"Impassable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... games, that his outlook is what is known as "breezy," that he observes the rules of cricket in every relation to his fellow creatures, and that he is capable of enduring defeat or success with the same impassable calm and good-nature. Now it would be absurd to deny that here we have a very imposing catalogue of highly desirable characteristics; it would, however, be equally absurd to claim that the person in whom they are all happily combined, necessarily displays, side by side with ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... each one with two guards behind him, who pricked him with their lances if he did not move fast enough. Their only other arms seemed to be bows and arrows. The march was a very weary one, and through a wild, mountainous country which would have been impassable for men who did not know it thoroughly. Occasionally they seemed to be following obscure paths, but as often there was no sign of a track, and the thick, tropical vegetation made progress difficult. For an hour or two they climbed up the half-dry bed ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... they sat upon the balcony of their residence overlooking the Corso, catching a glimpse of the open country beyond the surrounding mountains and the ever restless Tiber. Frequently, they rode slowly along the Appian Way, now almost impassable for heaps of rubbish, mounds, and broken fragments, temples, columns, pillars, and successive piles of neglected relics. The Campagna, in its dreary aspect, often tempted their stay. Sometimes her ladyship would have a feeling of vexation, knowing that it was utterly impossible ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... Wealth, Commerce, Industry, Arts, Inventions; the extraordinary additional Number, in this happy Reign, of our beautiful Seats, elegant Improvements, useful and ornamental Plantations, extensive Inclosures, excellent high Roads, (formerly almost impassable,) with the visible Reformation in national Harmony, and Allegiance, will best suggest an Idea of the Honourable the House of Commons of Ireland, composed of such candid Spirits, as, neither the Smiles or Frowns of superior Influence, ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... he blamed himself for having made it; blamed himself for being blind; blamed himself more than all for having discovered his blindness and his blunder. Thinking thus, he resolved to go away. Yes, he would go away! He would marry Priscilla at once, and have it over. He would put an impassable ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... we have a partial parallel to the present state of Christendom, in which are seen at work, on one hand, superficial separation; on the other, underlying unity. The splintered peaks may stand, or seem to stand, apart from their sister summits, or may frown at each other across impassable gorges, but they all belong to one geological formation, and in their depths their bases blend indistinguishably into a continuous whole. Their tops are miles apart, but beneath the surface they are one. And so the things that bind Christian ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... at the absence of their husbands after the rains have set in. The rainy season is in India looked on as the season of love, and separation from the lover at this time is particularly bewailed, all the more as the rains soon make the roads impassable. ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... smoked and dined off the hams of the grizzly. Basing our opinion upon such familiar and well-known instances, we are apt to take it for granted far too readily that between eating and being eaten, between the active and the passive voice of the verb edo, there exists necessarily a profound and impassable native antithesis. To swallow an oyster is, in our own personal histories, so very different a thing from being swallowed by a shark that we can hardly realise at first the underlying fundamental identity of eating with mere coalescence. And yet, at the ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... affair of Madras. On the 30th of August, 1748, Admiral Boscawen went and laid siege to Pondicherry; stopped at the outset by the fort of Ariocapang, of the existence of which they were ignorant, the disembarked troops could not push their trenches beyond an impassable morass which protected the town. The fire of the siege-artillery scarcely reached the ramparts; the sallies of the besieged intercepted the communications between the camp and the squadron, which, on its side, was bombarding the walls ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... plateau to the Great Gheet are steep and abrupt. The other rivers rise in wet marshes, in some places impassable. The French left was on the crest of the ridge, above the marshes of the Little Gheet, and extended to the village of Autre Eglise; while the extreme right stood on the high ground overlooking the sources of the Mehaigne. ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... with Ariovis'tus at their head, were next cut off, to the number of eighty thousand, their monarch himself narrowly escaping in a little boat across the Rhine. The Belgae[3] suffered such a terrible overthrow, that marshes and rivers were rendered impassable from the heaps of slain. 11. The Ner'vians,[4] who were the most warlike of those barbarous nations, made head for a short time, and fell upon the Romans with such fury, that their army was in danger of being utterly routed; but Caesar himself, hastily ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... way may be so cut by dips and ravines that it's all but impassable. The chances are a thousand to one in favor of it, as this is one of the roughest ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... aunt had indulged in when learning of the fact. She had only thought in sorrow that since he was "capable of accepting hospitality from the people who had murdered her kindred and blighted the South, there was an impassable gulf between them." ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... of a rapid river. They were in the midst of a great wilderness too, many long miles from a settlement. The nearest could only be reached by travelling through pathless forests, and over numerous and deep rivers. Impassable swamps, and lakes with marshy shores, lay on the route, and barred the direct course, and all this journey would have to ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... Cecil's arms clung round her as though they would never let her go. The saddest feeling of the many that were busy then in the guilty, troubled heart, was a consciousness that in a few hours the gulf between them would be deep and impassable as the chasm dividing ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... whales were sighted, the first we had seen for 260 miles. We saw also petrels, numerous adelies, emperors, crab- eaters, and sea-leopards. The clearer weather of the morning showed us that the pack was solid and impassable from the south-east to the south- west, and at 10 a.m. on the 4th we again passed within five yards of the small berg that we had passed twice on the previous day. We had been steaming and dodging about over an area of twenty square miles for fifty hours, trying to find an opening ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... the country of the Volscians Anxur was soon retaken, the guarding of the city having been neglected during a festival day. This year was remarkable for a cold and snowy winter, so that the roads were impassable, and the Tiber not navigable. The price of provisions underwent no change, in consequence of the abundance previously laid in. And because Publius Licinius, as he obtained his office without any rioting, to the ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... decided we should return to the main camp near the Mission, for we were now confident that Maloney was delayed by the snow, and safe enough on the other side of the mountains. At all events he was beyond aid from us, for the impassable snowdrifts could not be overcome with the means in our possession. It turned out that our suppositions as to the cause of his delay were correct. He had met with the same difficulties that confronted us, and had been ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... have effected by their courage. Spies, principally Jews, were employed throughout the whole country, to give notice where a booty might be obtained. Spring and autumn were the principal seasons of their harvest; in winter the roads were almost impassable, and in summer the days were too long; the light of the moon, in particular, was always avoided, and so were the betraying foot prints in the snow. They seldom marched in a body to the place of attack, but went thither two or three in a party, some on foot, some ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... intractable. I shall have to wear my curl-papers by day as well as by night. Excuse me, gentlemen, for a few minutes," and she disappeared into the back room, to shortly reappear with the rebellious bands tightly swathed in a dozen little rolls of twisted paper. "Again the impassable 'Bridge,'" she said, gayly, and the pair wrestled half a dozen times with the ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... between the Fox and the Wisconsin Rivers. Teams of oxen and a driver were kept at the Agency by the Government, to transport the canoes of the Indians across this place, which at many seasons was wet, miry, and almost impassable. ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... in Moravia, on the confines of Silesia, and intrusted the command to Count Neuperg, whom she liberated from the prison to which her father had so unjustly consigned him. But it was mid-winter. The roads were almost impassable. The treasury of the Austrian court was so empty that but meager supplies could be provided for the troops. A ridge of mountains, whose defiles were blocked up with snow, spread between ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... Balboa resolved to make a name for himself and to be the discoverer of the other sea. He set off in 1513. The land is not more than forty-five miles wide at Panama, but it is almost impassable even to this day. For twenty-two days the hardy adventurers advanced through a forest, dense with thickets and tangled swamps and interlacing vines—so thick that for days the sun could not be seen—and over rough and slippery mountain-sides until they came to an open sea stretching off to ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... Spanish Ambassador, and several more dignified carcasses, I moved off to the Negroni garden. There I found what my soul desired, thickets of jasmine, and wild spots overgrown with bay; long alleys of cypress totally neglected, and almost impassable through the luxuriance of the vegetation; on every side antique fragments, vases, sarcophagi, and altars sacred to the Manes, in deep, shady recesses, which I am certain the Manes must love. The air was filled with the murmurs of water, trickling down ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... true nature of her feelings; how, as his recovery progressed, to watch over him, and minister to his comfort, was happiness beyond expression to her;—how, when he left the cottage, everything seemed changed and dark, and a gulf appeared to have interposed between them, which she deemed impassable;—how, in the struggle to conceal, and, if possible, conquer her attachment, she studiously avoided all intercourse with him, and how the struggle ended in the loss of health and spirits;—how, during his absence, she felt it a duty still to bear up against these feelings of despair, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... spring at the end of the island," cried the man, "to this house since yesterday afternoon! I have always supposed that no one could get here from the spring by land. I call that way impassable. You are safe here, sir, I am sure. Pirates would not follow very far through those forests and morasses; they would be afraid they would never get back to their ship. But I will find out for certain if you have reason, sir, to fear ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... persistently in San Francisco during the first week of January, 1854, that a certain quagmire in the roadway of Long Wharf had become impassable, and a plank was thrown over its dangerous depth. Indeed, so treacherous was the spot that it was alleged, on good authority, that a hastily embarking traveler had once hopelessly lost his portmanteau, and was fain ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... I did not care for the ride, my teacher and I would start after breakfast for a ramble in the woods, and allow ourselves to get lost amid the trees and vines, with no road to follow except the paths made by cows and horses. Frequently we came upon impassable thickets which forced us to take a round about way. We always returned to the cottage with armfuls of laurel, goldenrod, ferns and gorgeous swamp-flowers such as grow only ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... utterly destroyed. He had driven the machine out there, with despatches, on the afternoon of the third day. Some of the heaviest fighting had occurred there, he said, many of the streets being rendered impassable by the heaps ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... opening, had caught the first driven flakes of snow here the night before. The snow had gathered rapidly when once a streak of it lay across the lake. Deeper and deeper the drift had grown until tons of the white crystals had been heaped here in what looked to Janice to be an impassable barrier. ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... Numidians, Moors, Greeks—men of almost every race except his own. We see him cutting loose from his base of supplies, leaving enemies behind him, to force his way through hostile races, through unknown lands bristling with almost impassable mountains and frigid with snow and ice. We see him conquering here, making friends and allies there, and, more wonderful than all, holding his mongrel horde together through hardships and losses by the force of his character ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... descending a thousand feet of broken, precipitous slope; and it was almost sunset when we found ourselves upon fields of level snow which lay white and thick over the whole interior slope of the amphitheatre. The gorge below us seemed utterly impassable. At our backs the Mount Brewer wall either rose in sheer cliffs or in broken, rugged stairway, such as had offered us our descent. From this cruel dilemma the cross divide furnished the only hope, and the sole chance of scaling ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... washing are very deficient in phosphorus and much poorer than ours in potassium and magnesium; and your undulating and steeply sloping lands are more or less broken, with many rock outcrops on the points and some impassable gullies, which as a rule compel the cultivation of the land in small irregular fields. A three-cornered field of from two to fifteen acres can never have quite the same value per acre as the land where forty or eighty acres of corn can be grown in a body with no necessity of omitting ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... surface was torn from the sea. The ship drove relentlessly through sheets of spray that caused the officers high up on the bridge to gasp for breath. They held on by main force, though protected by strong canvas sheets bound to the rails. The main deck was quite impassable. The promenade deck, even the lofty spar deck, was scourged with the broken crests of waves that tried with demoniac energy to smash in the starboard bow, for the Sirdar was cutting into the heart ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... tropical jungle. I could not have imagined anything so perfectly beautiful, nature seemed to riot in the production of wonderful forms, as if the moist hot-house air encouraged her in lavish excesses. Such endless variety, such depths of green, such an impassable and altogether inextricable maze of forest trees, ferns, and lianas! There were palms, breadfruit trees, ohias, eugenias, candle-nuts of immense size, Koa (acacia), bananas, noni, bamboos, papayas ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... saloons, which in half an hour would be almost impassable, were only sprinkled with guests, who, however, were constantly arriving. Mr. Wilton looked about him in vain for the person who, he was quite sure, could not then be present. He lingered by the ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... should not have been able to pass round the north at all. No ice actually forms round the coast line, but the sea ice drifts from Greenland, 100 miles distant, causing the north of the Island to be impassable, except during two or three ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... the outer world learn through your book that we are unfortunate—that the Pope shows by his acts how bitterly he regrets the benefits conferred upon us in 1847—that the Ghetto is closed by doors invisible, but impassable—and that our condition is worse than ever! All you say in our favour will turn against us, and that which you intend for our good will do ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... mounted these boldly, as if he knew of their existence, and lowered himself gently down the other side, waiting to help the Doctor, for Bart laughingly declined, preferring as he did to leap from stone to stone, and swing himself over cracks that seemed almost impassable. ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... for the last two years and now I have lost you. I must face up to that. I must meet it with what fortitude I can. But I cannot bear to feel that every time I come you will like me less; that others will crowd me out and take my place; that the gulf will widen and widen until at last it is impassable. I am going while you still love me a little and will ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... her, if it were not an index of a vastly more serious barrier, a proof that he had never loved her. If he had loved her truly, he would never have forgotten her in three short months,—three long months they had heretofore seemed to her, for in them she had lived a lifetime of experience. Another impassable barrier lay in the fact that his mother had met her, and that she was known in the neighborhood. Thus cut off from any hope that she might be anything to him, she had no wish to meet her former lover; no possible good could come of such a meeting; and yet her fluttering heart ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... imitate, transmutes dead inorganic matter into organic matter, suited to the sustenance of animal life, and without which animals cannot live. The gulf, therefore, between the plant and animal would seem to be impassable. ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... so as to prepare for it by the necessary theological courses. To most of them the fact of becoming clergymen would be the entree into a social position from which they were at present kept out by barriers they well knew to be impassable; ordination, therefore, opened fields for ambition which made it the central point in their thoughts, rather than as with Ernest, something which he supposed would have to be done some day, but about which, as about dying, he ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... is interspersed with some hillocks, which were rifted, in every direction, as well towards the great woody hanger, as from it. In the first pasture the deep clefts began: and running across the lane, and under the buildings, made such vast shelves that the road was impassable for some time; and so over to an arable field on the other side, which was strangely torn and disordered. The second pasture field, being more soft and springy, was protruded forward without many fissures in the turf, which was raised in long ridges resembling graves, lying at ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... road leading over the mountains, which is impassable for carriages, I passed through vast tracks of forest, where the lofty trees were covered with stout vines reaching to the tree tops, rendering it difficult for man to penetrate those sylvan recesses. Near the highest part of this mountain road, at ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... the two counties by noon of the fifteenth of March. That part of the line was peculiarly difficult of access. It could be reached only by a twenty-five mile journey across country, over roads which, in the winter, were well-nigh impassable. In order to build any sort of railroad line at the point involved, it was necessary to carry across country all the tools, earth cars, and construction materials, together with a large company of workmen. Huts must be built to shield the men ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... from Lancilly. They drove across the moor from my uncle's house, Les Chouettes, and turned into the lane a few hundred yards higher up. As to impassable—I think your wheels will come off, if you attempt it, and your horses' knees will suffer. Where the ruts are not two feet deep, the bare ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... a difficulty would not occur again they pushed on, but had not gone far when another, and still more impassable, fissure ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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. "All very well for the ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... most irretrievable wreck of friendship is the result of a moral breakdown in one of the associates. Worse than the separation of the grave is the desolation of the heart by faithlessness. More impassable than the gulf of distance with the estranging sea, more separating than the gulf of death, is the great gulf fixed between souls through deceit and shame. It is as the sin of Judas. Said a sorrowful Psalmist, who had known this experience, "Mine own familiar friend in whom I trusted, ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... whirlpools of withered leaves that the swollen streams tossed noisily into the ravines; sharp, cutting winds from the north, bleak frosts hardening the earth and vitrifying the cascades; abundant falls of snow, lasting sometimes an entire week. The roads had become impassable. A thick, white crust covered alike the pasture-lands, the stony levels, and the wooded slopes, where the branches creaked under the weight of their snowy burdens. A profound silence encircled the village, which seemed buried ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... surface of it was beautiful in a high degree. The universal face was clothed with living green. And every part was fertile as well as beautiful. It was no where deformed by rough or ragged rocks: it did not shock the view with horrid precipices, huge chasms, or dreary caverns: with deep, impassable morasses, or deserts of barren sands. We have not any authority to say, with some learned and ingenious authors, that there were no mountains on the original earth, no unevennesses on its surface, yet it is highly probable that they rose and fell, ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... mouth of a river, with a vengeance. That marsh extends for miles on both sides of a river as impassable as ours. Ten days I tramped northward up the farther bank. And then, in swimming across, I lost nearly all my provisions, and ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... 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 which ambulances ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Courland, and Poland, travel in winter is easier than at any other time of year. The rivers, which run sluggishly in their ditch-like beds, are frozen so completely that the bridges are no longer required. The roads, in summer almost impassable—mere ruts across the plain—are for the time ignored, and the traveller strikes a bee-line from place to place across a ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... defensive action in Position Warfare and the defence in a War of Manoeuvre. The first of these is the inevitable absence of flanks to be assailed, as the operations necessitate a connected line of strong points from sea to sea, or from the sea to the impassable barrier of neutral territory. Mounted troops are therefore doomed to inaction in their most important sphere, until the lines have been breached and the enemy is forced to retreat, and the opportunities for delivering ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... travelling became a task. There was nothing in the nature of a path or trail to follow, and they were compelled to pass around boulders and rocks, sometimes turning back and retracing their steps, and making long detours, so as to flank impassable chasms. All this tended to confuse their knowledge of the points of the compass, but they did not forget to note everything that could serve as a guide, and were confident of finding their way whenever it should become ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... 