water trickled here and there, overhung by mosses of loose habit and of a dazzling green. Tree ferns arched over the way with their lace-work fronds, and here and there clumps of trees towered up, showing that it must have been many generations since fire had devastated this part of the island, and the huge masses of lava had been formed in a long, river-like mass, to be afterwards broken up and piled by some convulsion in the ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn

... to secure and maintain freedom of communications and of transit and equitable treatment for the commerce of all Members of the League. In this connection, the special necessities of the regions devastated during the war of 1914-1918 shall be borne ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing

... Three years later Duke Francis died a ruined man. The Napoleonic harrow passed over Saxe-Coburg. The duchy was seized by the French, and the ducal family were reduced to beggary, almost to starvation. At the same time the little principality of Amorbach was devastated by the French, Russian, and Austrian armies, marching and counter-marching across it. For years there was hardly a cow in the country, nor enough grass to feed a flock of geese. Such was the desperate plight of the family ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... the pale, handsome face, which lay motionless against the pillow. His thoughts flew back to his own youth, to the long years which had filled the gap between. Friends had come and gone, loved ones vanished; and still he stood, like an oak in the heart of a devastated forest, alone. Why had he been spared, and to what end? Ah, how old he was, how very old! To live beyond the allotted time, was not that a punishment for some transgression? His eyes shone ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... broadcasted by the Meat Board. The public must not only be taught the value of nuts as set forth in Mr. Russell's admirable book, but should be encouraged by government aid to plant nut trees on barren mountain sides and areas devastated by lumbering operations. If every lumberman had been required by law to plant a nut tree for every ten timber trees cut down during the last 50 years, a food source would have been provided which would insure more than an ample supply of precious protein and satisfying ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... them on their chosen ground, when such an attack could only have resulted in a repetition of the Custer massacre. His action proved, in the end, the wisest he could have taken in a strictly military sense; and, besides, it saved the Bitter Root country from being devastated; for White Bird said, afterward, that had the Indians been compelled to fight their way out of Lo Lo they would have fired the whole country, and many a ranchman would have lost his crops and his home if not ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields

... 1373. Italy is devastated by petty strife: "It seems as if a planet reigned at this time which produced in the world the following effects: That the Brothers of St. Austin killed their Provincial at Sant' Antonio with a knife; and in Siena was much ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa

... authority to different officials, he visited the chief towns and villages in the meizoseismal area; and, in spite of unfavourable weather and the difficulties of travelling in a country so recently devastated, he completed his examination in little more than two months. It was a task, surely, that would have baffled any but the most enthusiastic investigator or one unspurred by the feeling that he possessed the key to one of the ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison

... The geographical order in which the scribes of Rameses enumerated their conquests shows clearly the direction from which the federals had come and the path they followed. In succession they had devastated Hatti (i.e. Cappadocia), Kedi (i.e. Cilicia), Carchemish and central Syria. Their victorious progress began, therefore, in northern Asia Minor, and followed the great roads through the Cilician passes to ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth

... like a restive steed. And waiting thus impatient to be gone, Looking out seaward from the dripping wharf, Strange rumours fill'd his ears, from inland come, How all the land around his native place Was devastated by a mighty Beast, Most terrible to see, and passing strong. They told him how it slew both man and brute, Destroying every living thing around, And laying waste the land for many a mile; And how 'twas thought no blade, by mortal wrought, Could ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... to the right nor the left, marching onward, onward to Vienna. Such obstacles as he encountered on his way he removed by the might and strength of his forces, as an elephant lifts his ponderous foot to crush a pigmy lying in his path. His march was through burning villages and devastated fields; the glare of his torch illumined the sky, the blood of his victims reddened the earth. Austria's desponding hopes were concentrated upon the Duke of Lorraine; for the King of Poland had not arrived, and the Elector of Bavaria ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... other quarter of the world; and that by some convulsion of nature, the spinal cord of its existence had been broken, and life became extinct. This hypothesis has been acted on, in accounting for the earthquakes which occur at Comrie in Perthshire. The great storm which devastated the princely estates of Earl Goodwin in Kent (circa anno 1098), and now so well known to mariners as the Goodwin Sands, is also said to have laid waste the parish of Forvie, in Aberdeenshire. On the occasion of the great earthquake at Lisbon in 1755, a flock of sheep were drowned in their ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various

... a mile to travel over a rough, wild region, where the fires that had formerly devastated it had left the only visible marks of a near civilization. In a tranquil little dell that had grown up to wild grass, he came suddenly upon a horse feeding. It was Stackridge's useful nag, which looked up from his lofty ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... GERST.). Nearly a quarter of a century ago, I saw her, all through the month of July, cutting out her rounds and ellipses at the expense of the petals of the Pelargonium zonale, the common geranium. Her perseverance devastated—there is no other word for it—my modest array of pots. Hardly was a blossom out, when the ardent Megachiles came and scalloped it into crescents. The colour was indifferent to her: red, white or pink, all the petals underwent the disastrous operation. A few captures, ancient relics of ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... have the chronicles of the land put into rhyme, and engaged Firdusi for this piece of work, promising him a thousand gold pieces for every thousand distichs he finished. Firdusi, who had long wished to build stone embankments for the river whose overflow devastated his native town, begged the king to withhold payment until the ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... insatiable Bati pressed on hundreds of miles further west, assailing, storming, destroying the provinces of Gallicia as far as southern Vladimir within a few leagues of the frontiers of Poland. Russia being thus entirely devastated and at the feet of the conquerors, Bati wheeled his army around toward the south and descended into Hungary. Novgorod was almost the only important city in Russia which escaped the ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... to go? What to do? In what direction to look for a refuge? Was there any shelter near by? How were we to reach it? How were we to move at all? No doubt he had expired; and the earth, swept, deluged, glimmering fiercely and devastated with an awful uproar, appeared no longer habitable. A thunder-clap seemed to crash new life into him; the world flared all round, as if turning to a spark, and he was seen sitting up dazedly, like one called up from ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... were made in the charter of the city. Galveston and several other Texas cities tried the experiment of substituting a commission for the mayor and council. The Galveston idea originated in 1901, after a hurricane had devastated the city, and the mayor and aldermen proved unable to cope with the situation. Upon request of an existing civic committee the State legislature gave to the city a new charter, with provision for a commission of five, including a mayor who ordinarily has no more power than any other ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... predecessors by Pepin and Charles the Great. He pursued the Papal line of conquest in a nobler spirit than his predecessors, not seeking to advance his relatives so much as to reinstate the Church in her dominions. But he was reckless in the means employed to secure this object. Italy was devastated by wars stirred up, and by foreign armies introduced, in order that the Pope might win a point in the great game of ecclesiastical aggrandizement. That his successor, Leo X., reverted to the former plan of carving ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... delightfully ridiculous phenomenon in a delightfully ridiculous universe. And she had once been obliged to make a convulsive exit from an English cathedral, in which one hundred colonial bishops were singing a solemn hymn, entirely devastated by the laughter waked in her ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... was a delightful song that devastated New York. It was a patriotic song, and it was called: "The sun is always shining on Broadway." At the time, I translated this into English, for rendering at a private show, the refrain being that the sun is always shining in the Strand. So it is. Dull as the ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... often witnessed their fine country devastated by petty warfare, their notion of the military character was not usually heroic. Il soldato per far male e ben pagato: "The soldier is well paid for doing mischief." Soldato, acqua, e fuoco, presto si fan luoco: "A soldier, fire, and water soon make ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... unhesitatingly names you and me and the French investors and several editors. Well, I have no space for more than an indication of what you will find in this undeniably vigorous and vehement little volume. But I must not forget the photographs. Some of these, of devastated streets and the like, have rather lost their novelty. Unfortunately, however, for Mr. WELLS as propagandist he has also included a number of the most revealing portraits yet available of the men who are hag-riding a once great nation to the abyss. I can only say that for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various

... markets, and to swamp our home markets with their surplus stocks. Down to the minutest detail, the same causes and actions had produced the same results a century earlier in the Netherlands; and even as, first, King William of Prussia, and then revolutionary France, had devastated the Netherlands, so had the Kaiser's legions overrun England. It was not for lack of warning that our politicians had blindly followed so fatal a lead. "The Destroyers" were still being warned most urgently at the very time of the invasion by public speakers, and in such ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... of Poggio's collection came from Rome: Even Lorenzo de' Medici got most of his from the provinces. A century later Sabba del Castiglione complains of having to buy a Donatello owing to the difficulty of getting good antiques.[117] Rome had been devastated by cupidity and neglect as much as by fire and sword. "Ruinarum urbis Romae descriptio" is the title of one of Poggio's books. Alberti says that in his time he had seen 1200 ruined churches in the city.[118] Bramantino made drawings of some of them.[119] ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

... all that, unfortunately. No, the general information column. "Will you be so good as to inform me, through the medium of your invaluable paper, what was the exact area devastated by the Great Fire of London?"—that kind of thing, you know. Hopburn—that's the fellow's name—tells me that his predecessor always called the paper Chat-moss, because of the frightful difficulty he had in filling it up each week. By-the-bye, what a capital column that is of ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... near they might approach, Not touch, while firm his faith—their Foe that dragged, Sole-kneeling on that wood-girt mountain's base, With both hands forth their realm's foundation stone. Thus ruin filled the mountain: day by day The forest torment deepened; louder roared The great aisles of the devastated woods; Black cave replied to cave; and oaks, whole ranks, Colossal growth of immemorial years, Sown ere Milesius landed, or that race He vanquished, or that earliest Scythian tribe, Fell in long line, like deep-mined castle wall, At either side ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere

... which the mention of Jessie's name had set leaping in Kars' brain subsided as swiftly as it had risen. He sat silent for some moments regarding the storm-swept features of the man whose crimes had devastated the life of the girl he loved. His anger changed to an added loathing. And his loathing inspired a desire to ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... that such a problem had become acute in Kalidasa's time, when the old simplicity of Hindu life had broken up. The Hindu kings, forgetful of their duties, had become self-seeking epicureans, and India was being repeatedly devastated by the Scythians. What answer, then, does the poem give to the question it raises? Its message is that the cause of weakness lies in the inner life of the soul. It is in some break of harmony with the Good, some dissociation from the True. In the commencement of the ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore

... Nelly's presence, and stepped toward her with the intention of speaking to her, but she shuddered, rose quickly and fled toward the salon. The portiere closed behind her. He followed her. She was standing trembling and amazed at the sight of the devastated room. He ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc

... present mood. It was so strange to look on these big evergreen trees and on the havoc caused by weeds and weather on the fine carving of the fountain, and to think of their going on here year after year for the past twenty years, while that hideous revolution had devastated the whole country, while men had murdered each other, slaughtered women and children and committed every crime and every infamy which lust of hate and revenge can engender in the hearts of men. ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... Navarre, with his powerful profile and broad chest like an eagle in repose, and different from Nungesser, the Nungesser before his wounds had so devastated his body that a medical board wanted to declare him unfit, a decision which he heroically resisted, adding to his thirty victories another triumph over physical disability. Guynemer differed from them mentally, too, ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux

... broke in Alcibiades, "believe that Athens is near her end. While we have been celebrating the victory of Salamis, the Spartans have risen and devastated the north. Megaris, Locris, Boeotia, and Phocis ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... scientists consider the Abseron Yasaqligi (Apsheron Peninsula) (including Baku and Sumqayit) and the Caspian Sea to be the ecologically most devastated area in the world because of severe air, water, and soil pollution; soil pollution results from the use of DDT as a pesticide and also from toxic defoliants used ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... stretched out mighty arms to fondle willow-twig across the shady aisles, and maidenblush rubbed cheeks with Spitzenberg, all reddening in the sun. Under many of the trees the ground was as bare as if fire had devastated it, for the sun never fell through those close-woven branches from May to October, and there no clover grew. But in the open spaces between the rows it sprang rank and tall, troublesome to cut with a mower because ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... re-opening of the choir a matter of sufficient national importance to be recorded in her book. She writes thus: "A new choir of great beauty, was erected in Peterborough Cathedral during this period, and the church was made once more what it was before it was devastated by the Puritans." All must admire the enthusiasm and devotion which brought this restoration to a successful issue, although to the taste of the present day it would all ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting

... incorporated. The cathedral of S. Mustiola is a basilica with a nave and two aisles, with eighteen columns of different kinds of marble, from ancient buildings. It has been restored and decorated with frescoes in modern times. The campanile belongs to the 13th century. The place was devastated by malaria in the middle ages, and did not recover until the Chiana valley was drained in the 18th century. For ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... "I have been intending to tell you, and will now do so without more delay, that you may see how from the saddest beginning a happy result sometimes flows. Those whom you formerly knew are now dust and ashes! A plague sent by angry Juno devastated the land. She hated it because it bore the name of one of her husband's female favorites. While the disease appeared to spring from natural causes we resisted it as we best might by natural remedies; but it soon appeared that the pestilence was too powerful for our efforts, and we yielded. ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... people to those less exalted in birth been described with more delightful irony. True that some of the Firebraces kicked over the traces and married whom they listed, but the family as a whole was rooted deep enough to stand shocks which would have devastated people of less assured position. The scenes of the story are laid in and around Lewes, a part of England dear to Mrs. DUDENEY'S heart, and of which she writes with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 28, 1917 • Various

... Lithuania, Galicia, part of Hungary, Alsace, Serbia, Bosnia, northern France, south-western Austria-Hungary, and all of Belgium and Roumania, a territory amounting to one-fifth of the whole of Europe, were scarred and burned and devastated. ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet

... mandate on each wind is whirled. Let no man hesitate or look askance, For from the devastated homes of France And ruined Belgium the cry is hurled. Why, Christ Himself would keep peace banners furled Were He among us, till, with lifted lance, He saw the hosts of Righteousness advance To purify the Temples of the world. There is no safety on the earth to-day For any sacred thing, or ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... apparatus, I again crossed "No Man's Land," and carefully made my way into the village of Neuve Chapelle itself. To describe it would only be to repeat what I said of the devastated city of Ypres. There was nothing whole standing. The place was smashed and ground down out of all recognition. And yet, from its solitary high position upon the cross, the figure of Christ looked down upon the scene. It was absolutely untouched. It stood there—this sacred emblem ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins

... was destroying the State's finances. Like Julius Caesar he attained his gubernatorial power by making multiple false promises and kept it by a species of corrupt practices which were incredibly vile. There is the tragic setting, the broken, maimed, devastated State of Louisiana, just out of the War of Rebellion and struggling hard to regain her "former glory." There are the carpetbaggers, irresponsible, predatory and indigent, of whom an army estimated to have been five hundred thousand strong invaded the State attracted as vultures by ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... a whole enclosure. On hearing this, both Karl and Caspar were more contented with what they had done. Perhaps, reflected they, had these two cubs lived to grow up, they or their mother might have devastated the paddy-field of some poor jemindar, or farmer, and he and his family might have been put ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... Oxford still offers public thanks for Bodley's generosity upon his calendar-day. The ancient library of Duke Humphrey and his pious predecessors had, as we have seen, been plundered and devastated. But Sir Thomas Bodley, when retiring from office in 1597, conceived the idea of restoring it to prosperity again; 'and in a few years so richly endowed it with books, revenues, and buildings, that it became one of the most famous in the world.' Bodley has left us his own account of the matter:—'I ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton

... corners than of the mosquitoes to and the heat. Without hurry he picked his way through the thronged streets, where already men lay in thousands to escape the breathlessness of walled interiors; the gutters seemed like trenches where the dead of a devastated city had been laid; the murmur was like the voice of storm-winds gathering, and the little lights along the housetops were for the vent-holes on the ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... day, and this he is supposed to have inherited chiefly through his predecessor Herodicus; and he enlarged his education by extensive travel. He is said, though the evidence is unsatisfactory, to have taken part in the efforts to check the great plague which devastated Athens at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. He died at Larissa between 380 and 360 ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... was devastated by General Banks's troops. After the war he appealed to me, and through the Attorney-General, Henry Stanbery, I aided in having his land restored to him, and I think ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... the awful mess of mud and water. These tracks were supported on wooden piles driven into the mud, and were more like wooden bridges than tracks. Sometimes they rested on firm ground, but mostly they were held up in the air by the wooden piles. Again right through the devastated area ran a good paved road from Ypres towards Zonnebeke. Here and there in some of the drier spots you could see queer white mounds—the concrete pill-boxes, some of which were still sound enough, but others broken in and waterlogged. ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley

... in his blood, David, and we all knew it and protected him from high play always. We were impoverished gentlemen, who were building fences and restoring war-devastated lands, and we played in our shabby club with a minimum stake and a maximum zest for the sport. But that night we had no control over him. He had been playing in secret with Peters Brown for weeks and had lost heavily. When we had closed up the ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess

... lonesome Schoenhausen on the Elbe, the village lately devastated by Marshal Soult and his plundering soldiers, the infant Otto sleeps peacefully in his oak-carved Gothic cradle. A century later, we still see that huge cradle as one of the souvenirs in the famous Bismarck ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... Benga and Igalwa, told me that when a family had quite died out, after a time its spirits died too. Some, but by no means all, of these spirits of human origin, as is the case among the Negro Effiks, undergo reincarnation. The Doctor told me he once knew a man whose plantations were devastated by an elephant. He advised that the beast should be shot, but the man said he dare not because the spirit of his dead father had passed ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... that half-Christian, wholly fanatical uprising which devastated many flourishing provinces, had, at this time, attained alarming proportions. Ching Wang, with a host of blood-crazed rebels, had swept over the country in the vicinity of Shanghai with fire and sword, and at the time of Ward's arrival these ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford

... a desolate moon was rising upon a devastated earth; a random river wandering through a lifeless solitude; a long-drawn fairy-tale coming to a close over a deserted world,—all the kings and the princesses, their ministers and friends and their golden castles ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore

... recollection of the diverse acts of wrong which my wicked son of exceedingly evil understanding perpetrated. Possessed of a sinful understanding, he always persecuted the innocent Pandavas. Alas, the whole Earth has been devastated by him, with her steeds, elephants and men. Many high-souled kings, rulers of diverse realms, came for siding my son and succumbed to death. Alas, leaving their beloved sires and wives and their very ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... which for ages had been oppressing our world. Conscience, illuminated and revived by the Word of God, had risen up to assert its rights of free judgment and free worship, and resentful power had drawn the sword to put it down. Continental Europe was being deluged with blood and devastated by relentless religious wars to crush out the evangelic faith, whose confessors held up the Bible over all popes and secular powers, and would not consent to part with their inalienable charter from the throne of Heaven to worship God according to his Word. And amid these woeful ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss

... thousands who once had their homes here. Occasionally in our own country we see houses untenanted and falling to ruin, bearing unmistakable evidences of death or desertion, and I have followed armies that devastated a countryside and slew its people or hunted them to the hills, but the first is a solitary case, and the second, though full of horror, has at least the element of activity, of moving and struggling life. The ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... imaginings of other creeds; Satan might create a world of his own and people it with the damned; theology might evolve from elder faiths a newer trinity and set it like a diadem in space; angels and archangels might refill the devastated heavens of the past; none the less, in the light of that austere pronouncement, for a moment Israel dwelled in ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus

... awful booming; the dam has given way! An avalanche of water God's hand alone can stay! Oh, leap, ye hills, before it and keep this torrent back, Or devastated towns and homes will mark its ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... Brown Brother attained his first full set of antlers a forest fire devastated a great section of the wilderness to the northward. The animals fled in terror before it, lynx and deer, fox and rabbit, side by side, all personal feuds forgotten in the great common danger. Many perished, overtaken by the flames which, fanned by a brisk wind from the north, traveled with ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer

... startled birds, the sound Of tall trees crashing to the ground, Struck with amaze each giant's ear, And filled the isle with sudden fear. Then, wakened by the crash and cries, The fierce shefiends unclosed their eyes, And saw the Vanar where he stood Amid the devastated wood. The more to scare them with the view To size immense the Vanar grew; And straight the Rakshas warders cried Janak's daughter terrified "Whose envoy, whence, and who is he, Why has he come to talk with thee? Speak, lady ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... body;—or who have been brave warriors through several generations,—there never were any braver than the Vasas or the Protestant Wittelsbachs in Sweden. But none have been the educators of their people as were the early Hohenzollerns, who as great landed proprietors in a devastated country drew new men into their service and guided their education; who for almost a hundred and fifty years, as strict managers, worked, schemed, and endured, took risks, and even did injustice—all that they might build up for their state a people like themselves—hard, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... besought the poet to read aloud to a select audience, acted upon the hint he had unwittingly dropped to Anne Percy and organised a charity performance for the benefit of an island recently devastated by earthquake. Warner was visibly out of countenance when gaily reminded by Anne of his careless words, but he could do no less than comply, for the wretched victims were in want of bread. Lady Mary, Miss Bargarny, and several others offered their services. ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton

... of course, entertain friendly feelings towards the tribes which sided with their enemies and often devastated their homes and murdered their people. But it must be admitted that, from the first, the British in America were far behind the French in christianlike conduct towards the native races. The colonial traders generally despised the Indians and treated them as of commercial value only, ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis

... very necessary, moreover, to take steps to bring back some kind of prosperity to the devastated country. Seeds and grain were distributed among the peasants, who were encouraged to cultivate the land and taught the best methods of doing so. All these different undertakings were carried out with the regularity ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes

... Overview: Uganda has substantial natural resources, including fertile soils, regular rainfall, and sizable mineral deposits of copper and cobalt. For most of the past 15 years the economy has been devastated by political instability, mismanagement, and civil war, keeping Uganda poor with a per capita income of about $300. (GDP remains below the levels of the early 1970s, as does industrial production.) Agriculture is the most important sector ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... farewells and the bright hope of meeting two years hence in Berlin they little dreamed that it would be seven long years before they came together again; that during this time the world would be devastated by the most terrible war in history and that the task must be once more commenced of developing among the women of the nations the spirit ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... Calabria in the spring of 1496, and war broke out afresh through that already sorely devastated land. The Spaniards were joined by the allied forces of Venice and the Church under the condotta of the Marquis Gonzaga of Mantua, the leader ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... in their places; and when, in spite of this, the old spirit revived, Ivan the Terrible determined to apply the method of physical extermination which he had found so effectual in breaking the power of his own nobles. Advancing with a large army, which met with no resistance, he devastated the country with fire and sword, and during a residence of five weeks in the town he put the inhabitants to death with a ruthless ferocity which has perhaps never been surpassed even by Oriental despots. If those old walls could speak they would have many a horrible tale to ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... piratical. If vessels of war even, they would by this conduct have justly forfeited all courtesies in ports of neutral nations. Manned by foreign seamen, armed by foreign guns, entering no home port, and waiting no judicial condemnation of prizes, they have already devastated and destroyed our commerce to an extent, as compared with their number, beyond any thing known in ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... 1698, when the summit of Carguairazo, a mountain 19,720 feet in height, fell in, leaving only two huge masses of rock remaining of the ledge of the crater, a space of nearly thirty-two square miles was overflowed and devastated by streams of liquid tufa and argillaceous mud ('lodazales'), containing large quantities of dead fish. p 233 In like manner, the putrid fever, which raged seven years previously in the mountain town of Ibarra, north of Quito, was ascribed to the ejection of fish from the volcano ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... beautiful brilliant flowers towering upward above dry soil, particularly where the woodsman's axe and forest fires have devastated the landscape, illustrate Nature's abhorrence of ugliness. Other kindly plants have earned the name of fire-weed, but none so quickly beautifies the blackened clearings of the pioneer, nor blossoms over the charred trail in the wake of the locomotive. Beginning at the bottom of the long ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... into the territory of the enemy, so regardful was he of civilized warfare, that the observance of his general orders as to private property and private rights left the line of his march marked and marred by no devastated fields, charred ruins, or desolated homes. But it is in his private character, or rather I should say his personal emotion and virtue, which his countrymen will most delight to consider and dwell upon. His magnanimity, transcending all historic precedent, ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke

... these occasions as to what course the ejected lava will pursue; whose turn, of the many settlements on the southern slopes of the Mountain, will it be to suffer? This time it was Bosco-Trecase, a village above Torre Annunziata, that was devastated by the sinuous masses of incandescent matter, high as a house and broad as a river. Torre Annunziata itself, as also ruined Pompeii were threatened, but the red-hot streams of destruction mercifully stopped short of their expected prey. The story of ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... after midday, a strip of open ground was reached. It had probably been devastated at one ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon

... Frenchmen, were starting out on the famous Fourth Crusade—that enterprise which ended, on the outward journey, underneath the walls of Constantinople. The Venetians forced their way into Zadar, plundered and devastated it; and in order to mollify the Pope, who was indignant at Crusaders having behaved in this fashion against a Christian town, they subscribed towards the building of the cathedral, but retained possession of the place—this ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein

... were forced upon one by the increased activity on the Eastern Railway line to Delagoa Bay, plainly visible from the side verandah at Harmony, and, daily, train loads passed of armed soldiers, or Boer women and children being brought in from the devastated farms. ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt

... Over the mildewed harvest's hungry waste, Breathing the fetid breath of pestilence, And crying havoc to the dogs of war, Let slip on unresisting innocence? Why suffereth He that thus a rival mar His cherished work—through devastated fields Borne on triumphant in ensanguined car?— Him, who with power to rescue, tamely yields His helpless charge to persecuting hate, Nor His own offspring from the torturer shields, But sits aloof, callously obdurate, While but the will is ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... for you Mexicans to remember Washington, as it is for us Americans to remember Hidalgo and the other heroes of Mexican history together with our own. I firmly believe that Mexico has passed beyond the state in which civil dissensions devastated this fortunate country, and that in the future there will be no door open to internal strife, thanks to the wise administration and foresight of the great statesman ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root

... Mie towards the Luxembourg Gardens, the great devastated pleasure-ground of the ci-devant tyrants of the people. The beautiful Anne of Austria, and the Medici before her, Louis XIII, and his gallant musketeers—all have given place to the great cannon-forging industry ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... along with all these changes, and indeed anticipating some of them, there should arise a group of Southern writers. Indeed, immediately after the war there was a marked tendency in the direction of literary work — "an avalanche of literature in a devastated country." Magazines were started and books were published in abundance. The literary activity was due, no doubt, in the first place, to the poverty of men and women: some who would have looked down upon literature as a profession before the war were now eager to do anything to keep ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... in hand, stood at the head of the stone stairs; the ancient tower rocked with the fiercely magnificent anthem of revolt—the war cry of a devastated land—the land that died to save the world—the martyr, Belgium, still prone in the deathly trance awaiting her ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... love those whose hands are red with the blood of our children; to take to our bosoms the murderers and robbers who have slain upon the soil of their nativity our people, and who have robbed our homes and devastated our country; who have fattened Southern soil with Southern blood, and enriched their homes with the stolen wealth of ours. Are we not men, and manly? Do we feel as men? and is not this insult to manliness, and a vile mockery to the feelings of men? We can never forget—we will never forgive, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... resources: we do not lack for arms or ammunition, and we have still a wide territory from which to gather supplies. So, you see, we are not in extremities. But if we were,—if we were without money, without food, without weapons,—if our whole country were devastated, and our armies crushed and disbanded,—could we, without giving up our manhood, give up our right to govern ourselves? Would you not rather die, and feel yourself a man, than live, and be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... citizens prisoners—especially ecclesiastics—in order to extort exorbitant ransoms, they took from the peasants their beasts and their crops, and forced them to work in strengthening the dens of their spoliators with new fortifications. In fine, the Quercy was continually devastated, and the inhabitants only tilled the earth to satisfy the avidity of the English companies. The population could shield themselves from their violence only by concealing themselves in subterranean retreats, where traces of their sojourn are still observable. ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... little was spoken between the two, for Millicent was devastated by her own terrors and Michael was making plans for the sick man's isolation. His tent must remain where it was, while Michael's own, and all the servants', except those inhabited by the men who wished to nurse the saint, must be moved to a safe distance. Millicent's going ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... the 'chupatee movement,' as it is called, to be a sort of 'fiery cross' signal for a united rising, appear to have succeeded in proving little by their own ingenuity. Its real origin was, doubtless, a superstitious attempt to prevent any return of the fearful visitation of epidemic cholera which devastated the north-west provinces the year before, and still lingered in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... bare. Then the streams wore great ravines down the unprotected hillsides. Steadily the work of destruction by erosion has gone on, until time beyond our possibility to comprehend must pass before the land can be made productive again. The hills and valleys of China have been devastated in the same way, and many of the older regions of the earth that were once the sites of great cities and extensive commerce are now marked only by the ruins of the civilization that has passed away. They have almost ceased ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory

... on into the dark stretches of the park, among the debris of the devastated buildings, up the little sandy hills, out of the park to the lonely temple. Already his self-reproach seemed trivial. He knew how little his concealed suspicions had to do with bringing about this catastrophe. That misunderstanding was but a drop in the stream of fate, which ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... was sad enough, the houses in the suburbs with broken windows and doors as though pillaged, the gardens devastated, the trees cut down, and the fields, which ought to have been ripening to harvest, trampled or mown for forage, all looking as if a hostile invader had been there, and yet it was the sons of the country that had done this, while swarms ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and driven from one state to another. Parents were separated from their children, husbands from their wives, and if any one was daring enough to speak a word in favour of the much-suffering race, he ran the risk of having his house fired, and his plantations devastated, or of being put to death, as John Brown was in ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston

... seen most of these pictures in Germany, my interest quickened, for I had been through that devastated province during and after the first invasion. Familiar scenes of ruined villages and refugees scudding from the sulphur storm passed before my eyes. Then came the ruined heap of a once stately church tagged Beautiful Church ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin

... that the whole enterprise had been undertaken merely in his own interests; and it is possible also that his many painful associations with Espanola, and the bloodshed and horrors that he had witnessed there, had aroused in his superstitious mind a distaste for possessions and titles in that devastated Paradise. Instead, he accepted a measure of relief from the obligations incurred by his eighth share in the many unprofitable expeditions that had been sent out during the last three years, agreeing for the next three years to receive an eighth share of the gross income, ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... world was the like of the heroism of Cyrano ever to be found? These writers moved heaven and earth; they summoned from their tombs the Emperor and his legions, the bandits of the Ligue, the condottieri of the Renaissance, called up the human cyclones that once devastated the universe:—just to display a puppet, standing unmoved through frightful massacres, surrounded by armies, soldiers, and whole hosts of captive women, dying of a silly calfish love for a woman whom he had seen ten or fifteen years before—or King Henri IV submitting to assassination ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... fields of Scotland were being traversed and devastated by a lawless banditti, authorised by a lawless and covenant-breaking king and Government, those indomitable men who held with Cameron and Cargill united themselves more closely together, and thus entered into a new bond pledging themselves ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne

... caprices and the vices of mature age, sucks money out of disease. Even so, if they drink no brandy, like the artisan, nor wallow in the mire of debauch, all equally abuse their strength, immeasurably strain their bodies and their minds alike, are burned away with desires, devastated with the swiftness of the pace. In their case the physical distortion is accomplished beneath the whip of interests, beneath the scourge of ambitions which torture the educated portion of this monstrous city, just as in the case of the proletariat it is brought about by the cruel see-saw of the material ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... wretchedly closed a series of reigns lasting 4,000 years and noted all over the world for justice and equity. Under the rule of this miserable tyrant countless numbers of men perished and a great many prosperous and famous cities were devastated. All the better classes of citizens were plunged into the most frightful distress and the most lamentable desolation, and it would be impossible to tell how great and wide-spread was the mourning. Now while all were groaning in affliction ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors

... ignorance, that asceticism, that self-abnegation which could but end in the complete subjugation of man to superstition. He was taught that Heaven, the refuge, was the very antithesis of Earth, which was the source of sin. To gain for himself a seat in Heaven, man devastated the Earth. Yet she renewed herself, the good mother, and came again each Spring, radiant with youthful beauty, beckoning her children to come to her bosom and partake of her bounty. But ever the air grew thick with mephitic darkness, ever a hollow voice was heard ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various

... in vegetable physiology than that of these alternations of forest growths. They sometimes come on gradually, but, in a majority of instances, they make their appearance at once on the cutting off of old forests, in the tracks of tornadoes, or where fire has devastated extensive regions of timber. From the facts which have been gathered, it is difficult to determine any regular order of alternation, except that oaks and other deciduous trees succeed the different varieties of pine and other evergreen growths, and, perhaps, vice versa. In Dr. Hough's report ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... to year; 40 to 45 feet constitutes a good Nile—anything less than this implies a shortage of water and more or less scanty crops; while should the Nile rise higher than 45 feet the result is often disastrous, embankments being swept away, gardens devastated, while numbers of houses and little hamlets built on the river-banks ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly

... the first night of their occupation, and were extinguished with difficulty. On the next night fires were kindled by hidden Russians in a hundred different places, and at last the city was a sea of flames in which no man could live. Napoleon had gained nothing by his invasion except to conquer a devastated country, and now, with winter coming on, he was compelled to retreat again ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards

... dragged on the war indefinitely and effected little advantage or profit to anybody.[139] Captain Nuberry visited Santa Marta several weeks after Goodson's descent, and, going on shore, found that about a hundred people had made bold to return and rebuild their devastated homes. Upon sight of the English the poor people again fled incontinently to the woods, and Nuberry and his men destroyed their houses ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring

... recent years that the American people have begun to realize the necessity of the conservation of our forests, and in many sections much has been done to redeem the criminal thoughtlessness in destroying our forests and to restore those devastated by forest fires. Reforestation operations have accomplished a great deal, and the organization to prevent forest fires emphasizes the old adage that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Also ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts



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