"Moat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... obliged to be up our water in the way o' your business; now, if ye let me stay quietly here the night wi' the Captain, I'se pay ye double fees for the room; and if ye say no, ye shall hae the best sark-fu' o' sair banes that ever ye had in your life, the first time ye set a foot by Liddel-moat!" ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... feeling comes over us directly we leave the highroad and make our way down the sloped passage and across the drawbridge over the moat, past the massive gates and under the echoing tunnel that leads through the mighty walls. Within we see the parapets on which in bygone days the cannon thundered at the foe. We pass on into the great spaces of the Fort; and in our imagination ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... a stone edifice with battlements and a round tower at one corner, and a gate which looked as if it might have had a portcullis, and narrow windows in a portion of it, and a cannon mounted upon a low roof, and an excavation called the moat,—but which was now a fantastic and somewhat picturesque garden,—running round two sides of it. In very truth, though a portion of the castle was undoubtedly old, and had been built when strength was needed for defence and probably for the custody of booty,—the battlements, and the round tower, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... the side of the moat, buried his face in his hands and reflected. Ten minutes after he raised his head; his resolution was made. He threw some dust over the topcoat, which he had found time to unhook from the ante-chamber and button over his ball costume, and going to Chapelle-en-Serval he knocked loudly at the ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that they would not listen to reason, ordered them to be fired upon. The skirmish lasted in one place or the other about three hours, since the Spaniards could not assault or enter the fort because of the moat of water surrounding it. But, as fortune would have it, the natives had left on the other side, tied to the fort, a small boat capable of holding twenty men; and two of our soldiers threw themselves ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... the night, which was not wet, yet had a bloom of rain in the air, so that the lights shone with a plumy beam and all roads seemed to run to a soft white cliff. Above, the Castle Rock was invisible, but certainly cut strange beautiful shapes out of the mist; beneath it lay the Gardens, a moat of darkness, raising to the lighted street beyond terraces planted with rough autumn flowers that would now be close-curled balls curiously trimmed with dew, and grass that would make placid squelching noises under the ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... of its surrender," he wrote on the 22nd August. "You are wrong to have any such fear. Flushing is impregnable so long as there is bread in it, and they have enough for six months. Flushing is impregnable, because there is a moat full of water, which must be crossed; and finally, because by cutting the dykes they can inundate the whole island. Write and tell everywhere that Flushing cannot be taken, unless by the cowardice of the commandants; and also that I am certain of it, and that the English ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... notice we have of any circus visiting Birmingham is that of Astley's which came here October 7, 1787. In 1815 Messrs. Adams gave performances in a "new equestrian circus on the Moat," and it has interest in the fact that this was the first appearance locally of Mr. Ryan, a young Irishman, then described as "indisputably the first tight-rope dancer in the world of his age." Mr. Ryan, a few years later, started ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... visited a grand-looking ancient castle of the old dukes of Brunswick, in which was born the wife of George the Second of England. It stood on the summit of a lofty precipice, up which we had to climb; then crossing a deep moat by a narrow bridge, we entered through a great arched gate-way, surmounted by the Brunswick coat-of-arms, cut in the stone wall. The moat was dry, and ivy and tall trees growing in it far below, thrust the tips of their branches over the walls. I ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... Agaricus melleus is the destroying agent, a similar procedure is necessary; but regard must be had to the much more extensive wanderings of the rhizomorphs in the soil, and it may be imperative to cut the moat round more of the neighboring trees. Nevertheless, it has also to be remembered that the rhizomorphs run not far below the surface. However, my purpose here is not to treat this subject in detail, but ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... instances. It has been maintained that hares never take to water, but a correspondence was carried on in the newspaper a few years ago (see “Morning Post,” Nov. 14, 1892), in which instances were given of their doing so. I have myself seen a hare, which has eluded the greyhounds, swim across a moat, almost surrounding the house in which I am writing; and then steal away to the cover of some large ferns in a sheltered nook in the garden. Some years ago a baronet visited a relative of mine in this neighborhood, and brought with him a pack of beagles. ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... were the woman who had brought Tamar to Shanty's, that she put on her hood and cloak, and having filled a basket from the larder, she locked the cottage door, and went with Tamar to the Tower. It was barely light when they crossed the moat, for the bridge was not drawn; and when they entered the inner-court, they found many of the peasants seated in a circle, dipping portions of the ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... gulden to spare, and she decided to wander about the town until the ordinary diligence started for Rottenburg. She climbed the steep road to the ancient castle. The moat was filled with flowers and shrubs. It surprised her to see this peaceful garrison of the fortifications of a stronghold so soon after the invasion of Wirtemberg by the troops of Louis XIV. She questioned a peasant who was loitering near the drawbridge. He laughed ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... peace here; the sky a lovely lavender, a promise of coming morning in it, and a gold-spangled curtain of stars out yonder on the horizon. Not a soul moved. Below appeared a sheer drop of a hundred feet into a moat winding through thickets of heavy-scented convolvulus flowers to the waterways beyond. And as I looked a skiff with half a dozen rowers came swiftly out of the darkness of the wall and passed like a shadow amongst the thickets. In the prow was all Hath's wedding plate, and in the stern, a faint ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... secret wine and spirit vaults. The colour of the walls is a surprise until it is realized that the building is of brick. The southern entrance, by which we approach, is the most imposing part of the ruin. We enter by a wooden bridge across the moat; this replaces the drawbridge. In the recessed chamber behind the central arch a ghostly drum was sometimes heard, and the supernatural drummer was supposed to guard hidden treasure. This legend was made good use of by the smuggling fraternity, ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... meantime, the waiters who had waited in vain and the wanderers who had wandered fruitlessly, began to realize that the situation was serious. Billie grew desperately impatient. At last she succeeded in engaging a carry-all and two horses from a man at the moat house and soon she and Nancy, seated face to face, were hurrying along the road. Dr. Hume had met Percy. Ben had discovered Elinor and Mary standing fearfully on the edge of the forest. By the time that Richard Hook had got anywhere at all with his old nag, the lake-party, with the ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... girl, twenty years of age, and her two little sisters, Rose and Jeanne, had already bold, fearless eyes, under their unkempt mops of red hair. They all begged during the day on the highway and along the moat, coming back at night, their feet worn out from fatigue in their old shoes fastened with bits of string. Indeed, that very evening Tiennette had been obliged to leave hers among the stones, and had returned wounded and with bleeding ankles. Seated before their ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... of the town in safety, hoping to swim to the other side of the moat, where a horse awaited him. But he had dropt his hat and his second pistol in his flight, and so he was traced and seized before he could ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... of the great house with its new timber and plaster faced the evening sun across the square lawns and high terrace; and the woods a couple of hundred yards away cast long shadows over the gardens that lay beyond the moat. The lawns, in their broad plateaux on the eastern side descended by steps, in cool shadow to the lake that formed a quarter-circle below the south-eastern angle of the house; and the mirrored trees and reeds on the other side were broken, circle after ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... speak to the chambermaids, and have the sheets aired, if Lady G. had had a room to herself. They do not get to their bed, however in the poem, quite so easily as we have carried them. They first cross the moat, and Lady C. 'took the key that fitted well,' and opened a little door, 'all in the middle of the gate.' Lady G. then sinks down 'belike through pain;' but it should seem more probably from laziness; for her fair companion ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... be God's troubadour! Beneath His starry walls I'd pour Across the moat such roundelays He'd love me sure— And ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... towards the old wall which partially surrounds Amara, and which rises from a deep natural moat of sand, they saw that the ground immediately before the city which, from a distance, had looked almost fiat, was in reality broken up into a series of wavelike dunes, some small with depressions like deep crevices between them, others large with summits like plateaux. These dunes ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... standing in that part of the rampart walk which is now backed by the barracks of a modern soldiery, and before which, on the other side of the moat, lay a space that had seemed solitary and deserted; but as Hastings, in speaking his adieu, hurriedly pressed his lips on Sibyll's forehead, from a tavern without the fortress, and opposite the spot on which they stood, suddenly sallied a disorderly troop of half-drunken soldiers, with a gang ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... make our country dearer and more interesting to us, and afford fit soil for poetry to root itself in: for this is a plant which thrives best in spots where blood has been spilt long ago, and grows in abundant clusters in old ditches, such as the moat around Fort Ellsworth will be a century hence. It may seem to be paying dear for what many will reckon but a worthless weed; but the more historical associations we can link with our localities, the richer will be the daily life ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... idea of the professions' digging a moat round their close corporations, like that Japanese one at Jeddo, which you could put Park-Street Church on the bottom of and look over the vane from its side, and try to stretch another such spire across ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... "Really we should have a moat and drawbridge to make the thing perfect. Constance and I are the best protected women ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... ground-floor toward the courtyard (where Queen Catherine was lodged) is the third floor on the garden side, and the king's apartments were four storeys above the garden, which at the time of which we write was separated from the base of the castle by a deep moat. The chateau, already colossal as viewed from the courtyard, appears gigantic when seen from below, as La Fontaine saw it. He mentions particularly that he did not enter either the courtyard or the apartments, and it is to be remarked that from the place des Jesuites all the details seem ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... north-east of the Castle, upon a branch of the Avon which formed at once the Castle moat and the Priory mill stream, stands a large portion of one of the few Norman houses left in this country. It is seventy feet long by thirty feet in breadth, with walls of great thickness. It was built about the middle of the ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... rule that the monarch was to belong to the race of Miledh was adhered to almost without exception. One hundred and eighteen sovereigns, according to the moat accredited annals, governed the whole island from the Milesian conquest to St. Patrick in 432. Of these, sixty were of the family of Heremon, settled in the northern part of the island; twenty-nine of the posterity of Heber, settled in the south; ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... fired a salute of two muskets. Here they were met by a number of fellows with horns, who blew on them with the accustomed energy of the natives; these men preceded them over a bridge, which was thrown across a moat that surrounds Jenna into the centre of the town, where they again alighted, and waited the chief's pleasure in an open shed. They had not been seated many seconds before an immense crowd of people pressed in upon them on every side, subjecting them ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... as ill case as he that receives it would have been if he had not had it; for he from whose body the physic comes is dead. When therefore I took this farm, undertook this body, I undertook to drain not a marsh but a moat, where there was, not water mingled to offend, but all was water; I undertook to perfume dung, where no one part but all was equally unsavoury; I undertook to make such a thing wholesome, as was not poison by any manifest quality, intense heat or cold, but poison in the whole substance, ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... Could on the dark-blue mirror trace; And farther as the Hunter strayed, Still broader sweep its channels made. 245 The shaggy mounds no longer stood, Emerging from entangled wood, But, wave-encircled, seemed to float, Like castle girdled with its moat; Yet broader floods extending still 250 Divide them from their parent hill, Till each, retiring, claims to be An islet ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... were seated at supper, on a summer afternoon in the year 1402, when the sound of a horn outside the moat sent one of the farm-servants hurriedly to the gate. He returned saying, "A holy ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... we walked to the old castle of Calder (pronounced Cawder), the Thane of Cawdor's seat. I was sorry that my friend, this 'prosperous gentleman', was not there. The old tower must be of great antiquity. There is a draw-bridge,—what has been a moat—and an ancient court. There is a hawthorn-tree, which rises like a wooden pillar through the rooms of the castle; for, by a strange conceit, the walls have been built round it. The thickness of the walls, the small slaunting ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... with indefinite doom on it, Here, in the fumes of a feculent moat, Under an alp with inscrutable gloom on it, Squats the wild witch with a ghoul at her throat! Black execration that cannot be spoken of— Speech of red hell that would suffocate Song, Starts from this terror with never a token of Day and ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... one day as I came over the Adur by Moat Farm that I became aware of this great establishment, for there suddenly, as I turned a corner, by the Lord, the road was full of Carthusian monks all in their white habits, a sight as marvellous as delightful once more upon an English road. And so I found my way to ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... animosities? How many women are there who never meet without mingling in a close embrace, when each is to the other a Brinvilliers in heart? My gentle cousin Kate, only last night I saw you greet your intimate enemy. It was the moat gushing thing I ever imagined. The kisses were profuse and tantalizing in the extreme; yet I wish, if thoughts could kill, dearest Emma's neck would have been safer in the hug of a Norway bear than in the clasp of your white ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... conspirators, who was in the habit of paying nightly visits to a servant living in the castle, by means of a rope attached to her window, and who then admitted his companions, who were lying concealed in the moat. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... set out for the chateau. The walk was a delightful scramble through the neglected old woods for perhaps half a mile, when a seemingly impenetrable thicket barred the way. M. Gambeau said this was the line of the ancient moat, and they must cut their way through or make a long detour to the rear of the chateau, the side on which he usually approached. The hatchet was plied vigorously, hands were scratched, clothes torn, many a fall taken and many a fight had with the clinging vines, as they crawled and clambered through, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... sky appears, Not less than in the lighted village steads. So do those half-illumed wax clear to share A cry that is our common voice; the note Of fellowship upon a loftier plane, Above embattled castle-wall and moat; And toning drops as from pure heaven it sheds. So thou for washing a phantasmal air, For thy sweet singing keynote of the wise, Laughter—the joy of Reason seeing fade Obstruction into Earth's renewing beds, Beneath the stroke of her good servant's blade - Thenceforth art as their ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "were dug up in the moat of Holdernesse Hall. They are for the use of horses; but they are shaped below with a cloven foot of iron, so as to throw pursuers off the track. They are supposed to have belonged to some of the marauding Barons of Holdernesse ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of a mile, and that not towards the open, but the most uncouth and unfrequented part of the forest. We crossed a place which had once been a moat, but which was now in some parts dry, and in others contained a little muddy and stagnated water. Within the enclosure of this moat, I could only discover a pile of ruins, and several walls, the upper part of which seemed to overhang ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... skins, and shaking off a few of the enemies that had come to the attack; and it was not until we had contrived to make a little channel all round one of our boxes upon which the skins were laid, and connected it with the little spring of water, so that our treasure was surrounded by a tiny moat, that we could keep the ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... Fame, wealth, and lover, are for life secured. Much have I fear'd, but am no more afraid, When some chaste beauty, by some wretch betray'd, Is drawn away with such distracted speed, That she anticipates a dreadful deed: Not so do I—Let solid walls impound The captive fair, and dig a moat around; Let there be brazen locks and bars of steel, And keepers cruel, such as never feel; With not a single note the purse supply, And when she begs, let men and maids deny; Be windows those from which she dares not fall, And help so distant, 'tis in vain to call; ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... too well of his good ones. I won't say that the excellent man I speak of is the ideal cure, but I suspect he is an approach to it; he has a grain of epicureanism to an ounce of stoicism. In the garden path, beside the moat, while he puffed his cigarette, he told me how he had held up his head to the Prussians; for, hard as it seemed to believe it, that pastoral valley had been occupied by ravaging Teutons. According to this recital, he had spoken his mind civilly, but most ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... wall and a moat, and was regarded as impregnable to all save overwhelming forces; but Sidney depended more on the spirit of his men than on mere numbers, and he pressed hardily forward. When the moat was reached, he plunged boldly in, and was soon followed by some fifty others. A few moments more, and they ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... managed to cross the moat and force the gateway, in spite of a portcullis crashing from above, and melted lead pouring in burning streams from the perforated top of the rounded arch, but little of his work was yet done; for the keep lifted its huge angular ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... eagerly; "that's just my ambition. What a pity it's looking backward instead of forward. But I would love to live in a great stone castle, all my own, with a moat and drawbridge and outriders, and go around in a damask gown with a pointed bodice and big puffy sleeves and a ruff and a little cap with pearls on it, and a bunch of ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... and precipitous, and at first the members of the party began to fear that they should be unable to mount the steep escarpment of eight or ten feet high, which formed its base, which was further defended by a moat of mingled sludge and rounded fragments, ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... by. The Turks had made a desert of the surrounding country, and held many thousands of its inhabitants as prisoners in their camp. Step by step they gained upon the defenders. By the end of August they possessed the moat around the city walls. On the 4th of September a mine was sprung under the Burg bastion, with such force that it shook half the city like an earthquake. The bastion was rent and shattered for a width of more than thirty feet, portions of its walls ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... paused at sunrise upon the crest of a small eminence, whence they commanded a view of an extensive plain. On their right front, and at the distance of a mile, lay a town, composed of dark buildings of quaint and ancient architecture, surrounded by walls and a moat, and on the battlements of which sentries were stationed; whilst from the church tower the Spanish colours, the gaudy red and gold, flaunted their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... their own age, had often more or less fully rationalized it; transforming, for instance, the black river of Death which the original heroes often had to cross on journeys to the Celtic Other World into a rude and forbidding moat about the hostile castle into which the romancers degraded the Other World itself. Countless magic details, however, still remained recalcitrant to such treatment; and they evidently troubled Malory, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... brought a smile to his lips as he rode on up to the principal house in the place—Hayslope Grange. This was a large, rambling, roomy building, half farm-house, half mansion, standing in the midst of an old-fashioned garden, surrounded by fields, and enclosed with a moat. The moat was dry now, and had been for some years, and a permanent bridge of planks had been laid across, leading to the village; Master Drury would not have it filled up. "It might be useful yet," he would say, when his son Harry pressed him to ...
— Hayslope Grange - A Tale of the Civil War • Emma Leslie
... at Alkmaar about thirty years ago, I strolled to the neighbouring village of Heilo, on the road to Limmen, where I saw, surrounded by a moat, the foundations of the castle of Ypenstein. A view of this once noble pile is to be found in the well-known work of Rademaker, Kabinet van Nederlandsche en Kleefsche Oudheden. This place, as tradition tells, once witnessed the perpetration of a violent deed. When the son of the unfortunate ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... there is a low wall Binding the city, and a moat Beneath, that the wind keeps afloat. You pass the gates in a slow drawl Of wheels. If it is warm at all The Carillon will ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... are informed of the pageantry of our Court, of the expenses of our courtiers, of the profusion of our Emperor, and of the immense wealth of his family and favourites, may easily be led to believe that France is one of the happiest and moat prosperous countries in Europe. But for those who walk in our streets, who visit our hospitals, who count the number of beggars and of suicides, of orphans and of criminals, of prisoners and of executioners, it is a painful necessity to reverse the picture, and to avow that nowhere, comparatively, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... happen to come amongst them to teach their chiefs the art of governing. Of all villages the most secure from attack seem those that are situated on the river islands, where the division of the stream affords a natural moat, which ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... to happen after the fashion of what he read of, the moment he saw the inn he pictured it to himself as a castle with its four turrets and pinnacles of shining silver, not forgetting the drawbridge and moat and all the belongings usually ascribed to castles of the sort. To this inn, which to him seemed a castle, he advanced, and at a short distance from it he checked Rocinante, hoping that some dwarf would show himself upon the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... dining-hall where he had been carried back to die; there the white pillar behind which the murderer crouched, and there the dark archway through which Gerard had run, his heart beating thickly with the hope of escape, and the thought of the horse waiting beyond the ramparts and the moat. ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... famous fort of Agra, a couple of miles from the Taj, the other side of the Jumna, a structure of such magnitude as to form almost a city within itself, measuring two miles around its walls. Those walls, over fifty feet in height, are of red sandstone, with towers at intervals, and a deep moat. It is situated on the banks of the river, with which its vaults have an underground communication. We were shown one dark and gloomy cellar far below the level of the fort, known as the execution room, where the criminals, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... 28th) Robert Hart went once again to see Gordon and to be present at the taking of Chang-Chow-Fu. This was one of those typical water cities of Central China, walled in of course and with a canal—the Grand Canal in this case—doing duty for a moat. Gordon's headquarters were in boats, and Hart and his little party—one of whom, Colonel Mann Stuart, afterwards helped to keep the line of communications open for Gordon in Khartoum—moored his flotilla alongside. The largest vessel of the fleet was the common dining-room, and owed ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... lingeringly Donald closed the book. The many-branched tree under which he lay changed into a grey stone castle with moat and drawbridge upon which through the day armored knights on prancing steeds rode from castle to village, always on missions of good to the towns and hamlets. Never did Donald tire of reading about Arthur, Galahad, Merlin and the others, but Launcelot, the Bold, was his favorite knight. ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... but I am warmer now," she cried. "And if Maid Betsy A'hannay comes to take me away, I want you to stretch out your hand like this, and say: 'Seneschal, remove that besom to the deep dungeon beneath the castle moat,' as we used to do in our plays before you became a great man. Then I could stay very long and talk to you all through the night, for Maud Lindesay sleeps so sound that nothing can ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... (flown with the insolent recollection of a sunny summer in Milan) said was invariable in Nuremberg; but after the one-o'clock table d'hote they took a noble two-spanner carriage, and drove all round the city. Everywhere the ancient moat, thickly turfed and planted with trees and shrubs, stretched a girdle of garden between their course and the wall beautifully old, with knots of dead ivy clinging to its crevices, or broad meshes of the shining foliage mantling its blackened masonry. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... not unfrequently even the feudal castles, are still tenanted by the heirs, or by those who have peacefully purchased from the heirs, of their ancient lords; and the insensible gradations by which the feudal guard-room has softened down into the modern drawing-room, and the feudal moat into the flower-garden, are emblematic of the continuous and comparatively tranquil progress of English history. In France, how different! Scarcely eighty years have passed since the Chateau de Montgomeri ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... the sea," and I spoze it might just as well mean approaching from the sea, as we did. Old Shanghai is surrounded by a wall and moat and is entered by six gates, the roads are only ten feet wide and dirty and bad smellin', and most of its houses are small, though there are a few very fine buildings, according to their style, lots of little piazzas jutting out everywhere with the ends turned up, that seems to ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... skirted the terraces and approached the house on the eastern side. Here I found an old-world drawbridge—now naturally in disuse—spanning a ditch fed from the main river for the erstwhile purposes of a moat. I crossed the bridge, and entered an imposing courtyard. Within this quadrangle the same silence dwelt, and there was the same obscurity in the windows that overlooked it. I paused, at a loss how to proceed, and I leaned ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... from 20 to 30 feet high overshadow the moat of the castle, and aloes plants as luxuriant as those of Andalusia, shoot up their stems crowned with flowers along the shores of the bay, and by the sides of the roads, whose windings are lost amongst the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... not yet seen, might justify yet another of its nicknames, "the German Athens," but here were, in this southern and unfashionable suburb, only a few modern structures, and most of the quaint and rather picturesque dwellings, overhanging the stores, dated anterior to the filling up of the town moat ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... the most loathsome prison in London at that time, it being used for felons, while Ludgate was for debtors. Here he was thrown into an underground dungeon foul with water that seeped through the old masonry from the moat, and alive with every noisome thing that creeps. There was no bed, no stool, no floor, not even a wisp of a straw; simply the reeking stone walls, covered with fungus, and the windowless arch overhead. One could hardly conceive a more horrible place in which to spend even a moment. I had a glimpse ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... very glad to find himself again in the old house where he was born, and amongst familiar fields and faces. On the morrow he was to see the tradesmen as to alterations and repairs which were much needed, even the moat being choked with mud and weeds. His last sentence was: "I much mistrust me of that fine Spaniard, and I am jealous to think that he should be near to you while I am far away. Beware of him, I say—beware of him. May the Mother of God and all ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... fortress on the Island of Cape Breton which commanded the mouth of the St. Lawrence. This fortress was called Louisburg in honour of King Louis, and it was the strongest and best fortified in the whole of New France. The walls were solid and high, and bristled with more than a hundred cannon. The moat was both wide and deep. Indeed the French believe that this fort was so strong that no power on ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... their powers; at last flames burst forth from several parts of the works, and at one o'clock the magazine in the principal fort exploding cast destruction around. The batteries having been now silenced, the squadron stood closer in and destroyed moat of the vessels which had taken shelter behind the mole. Soon after the fleet retired from before Odessa, the Tiger, which had been stationed off the coast, ran on shore. While attempts were being made to get her off the Russians brought down a field battery, from which they ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... valley, lying like a moat between the elevated sandy desert and the plateau on which Mourzuk is situated. This plateau, at the distance of every few miles, juts out huge buttresses of perpendicular cliffs, which frown over the broken thread of green vegetation in the valley. Thick forests of palms stretch ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... castle of sand, and walled it in with sea shells. Helma showed them how to make the moat and the bridge, and Sally and she took turns and made up a story about the castle and told it ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... deliberations by the terrible chasm around, passed laws for the weal or woe of the people. It was only necessary to guard the causeway by which they entered; all other sides were well protected by the encircling moat, which varies from thirty to forty feet in width, and is half filled with water. The total depth to the bottom, which is distinctly visible through the crystal pool, must be sixty or seventy feet. Into this ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... Yeddo when affairs of state require his presence elsewhere. His palace is situated in the heart of the city, and is surrounded by grounds several miles in circumference, and enclosed by a deep moat. It is there that he receives the compulsory visits of the grandees of the empire, one of whom, on the point of being ushered into the audience-chamber, is shown opposite, in his robes of ceremony, and attended by a sword-bearer, ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... battle! Sons of Suli Up, and do your duty duly! There the wall—and there the Moat is: Bouwah![131] Bouwah! Suliotes! There is booty—there is Beauty, Up my boys and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... through the night the sweet strains float Like wind-blown rose-leaves, note by note, Over the great wall and the moat, ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... beg your pardon. Of course there may be instances,' thereby bringing an intense glow of carnation into Alice's cheeks, while the Canon, ready for the occasion, replied, 'And George Johnson considers himself one of them. He will repair the old moat house, ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... or dry moat is about 30 feet deep and 50 feet wide. The counterscarp by which one may descend into it has an ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... left: "in a angholo stia la guardia de la sstalla" (in the angle a may be the keeper of the stable). Below are the words "strada dabosa" (road to Amboise), parallel with this "fossa br 40" (the moat 40 braccia) fixing the width of the moat. In the large court surrounded by a portico "in terre No.—Largha br.80 e lugha br 120." To the right of the castle is a large basin for aquatic sports with the words "Giostre colle nave cioe li ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... The chateau has a moat around it, over which is a stone bridge which leads to the entrance on the side opposite the broad terraces bordered by cut trees, as in Versailles. The park is very large, filled with beautiful old trees, ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... headlong from the window. He clutched at the window-sill. A blow came down on his hands. He had to leave go, and down he fell, seventy feet, into the moat below. ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... Scottish officers alone, Captain Innes and Lieutenant Lumsden, succeeded in breaking their way down a side lane, and thence, rushing to the wall, leapt down into the moat, and swimming across, succeeded in making their escape, and in carrying the news of the massacre to the camp of Gustavus, where the tale filled all with indignation and fury. Among the Scotch regiments ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... land side is complete; the bastions are faced with brick. There is a double ditch, or moat, the innermost part of which is 180 feet broad; there is a good counterscarp, and a covered way marked out with ravelins and tenailles, but they are not raised a second time after ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... course to the battles of the Franco-German campaign, which was especially horrible to me, in its digging, as the Germans should have known, a moat flooded with waters of death between the two nations for a ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... Dead," a small cemetery just outside one of the old city gates. These gates, some of which are large and imposing, pierce the dilapidated wall at intervals. The wall, about six miles in circumference, is surrounded by the remains of a moat, now chiefly useful as an addition to the picturesque landscape and as a breeding place for mosquitoes. The top of a city gate, reached by a winding stone stairway from within, is a convenient place from which to view the densely crowded roofs ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... not be yielded till every one of them was dead. But one course, therefore, was open to the monarch,—the castle must be stormed. This, with the guns which he possessed, demanded almost more than human strength. The castle was surrounded on all sides by a moat, beyond which rose a perpendicular wall of masonry twenty feet in height. This rampart was washed on three sides by the sea, and on the other was protected by a broad deep dike and then an outer wall. From within, the rampart ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... clear that Scarthwaite Hall had been built in those days of foray, for one little, ruined, half-round tower rose from the brink of a ravine whose sides the hardiest of moss-troopers could scarcely have climbed. A partly filled-in moat led past the other, and in between stretched the curtain wall which now formed the facade of the house itself. Its arrow slits had been enlarged subsequently into narrow, stone-ribbed windows, and a new entrance made, while ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... by a moat and a wall is Prospect Hill, a charming elevation which serves as an imperial garden. On the fall of the city in 1643 the last of the Mings hanged himself there—after having stabbed his daughter, like another Virginius, as a last proof ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... which, scenting a favorite food, suddenly sprang upon the table and upon us, leaping and flying into the plates and drawing Corsican curses from Capriata and Norwegian maledictions from Lee. I did not wait to see them throwing the invaders from the battlements of the table into the moat of salt water and spilt wine below, but quickly, though feebly, climbed to the deck and laid myself beside Pere Olivier, nor could cries that the enemy had been defeated and that "only a few" were flying about, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise; This fortress, built by nature for herself, Against infection, and the hand of war; This happy breed of men, this little world; This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a home, Against the envy of less happier lands; This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, Fear'd by their breed, and famous ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... here, but the great fortress, with its citadel, barracks, machine-shops, gardens, church, and protecting forts, was almost a city in itself. It had a garrison of twenty thousand, and its gigantic concrete walls, covered over with earth and grass, its, moat and barbed wire, looked formidable enough. It had no modern heavy artillery, however, and even if it had, artillery in a fixed, known spot is comparatively helpless against the mobile guns, screened by hills and timber, besiegers can bring against it. Elaborate earthworks ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... city in Spain—at one time the capital. Toledo is built on a series of hills above a river, called Tagus, which winds around the base of the city like a natural moat around a fortress. Nearly four hundred years ago a Greek painter came to Toledo and stayed to become one of Spain's—and the world's—greatest artists. He was known as "El Greco," which means The Greek, and today most people have ...
— Getting to know Spain • Dee Day
... their ingenuity in making toys, lace, cloth, silk, satin, velvet, and other useful articles. They are also famous for the culture of flowers, in which they excel even the Dutch. Every house has a garden attached, which is frequently surrounded by a moat. The country is small, but every part of the land is made fertile by the industry of the farmers, of whom there are a great number; many of them grow flax, which is woven into linen by the women. There is a weekly market for linen, held at Ghent, whither the peasantry carry ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous
... by far more tremendous ramparts than any that the hand of man could rear, only required them for show and to guard against civil discord. But on the other hand they were as broad as they were high, built entirely of dressed stone, hewn, no doubt, from the vast caves, and surrounded by a great moat about sixty feet in width, some reaches of which were still filled with water. About ten minutes before the sun finally sank we reached this moat, and passed down and through it, clambering across what evidently were the piled-up fragments ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... along the main path of the first terrace, Lanstron followed it past the rear of the house to the old tower. Long ago the moat that surrounded the castle had been filled in. The green of rows of grape-vines lay against the background of a mat of ivy on the ancient stone walls, which had been cut away from the loopholes set with window-glass. The door was open, showing a room ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... some directions about his garden" (at Wooton Surrey), "which, he was desirous to put into some form, for which he was to remove a mountain overgrown with large trees and thickets and a moat within ten yards of ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... a few days with Thomas Clarkson, in Ipswich. He lived in a very old house with long rambling corridors, surrounded by a moat, which we crossed' by means of a drawbridge. He had just written an article against the colonization scheme, which his wife read aloud to us. He was so absorbed in the subject that he forgot the article was written by himself, and kept up a ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the tongue of land a sand hill had been surrounded by a wall and moat, guarded by heavily armed soldiers and several archers. The level ground below had been made secure against any attack, and on the right side was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... moat-field, the great fascination of which was in the wild hill that gave it its name. What the moat originally was I know not. I think, now, it must have been a gravel-hill, for it was full of deep gashes, of pits and quarries, run over by briar, alight with furze-bushes. ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... lights in the left wing, but this part of the castle was surrounded by an empty moat, damp and weedy. This was not to be entered save by a ladder. There was a great central door, however, which had a modern appearance. The approach was a broad graveled walk. I tied Lady Chloe to a tree, knotted ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... and Louis XV figure in one scene of the story of The Moat with the Crimson Stains, as told by Elizabeth W. Champney in her Romance of the Bourbon Chateaux.[354] It tells of the German apprentice Riesener, who assisted his master Oeben in designing for Louis XV a beautiful ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the bustle of preparation for her own journey, and the excitement of her arrival at the Moat House. All three cousins were there to greet her, and she was welcomed with so many kisses, and such a chorus of delight, that for the moment everything else was forgotten. Each of the cousins had his or her favourite pet, or particular spot in the garden ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... used to hold her drawing-rooms in an apartment which many a New England journeyman mechanic would hardly think ample and comfortable enough for his parlor. There is a curious conical mound in the town, called the Moat-hill, which looks like a great, green carbuncle. It is thought by some to be a Druidical monument, but is quite involved in a mystery which no one has satisfactorily solved. It is strange that no persistent and successful effort has been made to let ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... this was done the main body of the storming party were at once to follow. But they met with an unexpected obstacle. Instead of finding, as they had expected, merely a shallow ditch, they found themselves at the edge of a counterscarp, the wall being fifteen feet in depth, with a regular moat filled with water between them and ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... pitched the tyrant out of the window, and turned to join the lady, victorious, but with a bump on his brow, found the door locked, tore up the curtains, made a rope ladder, got halfway down when the ladder broke, and he went headfirst into the moat, sixty feet below. Could swim like a duck, paddled round the castle till he came to a little door guarded by two stout fellows, knocked their heads together till they cracked like a couple of nuts, then, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... a stately house stood in Kittery, Maine, a strongly guarded place with moat and drawbridge (which was raised at night) and a moated grange adjacent where were cattle, sheep, and horses. Here, in lonely dignity, lived Lady Ursula, daughter of the lord of Grondale Abbey, across ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... Dukes of Ferrara, about which cluster so many sad and splendid memories, stands in the heart of the city. I think that the moonlight which, on the night of our arrival, showed me its massive walls rising from the shadowy moat that surrounds them, and its four great towers, heavily buttressed, and expanding at the top into bulging cornices of cavernous brickwork, could have fallen on nothing else in all Italy so picturesque, and so full of the ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... summit also bears signs of human occupation. The southern part of the buttress-crest still supports a double concentric circle with a maximum diameter of about fifteen feet; the outside is of earth, apparently thrown up for a rampart behind a moat, and the inside is of rough stones. Going south along the dorsum, we found remains of oval foundations; a trench apparently cut in the rock, pottery often an inch and more thick, and broken handmills ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... John, Lord Muncaster (the first of the family who obtained a peerage), entered into possession of Muncaster Castle, after his elevation in 1793, he found it still surrounded with a moat, and defended by a strong portcullis. The family having of late years entirely resided upon their estate of Wartee in Yorkshire, the house was in so very dilapidated a state that Lord Muncaster was obliged to rebuild ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... personation of a pilgrim. Herat lies in a valley, surrounded by high mountains and watered by a river, to which it is due that gardens and orchards abound. The town covers an area of about four square miles; it is surrounded by a wall flanked with towers, and a moat full of water. Large bazaars, containing numerous shops, and the Mechede Djouna, or Mosque of ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... equal to my expectation. I reformed the old house according to the advice of the best architects, I threw down the walls of the garden, and enclosed it with palisades, planted long avenues of trees, filled a green-house with exotick plants, dug a new canal, and threw the earth into the old moat. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... 1:41. The primary object of this company was a monopoly of the Indian trade, not colonization. The "princely" manors were a combination fort and trading house, surrounded by moat ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... before or perhaps a little after the birth of Champlain, the town was fortified, and distinguished Italian engineers were employed to design and execute the work. [2] To prevent a sudden attack, it was surrounded by a capacious moat. At the four angles formed by the moat were elevated structures of earth and wood planted upon piles, with bastions and projecting angles, and the usual devices of military architecture for the attainment of strength and facility ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... large population, and was stocked with provisions to maintain a siege of indefinite length against any enemy. The accounts of its walls and fortifications exceed belief, estimated by Herodotus to be three hundred and fifty feet in height, with a wide moat surrounding them, which could not be bridged or crossed by an invading army. The soldiers of Narbonadius looked with derision on the veteran forces of Cyrus, although they were inured to the hardships and privations of incessant war. To all appearance the city was impregnable, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... riding towards Orrain, and not alone, for mademoiselle was by my side. As we rode out of the pine-woods the Chateau stood before us. There was the square keep, with its pepper-box towers, and bartizans overhanging the moat. There were the grey ramparts tapestried in ivy, and the terraced gardens, where the peacocks sunned themselves. All around us were happy faces, and joyous voices welcoming us home—the home to which I had so long been dead; and it was mine ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... a house perched strongly on the western bank of the river, with a moat round, and a drawbridge separating the outer ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... late. Before he was answered by his followers, we heard the creaking of the hinges and the rattle of the running chains, ending in a thud that told us the drawbridge had dropped across the moat. Then came the loud continuous thunder of many hoofs upon its timbers. Paralysed by fear Ramiro stood where he had halted, turning his eyes wildly in this direction and in that, but never moving ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house Against the envy ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... of branches of trees, trusses of hay and corn, and faggots of vines landed. Their surprise became horror when they saw the captives and the cattle alike slaughtered as they landed. Their bodies were brought forward under cover of the shields and thrown into the moat, in which, too, were cast the ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... think otherwise; he said he was willing to die for the common good. This is how he was cured: a message was sent to him, supposedly from the commandant, saying that the town was threatened with a siege and there was no water in the moat, and asking him to fill it to keep the enemy out. The patient was delighted to be able to save both his fatherland and himself; so he got rid of his water and of his sickness ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... of Europe, has a sort of providential signification. It is the great moat which divides the north from the south. The Rhine for thirty ages, has seen the forms and reflected the shadows of almost all the warriors who tilled the old continent with that share which they call sword. Caesar crossed the Rhine in going from the south; Attila crossed it when descending ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... minute; but the flying or fashionable traveler, who came to do as much as he could in a given time, never gave more than a single glance, most of such people turning aside instantly to a bad landscape hung on the right, containing a vigorously painted white wall, and an opaque green moat. What especially impressed me, however, was that none of the ladies ever stopped to look at the dresses in the Veronese. Certainly they were far more beautiful than any in the shops in the great square, yet no one ever ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... road, and far distant from the bustling world. In the midst of a luxuriant wilderness, rising above prolific orchards and antiquated woods, appears the five towers of La Grange, tinged with the golden rays of the declining sun. The deep moat, the draw bridge; the ivied tower and arched portals, opening into a large square court, has a feudal and picturesque character; and the associations which occur, on entering the residence of a man so heroic, so disinterested, ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... road, stood a ruined fortress of an obsolete last-century pattern. Shellfire had battered it into a gruel of shattered red masonry; but German officers were camped within its more habitable parts, and light guns were mounted in the moat. ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... the wall to a deep breach which had been left unrepaired. Over the sharp rocks I clambered, and at the risk of breaking my neck I jumped off the wall into the moat, which was almost dry. Dawn was breaking when I found a place to ascend from the moat, and I hastened to the fields and forests, where all day and all night long I wandered without food or drink. Two hours before sunrise next morning I reached Craig's Ferry. The ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... hour of defeat, within which broken forces might rally to retrieve disaster. To surround it, an enemy required to be strong upon both land and sea. Foes advancing through Asia Minor would have their march arrested, and their blows kept beyond striking distance, by the moat which the waters of the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles combine to form. The narrow straits in which the waterway connecting the Mediterranean with the Black Sea contracts, both to the north and to the south of the city, could be rendered impassable to hostile fleets approaching ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... St Pierre, enveloping it on the east and south. The demolition of the ramparts of Old Calais was followed by the construction of a new circle of defences, embracing both the old and new quarters, and strengthened by a deep moat. In the centre of the old town is the Place d'Armes, in which stands the former hotel-de-ville (rebuilt in 1740, restored in 1867), with busts of Eustache de St Pierre, Francis, duke of Guise, and Cardinal Richelieu. The belfry belongs to the 16th and early 17th century. Close by is the Tour du ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... apartment where Francis awaited him. "Chartley is as much a prison for Mary as the tower itself would be. When I sought admission to its gates I was refused and threatened, forsooth. The manor is surrounded by a moat and is well defended. The walls can be scaled only by birds. Methinks that there is ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... valorously through a rampart of cold provision, when his ears were suddenly assailed by a tremendous alarum, and sallying forth, and looking from his castle wall, he perceived a large party of armed men on the other side of the moat, who were calling on the warder in the king's name to lower the drawbridge and raise the portcullis, which had both been secured by Matilda's order. The baron walked along the battlement till he came opposite to these unexpected visitors, who, as soon as ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... polished helms and corselets, giving them a most spectre like and supernatural appearance. They stood directly before the arched barbacan, which formed the entrance to the court, and appeared waiting for the warder, to lower the drawbridge over the moat, for their exit. Without expressing any astonishment at the strange scene thus presented to him, Conrad D'Amboise glided from his post, and favored by the shadows of the frowning battlements, gained a postern in an angle of the wall, ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... Emperors court, and the extraordinaire edifieng companie of Cornelius Agrippa might haue beene arguments of waight to haue arested vs a little longer there, yet Italy stil stuck as a great moat in my masters eie, he thought he had trauelled no farther tha Wales til he had tooke suruey of that Countrie which was such a curious ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... gates, probably twenty-five in each face. The Euphrates, lined with quays on both sides, and spanned with drawbridges, ran through the town, dividing it into two nearly equal parts. The city was protected without by a deep and wide moat. The wall was at least seventy or eighty feet in height, and of vast and unusual thickness. On the summit were two hundred and fifty towers, placed along the outer and inner edges, opposite to one another, but so far apart, according ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... rode; For this night take I horse to find the truth, And where my quest will end yet know I not. Save that it shall not end until I find. Therefore to-night, good steed, be fierce and bold! Let nothing stay thee, though a thousand blades Deny the road! Let neither wall nor moat Forbid our flight! Look! If I touch thy flank And cry, "On, Kantaka!" let whirlwinds lag Behind thy course! Be fire and air, my horse! To stead thy lord, so shalt thou share with him The greatness of this deed ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... him a secret place where hung a little horn. On this he blew a sharp and ringing blast, when the bridge presently began to lower, and instantly to adjust itself across the moat; whereon, hastening, he unlocked the gate. But here he had nigh fallen into a subtle snare, by reason of an ugly dwarf that was concealed in a side niche of the wall. He was armed with a ponderous mace; and had not the maiden drawn ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... house of Columbus is part of the old city wall erected in 1537 and of which numerous portions remain intact, though all traces of the moat have disappeared. The old city was in the form of a trapezium occupying an area of a caballeria or about 200 acres, and the wall on the north side, provided with numerous redoubts and watch towers, ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... the old fort wall are paling, The mountains in the evening light are red, The moon has dropped into the moat from heaven, A spell barbaric over all is spread. But what is that to him, a stranger lonely, In a land strange to all his faith and dim? He cares not for old splendours, he would only Hear on the air a ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... a stick, I flung open the gate and advanced to the officer; he was standing, I said, on the little bridge across the moat. I made him a low salaam, after the fashion of the country, and, as he bent forward to return the compliment, I am sorry to say, I plunged forward, gave him a violent blow on the head, which deprived him of all sensation, and then dragged him within ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... respects, more monotonous than that of any other Alpine valley. On each side it is bordered by banks of turf, darkened with pine forest, rising at an even slope to a height of about 3000 feet, so that it may best be imagined as a kind of dry moat, which, if cut across, would be of the form typically shown in Fig. 20; the sloping bank on each side being about 3000 feet high, or the moat about three fifths of a mile in vertical depth. Then, on the top of the bank, on each side, and a little way back from the edge of the moat, rise ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... valley of the Genesee, our road lying along the edge of the wide, reed-grown flats and water-meadows, bounded on the north by rolling hills. On our left hand, parallel with the road, ran a sort of willowed moat banked by a grass-grown causeway, a continuous narrow mound, somewhat higher than the surrounding country, and cut through here and there with grass-grown gullies, the whole suggesting primeval earthworks and excavations. So the old Roman roads run, grassy and haunted ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... little stream, That runs into the moat, Where tall green sedges spread their leaves, And ...
— Dame Duck's Lecture - Dame Duck's First Lecture on Education • Unknown
... could the nation break away from that iron feudal system which held her limbs. But now it was a new country which came out from that year of death. The barons were dead in swaths. No high turret nor cunning moat could keep out that black commoner ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... remember two years ago, when she enjoyed some weeks of our summer season. Their château was built by the Brissac of Henri IV.’s time and is one of the few that escaped uninjured through the Revolution, its vast stone corridors and massive oak ceilings, its moat and battlements, standing to-day unimpaired amid a group of châteaux including Chaumont, Rochecotte, Azay-le-Rideau, Ussé, Chenonceau, within “dining” distance of each other, that form a centre of gayety ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... I was agreeably surprised at the treatment to which I was subjected by my capturers. Instead of being loaded with chains and confined in a cell beneath the castle's moat, I was given perfect liberty, and had quite a pleasant suite of rooms. I should scarcely have known that I was in durance had not one of the less refined of the brigands shown me a revolver, and playfully informed me that its contents were intended for me if I ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various
... taken on a wonderful flavor and I now know how dissolved German tastes. The cook, instead of sending back two miles for water to cook with, has been using water from the moat in which a Boche ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... absently, all absorbed in a winding river, a moat, and a drawbridge. "Aunt Margaret won't let me have one, I know. Will they wear them on ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... drive of seven or eight miles, we alighted in front of Speke Hall. This house is a specimen of the old fortified houses of England, and was once fitted up with a moat and drawbridge, all in approved feudal style. It was built somewhere about the year 1500. The sometime moat was now full of smooth, green grass, and the drawbridge ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... before you, dotted with groups of rhododendrons, which grew in more perfection here than anywhere else in the county. To the right there were the kitchen gardens, the fish-pond, and an orchard bordered by a dry moat, and a broken ruin of a wall, in some places thicker than it was high, and everywhere overgrown with trailing ivy, yellow stonecrop, and dark moss. To the left there was a broad graveled walk, down which, years ago, when the place had ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... and Ridsdale at Saint Jude's, Kensington by the very reverend Dr Forrest, dean of Worcester. Eh? Deaths. Bristow, at Whitehall lane, London: Carr, Stoke Newington, of gastritis and heart disease: Cockburn, at the Moat house, Chepstow... ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Apparently the city was unprotected, having not even a wall. Outward from the low, rounded houses of the city's edge there reached a wide and verdant plain, which was separated from the jungle by a narrow moat of shimmering liquid—a liquid of such dire potency that across it, even those frightful growths could neither ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... But at least I am glad, now that the taxes are in, To learn that in my province there is no discontent. I fear its prosperity is not due to me And was only caused by the year's abundant crops, The papers that lie on my desk are simple and few; My house by the moat is leisurely and still. In the autumn rain the berries fall from the eaves; At the evening bell the birds return to the wood. A broken sunlight quavers over the southern porch Where I lie on ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... I rebelled; I was bitter. I strove To outwit the great Cosmic Forces, above, Or beyond, or about us, who guide and control The course of all things from the moat ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the corridor without was through a single doorway from the boudoir. This door was equipped with a massive bolt, which, when she had shot it, gave her a feeling of immense relief and security. The windows were all too high above the court on one side and the moat upon the other to cause her the slightest apprehension of danger ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... shouts of joy. The enthusiasm spread with the news. Bells were rung as for a great victory, and bonfires in all parts of the kingdom proclaimed the joy of the nation at its release from what was regarded the moat oppressive burden of the war. Twenty-five years later the income tax ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... of Ceylon, and the chief port on the W. coast; it is surrounded on three sides by the sea, and on the other by a lake and moat; is supplied with water and gas; has many fine buildings; has a very mixed population, and has belonged to Britain since 1796; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... take it, for here comes a fort we must look at—miles of sloping coppery-coloured crenellated stone wall of moresque design. Graceful trees grow inside, and over its walls you see an occasional turbaned native's head, one is vivid yellow another rose; we pass so close we almost cross the moat, and the women stop washing clothes and look up. More park scenes follow, then market gardens and native cottages of dried mud, and we can see right ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... alone! I shall find her more easily alone. If I do not return, avenge this for me," he said, pointing to the moat; then, turning to the Wallachian, he added sternly: "I have found beneath your girdle a gold medallion, which my grandmother wore suspended from her neck, and by which I know you to be one of her murderers, and, had I not promised to spare your life, you should ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... residence of the chieftain was commonly a large square battlemented[40] tower, called a keep, or peel; placed on a precipice, or on the banks of a torrent, and, if the ground would permit, surrounded by a moat. In short, the situation of a border house, surrounded by woods, and rendered almost inaccessible by torrents, by rocks, or by morasses, sufficiently indicated the pursuits and apprehensions of its inhabitant.—"Locus horroris et vastae solitudinis, aptus ad praedam, habilis ad rapinam, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... mount, though not steep, was full two miles in circumference, from base to brow occupied by the castle, which was erected in that massive yet irregular form peculiar to the architecture of the middle ages. A deep, broad moat or fosse, constantly supplied by the river, defended the castle wall, which ran round the mound, irregularly indeed, for there were indentations and sharp angles, occasioned by the uneven ground, each of which was guarded by a strong turret or tower, rising from the wall. ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar |