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, including every place and ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... rout, so valiantly did he lead the advance, encouraging the light troops to "come to a close grip with the invadors," or summoning the heavy infantry of the Thespiaeans to "bring up their supports." Presently the Theban cavalry as they retired found themselves face to face with an impassable glen or ravine, where in the first instance they collected in a mob, and next wheeled right-about-face in sheer resourcelessness where to cross. The handful of light troops who formed the Spartan vanguard took fright at the Thebans and fled, and the Theban horsemen ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... the advantages he had promised himself. The Duke says that they certainly were not prepared for this attack,[48] as the French had previously broken up the roads by which their army advanced; but as it was in summer this did not render them impassable. He says that Bonaparte beat the Prussians in a most extraordinary way, as the battle[49] was gained in less than four hours; but that it would probably have been more complete if he had brought a greater number of troops into action, and not detached so large a body ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Israel." There is no third suggestion possible. We must either estimate Jesus as immeasurably inferior, or incomparably superior, to the strong, sane, Spirit-filled prophet, who never wearied in declaring the impassable ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... of banner, if nothing more than white or brown paper with the five welcome letters, and everybody was shouting. Some men were carrying high banners with the words in blue or red on a white ground. When they came to State Street it was impassable. Cornhill was jammed. The Evening Gazette office had the announcement, thirty-two hours from New York (there was no telegraph ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... secret storehouses within. So he had struggled with soil and season, with suns that scorched and winds that chilled, with parching days that opened the earth in great crevices, and with torrents that made the paths between the vines impassable for days. ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... by creating and perpetuating arbitrary and yet almost impassable lines of social cleavage, must be fatal to the development of a robust body politic which can only be produced by the reasonable intermingling and healthy fusion of the different classes of the community. It was perhaps ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... commenced this exasperated and semi-poetic fury, shaking her fist under the nose of the impassable hunter, "you are not even a woman. Your friends the Delawares are only women, and you are their sheep. Your own people will not own you, and no tribe of redmen would have you in their wigwams; you skulk among petticoated warriors. You slay our brave friend who has ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... impassable. A small gate leading through it was still locked with a heavy Chinese padlock, and there was no key. One of the officers gave a wave of his hand, and a couple of the soldiers went out and reappeared with axes. In ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... small ruts in the surface of the ground are rapidly converted into large arroyos. Frequently ordinary wagon tracks along a bit of valley slope serve as an initial channel to the rapidly accumulating waters and are eaten away in a few weeks so that the road becomes wholly impassable, and must be abandoned for a ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... to force their passage; again it became clogged with masses of debris, dead branches, and dislodged fragments of stone, across which they were obliged to struggle desperately, while once they completely halted before a sheer smoothness of rock wall that appeared impassable. It was bridged finally by a cedar trunk, which Hampton wrenched from out its rocky foothold, and the two crept cautiously forward, to emerge where the sunlight rested golden at the summit. They sank ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... at all without previous introduction. It was true that the famous actor was permitted a license not granted to the ordinary individual,—as indeed most actors are. Even princes, who hedge themselves round with impassable barriers to certain of their subjects who are in all ways great and worthy of notice, unbend to the Mime who today takes the place of the Court-jester, and allow him to enter the royal presence, often bringing his newest wanton with ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... days were short and weather far from favorable, he set out on horseback from Bristol to Newcastle, a distance between three and four hundred miles. The journey occupied ten days. Brooks were swollen, and in some places the roads were impassable, obliging the itinerant to go round through the fields. At Aldrige Heath, in Staffordshire, the rain turned to snow, which the northerly wind drove against him, and by which he was soon crusted over from head to foot. At Leeds the mob followed him, and pelted him with whatever ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... He took two long strides to her. "Joan, are you going to let your pride rear impassable walls between us for ever? Can't you be fair, generous, natural, true to yourself? Can't you see how great, how overwhelming my ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... left Guelph, I had arranged with my wife that as soon as I could get the new house ready, I would send for her. I did not think that this could possibly be done before sleighing-time, as the newly-cut road was almost impassable for waggons. Judge, then, of my surprise when, on returning home from the store-house one day, I noticed the door of my log-cabin open, and saw a lovely curly-headed child sitting in the doorway. I could ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... roads are passable at all seasons of the year, the country much more favorable for offensive operations than that in front of Washington, much more level, the woods less dense, the soil more sandy" (p. 47). After arriving, we find "the roads impassable," "very dense and extensive forests, the clearings being small and few;" and "the comparative flatness of the country and the alertness of the enemy, everywhere in force, rendered thorough reconnoissances slow, dangerous, and difficult" (p. 79). General ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... women by seeing around me so many who were self-devoted to celibacy. The thought sometimes occurred to me whether I should not find the best and the only natural solution of the problem of existence, as submitted to myself, in taking upon me the vows which settle the whole question and raise an impassable barrier between the devotee and the object of his ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... known in towns? "Stepple" is the mark or step of a horse; "stabbling" is poaching up the turf or ground from continual movement of feet, whether human, equine, or otherwise. The ground near gateways in fields is often "stabbled" to such a degree in wet weather as to appear impassable. A piece of wood falling into water, gradually absorbs the liquid into its pores, and swells. The same thing happens in wet weather to gates and even doors; the wood swells, so that if they fitted at all tightly before, they can then scarcely ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... boat-races I won—are they not 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
... over an almost impassable array of black rocks and boulders, Nelson fought his way forward, conscious that with every stride the air grew damper and warmer. Soon trickles of sweat were pouring down over his chest, ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... French, and English tongues. It required such a lurid vocabulary to give vent to his feelings. He was even more distressed when he sighted the clump of gum trees near by which he and Bill had purloined the pirogue. Beyond this the creek was impassable. ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... of my expeditions took me well up the side of a mountain which the natives called Tuylpit, so near as I could catch their pronunciation. I never saw the name in print. The mountain's sides were rocky enough so that they were not so impassable on account of the dense under-growth as much of the island was, and I had much less trouble than usual going forward after I left the regular "carabaos" (water ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... on Professor Wogglebug's Map of the Land of Oz there is a place marked 'Skeezer,' but what the Skeezers are like I do not know. No one I know has ever seen them or heard of them. The Skeezer Country is 'way at the upper edge of the Gillikin Country, with the sandy, impassable desert on one side and the mountains of Oogaboo on another side. That is a part of the Land of Oz of ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... surroundings of the old noblesse. But this gift, which showed so conspicuously in the family of the Sidneys, is an inheritance, and cannot be really copied. It is so easy to patronise from a lofty vantage ground, so difficult to make those below it feel that the distance is not thought of as an impassable gulf, but is bridged over by the true politeness which lies not on the surface, but has its root deep in the consideration for others, which finds expression in forgetfulness of self, and in remembering the feelings and tastes of those with whom we ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... well, but at the end of two miles in an East-South-East direction from Palm Island, all hopes were at an end of proceeding farther in the boats, as for a great extent the river was impassable for them. We found there was a large sheet of water beyond, and then another dry patch. It would therefore have been useless labour to attempt dragging the boats over any more of the dry parts. Two conical-shaped hills, so much alike that we called them the Brothers, bore North by West 1/2 ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... became supreme in the state was an army very different from any that has since been seen among us. At present the pay of the common soldier is not such as can seduce any but the humblest class of English laborers from their calling. A barrier almost impassable separates him from the commissioned officer. The great majority of those who rise high in the service rise by purchase. So numerous and extensive are the remote dependencies of England, that every man who enlists in the line must expect to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... looking down at Mrs Wolff with a new impulse of sympathy. Hitherto, they had seemed divided by an impassable gulf, but this morning the girl's usual radiant sense of well-being had died away, and left a little rankling ache in its place. "Uncle Bernard's illness, and this new bother at home," was Mollie's explanation even to her own heart, but ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... there's this mile of quiet water. From that point on the Yuga 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 ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... lead and what it will prove," and finding that it must imply an organized designer, and an endless series of such beings, "he gives it up," and denies the existence of design altogether. There is a hiatus, it would seem,—an impassable gulf,—between the admission that law and order prevail in Nature, and the conclusion that law and order are manifestations of design: "What I supposed to be design in the opening of my argument is no ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... the family settled down on the desert coast up near the Cattegat, and this was the beginning of the hamlet. It was in those times when forest and swamp still made the country impassable, and the sea was used as a highway. The reefs are still there on which the men landed from the boats, carrying women and children ashore; by day and by night white seagulls take turns to mark the place—and have done ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... burn of Bannock, which at one point winds through a cleugh with steep banks, and next by two morasses, Halbert's bog and Milton bog. What is now arable ground may have been a loch in old days, and these two marshes were then impassable by a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the paddock were not to be seen anywhere; the fowl-house and pig-styes which stood towards the weather quarter had entirely disappeared; every scrap of wood (and several logs were lying about at the back) was quite covered up; both the verandahs were impassable; in one the snow was six feet deep, and the only door which could be opened was the back-kitchen door, as that opened inwards; but here the snow was half-way over the roof, so it took a good deal of work with the kitchen-shovel, for no spades could be found, to dig out ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... so many of our great families," continued the impassable Trenta. "Now, on the other hand, Enrica may possibly change her mind; Nobili may change his mind. Circumstances quite unforeseen may occur—who can answer ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... generous conditions possible, leaving it unshielded alike from Polar winds in winter or scorching heat in summer, divesting it of beauty and of charm, and then casting this arid, frigid, torpid land to a branch of the human family as unique as its own habitation; separating it by natural and almost impassable barriers from civilizing influences, and in strange isolation leaving it to work out its own ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... Baranzano[87] ("Redemptus": 1590-1622):—"With regard to the multitude of instances by which men may be deterred from the attempt, here is my answer. First, what need to dissemble? Either store of instances must be procured, or the business must be given up. All other ways, however enticing, are impassable. Secondly, the prerogatives of instances, and the mode of experimenting upon experiments of light (which I shall hereafter explain), will diminish the multitude of them very much. Thirdly, what matter, I ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... of snow and rock rose impenetrable, and the mountain peaks above were in heaven immediate. This was the centre, the knot, the navel of the world, where the earth belonged to the skies, pure, unapproachable, impassable. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... like some foreign military station in the tropics. The long, low, white buildings, with piazzas and verandas on the water-side; the general impression of heat and lassitude, existence appearing to pulsate only with the sea-breeze; the sandy, almost impassable streets; and the firm, level beach, on which everybody walked who could get there: all these suggested Jamaica or the East Indies. Then the head-quarters at the end of the beach, the Zouave sentinels, the successive anterooms, the lounging aids, the good-natured ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Christopher was so great that when he went away she followed after him, and sought him for a long time in vain; and when at last she found him he was no longer the same Christopher that he used to be, but there was an impassable barrier between them which she fruitlessly struggled to break through. The agony of the fruitless struggle always awakened her, so that she never knew what the end of the dream was going ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... course at right angles to the river. The floor of this part of the valley was covered with a forest which had never known axe nor fire, and the going was difficult and slow over the down timber, some freshly-fallen, making well-nigh impassable barricades erected on the stumps of its broken branches, some which crumbled to powder at a touch. There was no undergrowth except a few lean shrubs that stretched great, pale leaves to catch the attenuated rays that ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... protected us, for it looked dangerous and we thought at times that it could not possibly be done without accident but we got down safely... we were all very tired and sleepy and let the angels be our guard during the night." Rains fell in torrents, making streams almost impassable and drenching the little band to the skin. The hammock was empty one night, for they had to spend the dark hours trench-digging about their tent to keep it from being washed away. Two days later (the 10th of November) the weather cleared and "we spent most of the day drying ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... "man never is, but always to be, blest," perfect happiness appeared not to be secured even by Macadam. Ruts began to be formed—rain fell, and mud was generated at a prodigious rate; repairs were needed, and the road for a while was rough and almost impassable. Then it was found out that the change had only led to a different kind of noise, instead of destroying it altogether; and the perpetual grinding of wheels, sawing their way through the loose stones at the top, or ploughing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... It seems impossible now to unravel this skein. The story of the move to Steventon, in 1771, is connected with a statement that the road was then a mere cart-track, so cut up by deep ruts as to be impassable for a light carriage, and that Mrs. Austen (who was not then in good health) performed the short journey on a feather-bed, placed upon some soft articles of furniture in the waggon which held their household goods. This story is too circumstantial ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... towards the class of persons of whom they speak, and of the position they occupied throughout the thirteen colonies, in the eyes and thoughts of the men who framed the Declaration of Independence and established the State Constitutions and Governments. They show that a perpetual and impassable barrier was intended to be erected between the white race and the one which they had reduced to slavery, and governed as subjects with absolute and despotic power, and which they then looked upon as so ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... places once cultivated for mountain-rice and afterwards abandoned. (Gogo is the name of a cane 7 to 8 feet high, Saccharum sp.). Transport then is almost impossible, because during the rainy season the roads are impassable, and the cattle find nothing to eat. The native does not feed his beast, but allows it to die when it cannot support itself. In the wet season of the year it frequently happens that a carabao falls down from starvation whilst drawing a cart. A carabao costs from $7 to $10; a horse $10 ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... of their climb down into the valley of the scratch, the three friends were too preoccupied with their own safety to talk more than an occasional sentence. They came upon many places that at first glance appeared impassable, or at least sufficiently hazardous to cause them to hesitate, but in each instance the changing contour of the precipice offered ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... him into a narrow glen; a single cattletrack, not a foot broad, led on between a swollen rocky creek, utterly impassable by horse or man, and a lofty precipice of loose broken slate, on which one would have thought a goat could not have found a footing. The young police lieutenant had done his work well, and sent a trooper round ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... below Tiptonville. A mile below Tiptonville begin the great swamps, extending down both sides of the Mississippi for a distance of sixty miles. The enemy therefore had the river in his front, and behind him a swamp, impassable to any great extent for either men or supplies in the then high state of the river. The only way of receiving help, or of escaping, in case the position became untenable, was by way of Tiptonville, to which a good road led. It will be remembered ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... us swing from the road. Come, the hedges of Nature are not as impassable as the hedges of man. Through these scrub oaks and wild pears, between this tangle of thickets, over the clematis and blackberry bush,—and here we are under the pines, the lofty and majestic pines. How different are these natural hedges, growing ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... away from her home, and the time I would introduce you there. It is a wild spot, almost inaccessible, unless one knows the secret paths which have been hewn up the sides of the rocks, and through the otherwise impassable undergrowth of the forest, by the perseverance and labors of the robbers. The rude castle, which I would now describe to you, was built with consummate military skill, and the walls and bastions, though small and low, could hold out a long time against any strength ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... sympathetic, with lives that in one important constituent of happiness are far beneath their own. Upon such the shadow of the infinite seems to fall but seldom. They succeed in so many things that they undertake, as to escape the sense of the impassable barriers that hem in all human existence. The very fact of living is so much to them, that they fail to see the meaning of the limitations, the shortcomings, the disappointments of life. They feel no abiding smart of a thorn in the flesh, and ...
— Strong Souls - A Sermon • Charles Beard
... in his hand and led the way. He knew it well, though it was a rugged and steep one with no track to mark it. Sometimes they seemed to be walking around the mountain, sometimes they were climbing, sometimes they dragged themselves over rocks or fallen trees, or struggled through almost impassable thickets; more than once they descended into ravines and, almost at the risk of their lives, clambered and drew themselves with the aid of the undergrowth up the other side. The Rat was called upon to use all his prowess, and sometimes Marco and the ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... away from the coasts are reached by bridle paths; but the roads outside the cities and towns are impassable during the rainy season. Sometimes there is only a bridle path or trail overgrown with tangled vegetation, and ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... probably of Arian origin, who hunted with the lasso over the great desert mounted on horses, and could bring into the field a force of eight or ten thousand men. Their country, a waste of sand and gravel, in parts thickly encrusted with salt, was impassable to an army, and formed a barrier which effectively protected Media along the greater portion of her eastern frontier. Towards the extreme north-east the Sagartians were replaced by the Cossseans and the Parthians, the former ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... valuable asset of the crown. The policy of the Spanish government did not avail to prevent an intermixture of the races, because the Spaniards themselves came from a sub-tropical country, and the Mexicans and Peruvians especially were separated from them by no impassable gulf such as separates the negro or the Australian bushman from the white man. Central and Southern America thus came to be peopled by a hybrid race, speaking Spanish, large elements of which were conscious of their own inferiority. This in itself would perhaps ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... of things will be eternal. Paradise and Gehenna will have no end. An impassable abyss separates the one from the other.[1] The Son of man, seated on the right hand of God, will preside over this final condition of the ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... hence unknown; they bear the stamp of having lasted, as they are now, for ages, and there appears no limit to their duration through future time. If, as the ancients supposed, the flat earth was surrounded by an impassable breadth of water, or by deserts heated to an intolerable excess, who would not look at these last boundaries to man's knowledge with deep ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... they had to 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 of many different ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... Russian armies entered East Prussia in the middle of August. At first they met with success. The nature of the country, however, was against them, as there was a chain of almost impassable lakes, marshes, and rivers stretching across their route. In this difficult territory they were surprised by German reinforcements which had been rushed to the east. In the battle of Tan'nenberg (August 26-31), ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson
... miles of plain that intervene. We came from the station through the Neustadt, passing the Japanese palace and the equestrian statue of Augustus the Strong. The magnificent bridge over the Elbe was so much injured by the late inundation as to be impassable; we were obliged to go some distance up the river-bank and cross on a bridge of boats. Next morning my first search was for the picture-gallery. We set off at random, and after passing the church of Our Lady, with its lofty dome of solid stone, which withstood ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... o'clock the Battalion, after a hot meal, began to advance through almost impassable country. The guns must have been pounding away at the same range for a long while; the ground was worked and kneaded until it was soft as dough, though no rain had fallen for a week. Barclay Owens and his engineers ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... in smoke as the rest. You could not look in any direction in the city but what mass after mass of flame stared you in the face. To get about one had to dodge from one street to another, back and forth in zigzag fashion, and half an hour after going through a street, it would be impassable. One after another of the magnificent business blocks went down. The newer buildings seemed to have withstood the shock better than any others, except well-built frame buildings. The former lost some of the outside shell, but the frame stood all ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... impassable at Dorchester. The whole importance of Dorchester indeed in history lies in its being a strong fortified position, and it depends for its defence upon the depth of the river, which swirls round the peninsula occupied ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... orders, prepared to spend the night there, that they might have the first chance of taking places in the boxes. I saw some take their hats off and put on night-caps. At ten o'clock the next morning the door was opened to them, and at that time the street in front of the theatre was impassable. When the rush took place, I saw a man spring up and catch hold of the iron which supported a lamp on one side of the door, by which he raised himself so as to run over the heads of the crowd into the theatre. Some of these fellows were hired by gentlemen to secure places, ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... we could not proceed, there being a violent storm of wind and rain, and the rivers being impassable. When I expressed my discontent at our confinement, Dr Johnson said, 'Now that I have had an opportunity of writing to the main land, I am in no such haste.' I was amused with his being so easily satisfied; for the truth was, that the gentleman who was to ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... shake his hand, there was no visible change in his manner. He greeted black and white with a courtesy which marked the social line, with an affability which had a touch of the august. Had the gulf between them been less impassable, he would not have dared the hearty handshake, the genial word, the pat upon the head—these were a tribute which he paid ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... should have by fifties and hundreds if he wanted them, she thought in her great-heartedness, reflecting on the one whose threatened pretensions to be his mate were slain by the title flung at her, and merited. The word (she could guess it) was an impassable gulf, a wound beyond healing. It pronounced in a single breath the girl's right name and his pledge of a return to sanity. For it was the insanest he could do; it uttered anathema on his love of her; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the largest and finest merchant ships afloat. As a consequence of this enterprise Glasgow has become the greatest ship-building port in the world. No less than twenty shipyards—in efficiency and magnitude of the very highest class—are to be found along the banks of the once shallow, impassable Clyde, between Glasgow ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... might strike Thomas before his division was concentrated, and learning that Fishing Creek divided his forces, and was so flooded by recent rains as to be impassable, marched out of his intrenchments at Beech Grove at midnight of the 18th, and about 7 A.M. of the 19th fell upon Thomas at Logan's Cross-Roads with eight regiments of infantry and six pieces of artillery. The battle lasted about three hours, when the Confederate troops gave way and beat ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... almost formed the western frontier of inhabited Virginia. Winter still lingered on the tops of the mountains, whence melting snows sent down torrents, which swelled the rivers and occasionally rendered them almost impassable. Spring, however, was softening the lower parts of the landscape and ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... had been felled so as to fall across the river, and Indian spies had been placed here and there along the river-bank to warn the townsmen of the approach of the boats. A mile below the town the river had been made impassable, so here the pirates went ashore to wait till daybreak. When it grew light they marched forward, to attack the strong wooden breastworks which the Spaniards had built. Captain Sawkins was in advance, with about a dozen pirates. Captain Sharp followed at ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... to storm Simon in his Galilean fastness, without King Herod's boxes, I trow. Then would all the Druses, and the Maronites, and the Saracens, and the half-breeds, the worst of the whole, come down on them in some impassable gorge, and the troops I have taken such pains to keep in health and training would leave their bones in those doleful passes; and not for the sake of the Holy Sepulchre, but of my private quarrel. No, no, Richard, ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... different scale from what it is to the northward. It is a plain business there. The geography of the country reduces its operations to two or three points. But here, it is everywhere; and the country is so full of deep rivers and impassable creeks and swamps, that you are always liable to misfortunes of ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... given to Joshua was a trial of his faith, for 'Jordan was in flood' (Joshua iii. l5),—and how was that crowd to get across, when fords were impassable and ferry-boats were wanting, to say nothing of the watchful eyes that were upon them from the other bank? To cross a stream in the face of the enemy is a ticklish operation, even for modern armies; what must it have been, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... state of seething excitement, which increased wherever our procession came in view. The people, pouring from the houses in thousands, blocked the roads until they became almost impassable, and the leader of the horsemen was in despair. Every one wished to see the wretch who had murdered Conde, and numbers shook their fists at me ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... artilleryman began to crawl very cautiously across the hot heather ash towards Horsell. He managed to get alive into the ditch by the side of the road, and so escaped to Woking. There his story became ejaculatory. The place was impassable. It seems there were a few people alive there, frantic for the most part and many burned and scalded. He was turned aside by the fire, and hid among some almost scorching heaps of broken wall as one of the Martian giants returned. He saw this one pursue a man, catch him up in one of ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... the rock to breakfast. Directly after it we set off on our return to the city. The natives of Chili, we were told, often catch the puma with the lasso. They also hunt it with dogs, and shoot it when it climbs up trees. When we came to the bridge of hide-rope it looked more rickety and impassable than ever. Just fancy a few rotten-looking strips of leather slung across a chasm some thousand ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... succession, not only gave him a friendly reception, but followed him to the war; and not only had roads been formed during the passage of his brother in most of the countries through which he marched, and which were before impassable, but also as the Alps had been passable for a period of twelve years, he marched through tribes of less ferocious dispositions. For before that time, being never visited by foreigners, nor accustomed, themselves, to see ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... a flood, or otherwise. But the right of going upon adjoining lands does not apply to private ways. A person having a right to a private way over another's land, has no right to go upon adjoining land, even though the private way is impassable. ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... face of this danger, Browning and Woodbridge, with their few supporters, marched nearly ten miles through the swampy, brush-lined ravine, and succeeded in moving the train over roads that were well nigh impassable under the most favorable circumstances. The wagons had to be literally carried over some of the worst places, the mules having all they could do to get ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... of two miles we entered upon a level plain three miles wide, which, with the exception of a patch here and there, was entirely covered with snow. The uncovered parts of this plain were so wet as to be almost impassable for the cart; and we were now as desirous of keeping on the snow as, at the beginning of our journey from Winter Harbour, we had been anxious to ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... peninsula; the sea, which insulates the other sides, have, with other causes, preserved the Arab blood from all general attaint of its purity. Ceremonies, institutions, awful scruples of conscience, and through many centuries, misery and legal persecution, have maintained a still more impassable gulf between the Jews and other races. Spain is the only Christian land where the native blood was at any time intermingled with the Jewish; and hence one cause for the early vigilance of the Inquisition in that country more than elsewhere; hence also the horror of a Jewish taint in ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... native courage, but by the resentment which, since their disgrace, had been festering in their breasts. They made their way into the camp; where, every one repeating, that here was not Caudium, nor the forks, nor the impassable glens, where cunning haughtily triumphed over error; but Roman valour, which no rampart nor trench could ward off;—they slew, without distinction, those who resisted and those who fled, the armed and unarmed, freemen and slaves, young and old, men and cattle. Nor would a single ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... peaks is an almost continuous succession of snow fields and glaciers beyond all comparison. The snow line is 17,000 feet in midsummer, and in winter comes down to 12,000 and 15,000 feet, and when that altitude is reached snow is continuous and impassable. This is the highest and the most extensive of all mountain ranges. Along the northern frontier of India for 2,000 miles it stands like a vast hedge, the most formidable natural boundary in the world, nowhere lower ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... a diligence rendered tenfold encouraging by this glimpse of the captive. But the way was rugged, broken, and in spots nearly impassable. Uncas abandoned his rifle, and leaped forward with headlong precipitation. Heyward rashly imitated his example, though both were, a moment afterward, admonished of his madness by hearing the bellowing ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... roof, with windows at the end only, facing the buckwheat field, and looking down two miles towards the main road—for the farm was on a concession or side-road, dusty in summer, and in winter sometimes impassable for weeks together. It was not much of a home, as any one with the mind's eye can see, but four stalwart men and three fine women had been born, raised, and quartered there, until, with good clothes, and speaking decent English and tolerable French, and with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... water we should have to go by land; and the distance, by the circuitous route we should have to adopt, would exceed two hundred miles, the way, too, taking us across mountains which the ladies at least would find impassable!" ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... and specially disqualified from the same cause to extend or embrace others; for while their community of oddity makes them, by a necessarily strong sympathy, fit associates to be together, it separates them by an impassable gulf from the appreciation and sympathy of the rest of mankind, who are interested only in the ordinary ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... both; death had not even threatened to rob him of the prize of such a noble and faithful heart which he had won. But a horrible superstition had arisen, which seemed to place at once an impassable abyss between them, and to say to him, in a voice of ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... certain physical limitations; they could not cross the sea—hence the variety native to the Island might be different from the mainland species, and would therefore demand local study before being approached with hostile intentions. I was wont to point out that since the sea presented an impassable barrier, the sand spit, drawn out to a fine point, was just the spot where a piccaninny might be easily rounded up, if it were detected in a preoccupied mood. I suggested that I might be at hand to encounter any untoward results in case ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... 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 Philadelphia to Virginia. The newspapers were few, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... musicians are as plentiful as niggers on the sea-shore. A publisher might spend his whole day receiving regiments of unappreciated geniuses. Bond Street would be impassable. You look at the publisher too ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... occurred; but Soult effected a most masterly retreat, saving his army, when it seemed upon the brink of destruction, by leaving his guns and baggage behind him, and leading his men by paths over mountains supposed to be impassable for any large body of men. He lost altogether 6000 men in this short campaign. This included 3600 prisoners either captured in action or left behind in the hospitals, and 1400 killed. The number of guns left behind ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... without their presence to enliven them, appeared never so stern and bleak and bare as now; the headlands never so forbidding and impassable; the valley never so prison-like, to the brothers, shut in as they were and ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... with its smooth limbs and huge white flowers. At last we reached the first hill, and began gently to ascend. The change was wonderful. Once out of the plain, we are in the midst of a tropical forest. The trees are crowded close together, and the convolvulus binds their branches into an impassable jungle, while ferns and creepers weave themselves into a dense mass below; and here and there a glimpse up some deep ravine shows great tree-ferns, thirty feet high, standing close to the brink of a mountain-stream, and flourishing in ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... Austerlitz and Waterloo; engulfing in disaster a world of miserable people; sending forth into the unknown realms of crime his natural son Victor, who disappeared, fleeing through the dark night, while he himself, under the impassable protection of unjust nature, was loved by the adorable Mme. Caroline, no doubt in recompense of all the evil he ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... for two sleighs. The road went between two rocky walls, and though in the summer, when there was no snow, two vehicles could squeeze past, in the winter the piling up of the snow on either side made an almost impassable barrier. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... 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 Las Torres before him. Nules surrendered to the mere terror of his ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... power is the most fruitful source of misunderstanding between European immigrants and their children, as it is between them and their American neighbors; and why should that chasm between fathers and sons, yawning at the feet of each generation, be made so unnecessarily cruel and impassable to these bewildered immigrants? Suddenly I looked up and saw the old woman with her distaff, sitting in the sun on the steps of a tenement house. She might have served as a model for one of Michelangelo's Fates, but her face brightened as I passed and, holding up her spindle ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams |
