"Impassable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... travel. I want to know the peculiarities of that country of Oregon. It would take me a year to send a messenger, for at best it requires six months to make the outbound passage, and in the winter the mountains are impassable. If you could, then, take service with us now, we should be proud to make you such return ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... arriving there we saw that his account was a correct one; and, to add to our difficulties, the nature of the ground in our front now changed, and the cane-brake sank down into sort of swampy bottom, extending to the northern extremity of the lake. Our situation was an embarrassing one. Before us, an impassable swamp; to our right, water; to our left, an impenetrable thicket; and four hours out of the eight that had been allotted to us already elapsed. There seemed nothing to be done but to retrace our steps; but, before doing so, we resolved ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... unlearned in letters, for this task none are so well educated. To fit them for this work they have been taught in the true school. They have been in that gulf from which they would teach others the means of escape. They have passed that prison wall which others have long declared impassable; and who that has not shall dare to weigh opinions with them as ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... the tree stems more rapidly, making a detour occasionally to avoid a swamp or piece of broken ground; sometimes descending a deep gorge formed by a small tributary of the stream they were ascending, and which to an unpractised eye would have appeared almost impassable, even without the encumbrance of a canoe. But the said canoe never bore Jacques more gallantly or safely over the surges of lake or stream than did he bear it through the intricate mazes of the forest; now diving down and disappearing ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... water was of great extent and very deep, so that the surface of the water stood considerably higher than the top of my house, which stood in a hollow, in the very course of the water, and where every ordinary heavy rain occasioned such a current at my door as to be for some hours impassable by man or horse. But the king caused a sluice to be cut during the night, to conduct the water by another course, so that we were freed from the extreme danger; yet the excessive rain had washed down a considerable part ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... out the light of the dawning Sun of Truth. It would mean a reversion to the blight and mold of the Middle Ages, in many respects a return in a degree to the ignorance and tyranny that stood for so many centuries like an impassable rock in the pathway of human progress. The attempt to foist upon a progressive people a system of medicine and healing which is wholly unscientific and uncertain in its effects, but which is admittedly known to be responsible for the death of millions and for untold suffering and misery, and then ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... broad blade sent the strangely-built craft across the pool. Once in the shadow, it disappeared completely. There was no visible outlet. The rocks thrust their stark ridge against the sky in a seemingly impassable barrier. Some of the men stared at the jagged crests as though they half expected to see the Brazilians making a portage, just as travelers in the Canadian northwest haul canoes up a river obstructed ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... cruel frost, that lasted six weeks and was enough to make this winter memorable without help of wars or bloodshed. At the first we all hailed it, as hardening the roads, which for a month had been nigh impassable: and either commander took speedy advantage of it—Hopton to make a swift diversion into Sussex and capture Arundel Castle (which was but a by-blow, for in a few weeks he had lost it again), and our own general to post up with his short, quick legs to London, where ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... been forsaken, nor Judah of his God, of the Lord of Hosts, though their land was filled with sin against the holy One of Israel;" Jer. li, 5. And though, while so much of error, prejudice and carnal interest, lie as impassable mountains in the way, there is little appearance of the nations taking this course yet the Lord seems still to bespeak us in that endearing language, Jer. iii, 12, "Go and proclaim these words towards the ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... and 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 but ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... cataract, when the wall of rock across the stream is impregnable in front, it can be taken in the flank by an amphibious birch. The navigator lifts his canoe out of water, and bonnets himself with it. He wears it on head and shoulders, around the impassable spot. Below the rough water, he gets into his elongated chapeau and floats away. Without such vessel, agile, elastic, imponderable, and transmutable, Androscoggin, Kennebec, and Penobscot would be no thoro'fares for human beings. Musquash might dabble, chips ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... chiefs must have been men of considerable enterprise; the land of one, in the western part of this country, was protected by the Zambesi on the S., and on the N. and E. lay an impassable reedy marsh, filled with water all the year round, leaving only his western border open to invasion: he conceived the idea of digging a broad and deep canal nearly a mile in length, from the reedy marsh to the Zambesi, and, having actually carried the scheme into execution, he formed a large ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... strike a blow at a distance, to reach, for example, those regions of Puanit of whose riches the barbarians were wont to boast, the aridity of the district around the second cataract would arrest the advance of their foot-soldiers, while the rapids of Wady Haifa would offer an almost impassable barrier to their ships. In such distant operations they did not have recourse to arms, but disguised themselves as peaceful merchants. An easy road led almost direct from their capital to Ras Banat, which they called the "Head of Nekhabit," on the Red Sea; arrived ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... with sleet, washed away 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, ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... 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 ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... peninsula, with the Wallabout Bay or present Navy Yard on one side of the neck, and on the other, a mile across, the extensive Gowanus creek and marsh, over which now run Second, Third, and Fourth Avenues. The creek set in from the bay where the Gowanus Canal is retained, and rendered the marsh impassable at high-water as far as the line of Baltic Street. Blocks of buildings now stand on the site of mills that were once worked by the ebb and flow of the tides. The lower part of what is known as South Brooklyn was largely swamp land in 1776. Here ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... humorist all men are primarily men. The waiter and the prince are equally ridiculous to him, because in each he finds similar incongruities between the man and his surroundings; but in England there is a deep impassable gulf between the man at the table and the man behind his chair. This democratic independence of external and adventitious circumstance sometimes gives a tone of irreverence to American persiflage, and the temporary character of class distinctions in America undoubtedly diminishes ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... zoologists and botanists are not only more at a loss than ever how to define a species, but even to determine whether it has any real existence in nature, or is a mere abstraction of the human intellect, some contending that it is constant within certain narrow and impassable limits of variability, others that it is capable of indefinite ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... more than he had, and that, despite his losses, he was in a condition to destroy that army. Not all that Lincoln could say availed to persuade him to renew the attack upon the retreating foe. When Lee reached the Potomac he found the river so swollen as to be impassable. He could only wait for the waters to subside or for time to improvise ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... of the storm at last ceased, and by night the rain fell softly and gently, as if Nature were penitent over her wild passion. The results of it, however, were left in all directions. Many roads were impassable; scores of bridges were gone. The passengers from the evening boats were landed on a wharf partially submerged, and some were taken in boats to a point whence they ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... Babylonia's prosperity the Euphrates was hailed as "the soul of the land" and the Tigris as "the bestower of blessings". Skilful engineers had solved the problem of water distribution by irrigating sun-parched areas and preventing the excessive flooding of those districts which are now rendered impassable swamps when the rivers overflow. A network of canals was constructed throughout the country, which restricted the destructive tendencies of the Tigris and Euphrates and developed to a high degree their potentialities as fertilizing agencies. ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... mutilated and gossiping accounts of the voyages of the Norsemen, or upon some still earlier adventures of which all truly historical record has perished. The shores of America here become the Land of Promise, the clouds which veil it are the fogs of the coasts of Newfoundland or Labrador, the great and impassable river which divides it, perhaps the St. Lawrence: the crystal column is an iceberg: the rough and rocky island, and the black, cloud-piercing volcano, which burnt in the midst of the Northern Ocean, are Iceland and its volcanoes; the Eden of ...
— Brendan's Fabulous Voyage • John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute
... sometimes to put soup in our coffee-pot and take it to the field. Coffee by some means we still had. Even on the desolate morning I am now telling you of many a poor foot-soldier who had been upon the almost impassable roads all night had been cheered by a sly tin cupful of the precious liquid as we trudged on toward the field. Well, we were finally ordered to halt at the little village of Rueil, within a stone's throw ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... society, that it has never been signified as such in the past. I do not know that such an argument amounts to anything at best, but I do know that the allegation itself has no foundation in fact. I know that in many cases and on many occasions this impassable barrier that is now set forth as dividing the natural rights of man and woman has been broken down and trampled upon, and that, too, without any injury to the society from so doing. Perhaps I can best illustrate this point by what an ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... it. They preferred water to land travelling, possessing thorough command of their light bark canoe, which they could direct with ease and security amidst the most formidable rapids. If they came to an absolutely impassable spot, they raised the slight vessel on their shoulders and carried it until they reached ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... their passion had been exhausted; as if their hearts had been saddened by an unbridled debauch. There was, however, their everlasting quarrelling. Several of them, I understood, left the camp for the schooner, but avoiding the road by the ravine as if Castro's dead body down there had made it impassable. And the talk went on late into the night. There was some superstitious fear attached to the cave—a legend of men who had gone in and had never come back any more. All they knew of it was the region of twilight; formerly, when they used the shelter of the cavern, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... well as on the land, by certain physical conditions connected with climate, with altitude, with the pressure of the atmosphere, the weight of the water, etc.; and this is true even for animals of migratory habits, for all such migrations are periodical, and have boundaries as definite and impassable as those that limit the permanent homes of animals. There is a certain series established by the relations between different kinds of animals, as thus distributed over the globe, which agrees with the gradation in their rank, their growth, and their succession ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... comparatively recent conquest from the sea. The character of this land may be thus described: The first three miles from the coast is occupied with ridges of hills, from 100 to 200 feet high, of calcareous limestone formation, cropping out in such innumerable points and odd shapes as to be almost impassable. Some of these lumps resemble a large barnacle; both lumps and points are covered with long, coarse grass, and thus concealed, become a great hindrance to the pedestrian, who is constantly wounded by them. To these ridges succeed ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... original curse of the earth been carried out to a fuller extent than in Ceylon: "thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee." This is indeed exemplified when a few months neglect of once-cultivated land renders it almost impassable, and where man has vanished from the earth and thorny jungles have covered the once ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... question—'To us, not to the world'; and quietly tells them the positive conditions and the negative disqualifications for His self-revelation. So my text deals with two things, the crown of loving obedience in the possession of a fuller Christ, and the impassable barrier to His manifestation which unloving disobedience makes. Or to put it into briefer words, we have in one of the verses—first, what brings Christ and what Christ brings; and, in the other, second, what keeps away Christ ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... rocks down for ages, until what perhaps had been once a deep canyon was now a narrow flat, a mass of debris, terminating at the top of the steep, ragged cliff that pitched downward before us. The high, rocky ridges on both sides were wholly impassable, at least for the teams. A search finally disclosed, at the base of the ridge on our right, a single possible passage. It was narrow, slightly wider than a wagon, and led downward at a steep incline, into the valley below, with rocks protruding from both its side walls, its bottom strewn ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... hundred years Portugal was an almost roadless country, and four centuries ago, as now, most of the heavy carting was done by oxen, which are able to drag clumsy carts heavily laden up and down the most impassable lanes. Several times does he write to the king of the difficulty of getting oxen. On 4th ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... waterhole, which was distant from the ship, by the road they went, about four miles, and passable for the horses, although partly over mudflats which during high tides are covered with water; and on that account I thought, having observed the country to be very low from the masthead, it would be impassable. ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... grave and heard the same bird-music making harsh discord with the rumbling of the clods falling on the lid of the coffin, and who saw the pleasant sunshine tinging the very sods that were in a few moments to form an impassable barrier between the beloved dead and the ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... ravishingly, paint fruits and flowers, and drop to each other, before surrounding savages, mysterious allusions to feats in ballrooms, which, alas! no longer could be achieved. They signified, and in some degree solaced, their intense disgust at their present position by a haughty and amusingly impassable demeanour, which meant to convey their superiority to all surrounding circumstances. One of their favourite modes of asserting this pre-eminence was wearing the Frank dress, which their father only ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... God, and King of 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 chasm that yawned ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... solitude, and it is on these occasions that I realise how absolutely alone each individual is, and how far away from his neighbour; and while they talk (generally about babies, past, present, and to come), I fall to wondering at the vast and impassable distance that separates one's own soul from the soul of the person sitting in the next chair. I am speaking of comparative strangers, people who are forced to stay a certain time by the eccentricities of trains, and ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... Battalion's occupation there was a good deal of snow, and when this melted the sides of the trenches commenced to crumble, making them very muddy at the bottom. In consequence of this mud they became almost impassable. For the men doing trench duty the conditions were bad enough. The man on post had to stand on the fire step for hours in damp clothes, shivering in the freezing cold, knowing that when his tour of duty was over all he could look forward to was the cold damp floor of a dugout on ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... 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; it painted his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... conceive a place capable of presenting greater obstacles to an invader; and at the same time more conveniently situated with respect to trade. Built upon a narrow neck of land, which is confined on one side by the river, and on the other by impassable morasses, its means of defence require little explanation; and as these morasses extend to the distance of only a few miles, and are succeeded by Lake Pontchartrain, which again communicates through Lake Borgne* with the sea, its peculiar commercial advantages ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... the master returned, and reported the channel to be nearly a mile and a half wide, and that it went quite through to the bay; but it did not generally contain more than fourteen feet water, and was therefore impassable for the Investigator. The bottom of this, and of the former small channel, as also the shoaler banks of the Spit, were of coral, mixed ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... would make us all seriously ill. The same evening Drs Keith and Black came to our tents and acquainted us with the news they had just received from Haifa. The road to Beyrout by the sea shore was infested with thieves, and the road they had intended to take, through Nablous, was quite impassable; they had therefore determined to proceed by sea, and intended leaving at six o'clock the next morning. Sir Moses, however, relying on the Almighty's protection, decided to go by land with Mr Finzi, ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... way into the galleries, which were almost impassable. In the distance Lady Holme caught sight of Miss Schley with Mrs. Wolfstein. They were surrounded by young men. She looked hard at the American's pale face, saying to herself, "Is that like me? Is that like me?" Her conversation with Robin Pierce had made her feel excited. She had not ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... universe, and say that all to the right of that is chance, and all to the left is pre-ordained. You would then have to contend that things which on the face of them are of the same class, are really divided by an impassable gulf, and that the lower are regulated, while the higher are not. You would, for example, be forced to contend that the number of articulations in a flea's hind leg has engaged the direct superintendence of the Creator, while the mischance which ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... blockade and carry out the somewhat rash promise made by Winston Churchill when First Lord of the Admiralty, to "dig the rats out of their holes." Such an attack it was urged should be made mainly from the air, as the land batteries and sunken mines made the waters adjacent to these harbours almost impassable to attacking ships. Rear-Admiral Fiske, of the United States Navy, strongly urging such an attack, ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... and their march certainly partook something of the nature of a retreat, little as they themselves appeared to be aware of the fact. Philip with his host was advancing from behind, the great river Somme lay before them, all its bridges either broken down or so well fortified as to be practically impassable; and though their allies in Flanders had raised the siege of Bovines in order to march to the assistance of the English King, there appeared small chance of their effecting a junction in time ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... been a surprise to me from the moment I met you. I had an ugly hour's scramble over the rocks and through a tangle of scrub spruce and briers until I was utterly lost and believed this island an impassable wilderness. Then you came along and brought me to one of the most beautiful spots I ever saw. I should like to stay here all summer and do nothing but look at this magnificent ocean view ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... the phenomenon into the spiritual. Hence in its view of heathen religion it strove to rescue the ideal religion from the actual, and to discover the one revelation of the Divine ideal amid the great variety of religious traditions and modes of worship. But its invincible dualism, separating by an impassable chasm God from the world, and mind from matter, identifying goodness with the one, evil with the other, prevented belief in a religion like Christianity, which was penetrated by the Hebrew conceptions of the universe, so alien both to dualism ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... the way to the countries explored for her own profit, only kept those countries closed." The court forbade, on pain of death, the use of plans at different times proposed. They wronged their own colonies by representing the coasts as dangerous and the rivers impassable. On the presentation of a memoir for improving the route through Tehuantepec, by citizens of Oaxaca, as late as 1775, an order was issued forbidding the subject to be mentioned. The memorialists were censured as intermeddlers, and the viceroy fell under the sovereign's displeasure ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... resemblance of their condition to that of the Israelites. When one considers the remoteness of the field from their native shores, the enormous energy needful to collect the proper elements for a population, and to provide artificers with the means of work; the almost impassable wildness of the woods; the repeated leagues of hostile Indians; the depletions by sickness; and the internal dissensions with which they had to struggle,—one cannot wonder that they invested their own unsurpassed fortitude, and their genius for government and war, with the quality of a ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... sufficiently to enable us to see its exact measure. There was, as is the case with nearly every East African river, a considerable bar at the mouth, which, no doubt, when the wind was on shore and the tide running out, was absolutely impassable even for a boat drawing only a few inches. But as things were it was manageable enough, and we did not ship a cupful of water. In twenty minutes we were well across it, with but slight assistance from ourselves, and ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... replied, dryly. "I shall be forced to offend you again," he continued, "as further delay will render the stream entirely impassable." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... miles ahead they came to a bridge across a torrent. The road, always a bad one, had been completely cut up by the passage of the provision and ammunition carts going to the front, and was now almost impassable. ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... was an outlaw she might have forgiven, but that he was, according to report, a low fellow of no birth placed an impassable barrier ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... similar fate through being on the summit, so to speak, of the rocky path; but though for the moment safe, we could not tell for how long; while on taking a hasty glance at our position it was this: overhead the shelving rock quite impassable; to left, to right, and in front, the swollen, ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... would be several months before she moved again. It was then before the gold rush, and in winter Alaska was practically cut off from all communication with the south. No man would have attempted to traverse the tremendous snow-wrapped desolation of almost impassable hills and trackless forests that lay between them and the nearest of the commercial factories on the north, or the canneries on the other hand. Besides, the canneries were shut up in winter time. They were prisoners, and could only wait with what patience they could muster until the thaw ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... noted, as she sat rocking her contemplative person before the parlour fire this very March afternoon, a supernatural tendency in that fire to burn all on one side: which signifies that a wedding approaches the house. Why—who shall say? Omens are as impassable as heroes. It may be because in these affairs the fire is thought to be all on one side. Enough that the omen exists, and spoke its solemn warning to the devout woman. Mrs. Berry, in her circle, was known as a certificated lecturer against ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... habit to instinct; or attempt, upon the analysis and analogies of admitted facts in the natural history of one animal, to deduce a theory of the history of another,—we shall find this mysterious but beautiful chain of relation and adaptation unbroken, impassable, perpetual. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... sufficient for any calls that Confiscation can make on them. Any other construction that may be put on what has been said heretofore or may be said hereafter, is all error. If insisted on, what then? Have we run up against the impassable? It is sufficient to say that what is ours is ours to change when the need is evident, and the Constitution itself is not, an exception ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... per cent, on second-hand commodities. All I transported three years ago, was conveyed under the canon of the Duke of Richmond. I have no interest in our present representative; nor if I had, is he returning. Plate, of all earthly vanities, is the most impassable: it is not Counerband in its metallic capacity, but totally so in its personal; and the officers of the custom-house not being philosophers enough to separate the substance from the superficies, brutally hammer ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... water which we know as the Irish Channel—if only every Englishman could realize their tremendous significance in Anglo-Irish history—what an ineffectual barrier "in the long result of time" to colonization and conquest; what an impassable barrier—through the ignorance and perversity of British ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... course, means "washed or baptized in a stone font." He reveals the misery and danger of passing through a ford "after great showers," and the sad deaths which befell adventurous passengers when the river was swollen by rains and the ford well-nigh impassable. No wonder the builders of bridges earned the gratitude of their fellows. Moreover, this Abingdon Bridge was free to all persons, rich and poor alike, and no toll or pontage was demanded from those ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... examination which I have given Mr. S. Kirkham's English Grammar, I do not hesitate to recommend it to the public as the best of the class I have ever seen, and as filling up an important and almost impassable chasm in works ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... hundred or three hundred feet were smashed into little bits. The fronts of all the surrounding houses were pierced with hundreds of holes, large and small. The street itself was filled with debris and was impassable. From this place we went to the other points where bombs had fallen. As we afterward learned, ten people were killed outright; a number have since died of their injuries and a lot more are injured, and some of these may die. A number of houses were completely wrecked and a great many will have ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... down the road in the opposite direction to the course followed by my pursuers. Arriving at the last house at the foot of the street, I found myself confronted by a small river, quiet and apparently deep, with all the space from the last house to the river one impassable barrier of giant cactus, I had either to swim the river or turn back, and I ought to have plunged in as I was, revolver and all, the distance over being short; and, as I am an expert swimmer, I could easily have got across, loaded down as I was. ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... soon as your wire reached me; but the messenger arrived during a big snow-storm, and the trail was impassable for a day. Now, then, professor, let's have the whole story," he said, as the driver slammed the door. "Where are they ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... remotely resembling any of those presented in connection with the two previous Bills can be put forward now. Each of those schemes would involve the Irish Parliament in a huge deficit from the very outset. Even if the schemes were adapted to the changed modern conditions the same impassable gap between available revenue and certain expenditure remains. Those schemes presumably embodied principles which the Governments of 1886 and 1893, and the Nationalist parties of those dates regarded as adequate. It would be strange if it were otherwise, seeing ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... that stood in the way of Jefferson's scheme, but the wholesale way in which he tried to deal with the slavery question. He wished to hem in the probable extension of slavery by an impassable barrier, and accordingly he not only provided that it should be extinguished in the northwestern territory after the year 1800, but at the same time his anti-slavery ardour led him to try to extend ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... Oh, where is he?' gazed wildly round, and, shuddering from head to foot, fell senseless on the floor. Other inhabitants of the valley, alarmed by the sudden swell of the river, which had augmented to a torrent, deep and impassable, now came in to inquire if any loss had been sustained, for numbers of sheep and teds of hay had been observed floating down about the dawn of the morning. They assisted in reclaiming the unhappy maiden from her swoon; but insensibility ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... and opened into a fairy world wherein only the untried feet of youth may tread and the fragile flowers of child-dreams bloom. The gates thereto are slight but strong, and only knowledge erects an impassable barrier. ...
— Little Sister Snow • Frances Little
... is this?" he said, still talking with himself. "Wait! wait! wait!—the time is not yet. Separation only exists. There is no divorce. The great, impassable gulf is yet between us. I cannot go to her. She cannot come to me. I must wait, hopefully, if not ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... the modifying power, which detached from the discriminative and reproductive power, might conjure a platted straw into a royal diadem: but it would be at least as true, that great genius is most alien from madness,—yea, divided from it by an impassable mountain,— namely, the activity of thought and vivacity of the accumulative memory, which are no less essential constituents of ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... account of battles, and of hardships endured from the cold, in the struggle through mountain snows, through almost impassable forests, and across bridgeless rivers, is given in Xenophon's Anabasis, the celebrated work, in seven books, which forms the classical narrative of the campaign and the retreat. Soon after the death of Cyrus, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... and who once, and once only, had yielded to him. They were both advanced in years, and Life and Time had taken toll. She was haggard, yet beautiful in a wan way. He did not believe the vanished years had placed between them an impassable barrier. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... understood that every purely scientific aspect, incapable of immediate application, is to be rigorously banished from these lessons? Is it to be understood that, confined to an impassable circle, the value of every truth must be reckoned at so much per hundred, and that I must silently pass over all that aims only at satisfying a laudable desire of knowledge? No, gentlemen, for ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... line ahead leading past Fordham Cut was impassable. The passenger was stalled ten miles away, and orders from Rockton were to the effect that the Overland Express should take the cut-off. This diverged into the foothills, where there were no such deep cuts as on the direct route, and where it was hoped ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... at the door. A rap at that time of night and in that weather might have surprised an ordinary mortal who had dwelt two years in the gulch without seeing a human face, and could not fail to know that the country was impassable; but Mr. Beeson did not so much as pull his eyes out of the coals. And even when the door was pushed open he only shrugged a little more closely into himself, as one does who is expecting something that he would rather not see. You may observe this movement in women when, in a mortuary ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... a yew maze, of circular form, and the hedges, long untrimmed, had grown out and upwards to a most unorthodox breadth and height. The walks, too, were next door to impassable. Only by entirely disregarding scratches, nettle-stings, and wet, could Humphreys force his way along them; but at any rate this condition of things, he reflected, would make it easier for him to find his way out again, for he left ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... labors by building a road, as we know one existed here in antiquity, but it has long since disappeared, and King Otho was then imitating him, as we found, presently, to our cost. The sun had already set, when the road became impassable, and shouts from two men some distance above, informed us that the building of the new road had rendered the old bridle-path impracticable. We had to urge our horses down a steep, narrow path to the water's edge, then as the beach was blocked up with huge rocks, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... Shafroth Amendment, if passed, will place an impassable barrier to future Congressional action in behalf of woman suffrage. It simply refers the matter to the States. As a reason for passing it, it is claimed that we cannot secure the submission of the original amendment. Perhaps ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... which there arose black precipices and giant mountains that poured forth rivers of fire and showers of ashes and sheets of flame. A tremendous peak arose before us, with a crest of fire and sides streaked with red torrents of molten lava; between us and it there spread away a vast expanse of impassable rocks—a scene of ruin and savage wildness which cannot be described, and all around was the same drear and appalling prospect. Here in the night-season—the season of darkness and of awful gloom—we stood in this land of woe; and ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... proposed that he and William, who wore mukluks, should carry the doctor and me, who wore moccasins across the overflow, and then rush the sled across; and this we did, wetting its contents somewhat, however. We camped immediately, for we had landed on impassable gravel. ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... access to his rooms often wondered how he ever got out of them looking so immaculate, for they were a perfectly impassable jungle to the stranger. Such a tangle of trunks, hand-bags, rug bundles, clothes, boots, pajamas, newspapers, scrap-books, B. & S. bottles, could hardly be found anywhere else in the world. He had a fondness for newspaper clippings, and had trunks of them, sorted into bundles or pasted in scrap-books. ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... the accustomed hour, she was seized with the greatest uneasiness. She could not imagine what had become of her big baby. That he had succeeded in escaping from the factory, the enclosure of which was absolutely impassable, was not admissible. Besides, Mrs. Weldon knew her cousin. Had one proposed to this original to flee, abandoning his tin box and his collection of African insects, he would have refused without the shadow of hesitation. Now, the box was there in the ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... was a knot of men, headed by Count Henry of Thurn, which was bent on the dethronement of Ferdinand. They resolved to take advantage of the popular feeling to effect the murder of the two Regents, and so to place an impassable gulf between the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... imprisonment they had made several exploring trips into the interior, but had failed to find trace of human life; nor were they able to go far either north or south on account of impassable waterways. Neither could they discover any timber from which to obtain firewood, and as the supply on the schooner was nearly exhausted their outlook for the future grew daily more and ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... Blanc or the Jungfrau. But I am no less effectually debarred—it matters not how—from mountaineering. I wander at the foot of the gigantic Alps, and look up longingly to the summits, which are apparently so near, and yet know that they are divided from me by an impassable gulf. In some missionary work I have read that certain South Sea Islanders believed in a future paradise where the good should go on eating for ever with insatiable appetites at an inexhaustible banquet. They were to continue their eternal dinner in a house with open wickerwork sides; and it was ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... poor to obtain by purchase, the material for making hospital clothing, yet resolved to do something for the soldier. Twelve miles distant, over the mountain, and accessible only by a road almost impassable, was the county-town, in which there was a Relief Association. Borrowing a neighbor's horse, either the mother or daughters came regularly every fortnight, to procure from this society, garments to make up for the ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... as to present politics is based on the very opposite view. "You will have to lead millions of men to the borders of an impassable gulf," he says to the revolutionists, "but the gulf will not be easier for the millions of men to pass over than it was for a hundred thousand. What we wish is to try to diminish the width of the gulf which ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... been hidden spectators of one of these dinners. There were long silences when the medium of communication, tenuous at best, seemed to snap, and the two sat gazing at each other as from mountain peaks across impassable valleys. With all the will in the world, their souls lost touch, though the sense in the clergyman of the other's vague yearning for human companionship was never absent. It was this yearning that attracted Hodder, who found ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... large, clear openings, he tried the windows, each of the three, but gently, not bouncing against them so violently as to fall to the floor, as more impetuous or less intelligent birds invariably do. Having proved each to be impassable, he was satisfied, and never tried again. Next, the ceiling interested him, and he flew all around the room, touching it gently everywhere, to assure himself of its nature. Convinced thus in a short time that his bounds were only widened, not removed, he went ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... not in such numbness of spirit only that the life of the invalid resembles a premature old age. Those excursions that he had promised himself to finish, prove too long or too arduous for his feeble body; and the barrier-hills are as impassable as ever. Many a white town that sits far out on the promontory, many a comely fold of wood on the mountain side, beckons and allures his imagination day after day, and is yet as inaccessible to his feet as the clefts and gorges of the clouds. The sense of distance grows upon him wonderfully; ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to delay their progress, until Jack found himself climbing the steep upgrade, which the Peruvians had declared impassable before they had done so much work in clearing it. The course was uneven now, and considerable of the way it was little more than a scratch on the mountain side, with a sheer descent on one side of hundreds ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... girl but not especially handsome. She was most agreeable to the young men. Honest Abe was deeply impressed by her talk and fine manners and general comeliness. He felt her grace and charm and spoke of it, with enthusiasm. But to him and to her there seemed to be an impassable gulf between them. She changed her mind about that, however, when she heard him speak and felt the power of his personality and saw his face lighted by the candle of his spirit. It was a handsome face in those moments of high elation. Hardship and malarial poison had ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... copious stool. Forcible stretching is seldom required more than once, if a large sized instrument is used from time to time afterward, just as in gradual stretching; when thorough dilatation has been accomplished, the muscle instead of acting as an impassable barrier to the discharge of the feces, now offers only passive resistance, but sufficiently strong, however, to prevent any unpleasant accidents, yet not strong enough to resist the power of the expulsory muscles ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... the way, is only one instance of the greatest defect in our volunteer system: the broad and almost impassable gulf of demarcation between commissioned officers and enlisted men. The character of the army requires that this should be eradicated as soon as possible. Enthusiastic patriotism might make men willing to bear with ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... between them with every long, powerful stride of his horse, but already the three rocks, gaunt and high, loomed before him as if forming an impassable barrier across the road. Suddenly, just as Jose and Gallito had almost reached them and the sheriff was gaining upon the fugitives in great leaps, he saw them swerve their horses aside and dash into a clump of trees to the right of ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... Sunday, and the congregation and their pastor went forth to the service. The road to church had been heavy; the sand made the way almost impassable; and now, when they at last reached their goal, a great hill of sand was piled up before the entrance, and the church itself was buried. The priest spoke a short prayer, and said that God had closed the door of this house, and the congregation must ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... happy day when you signed the pledge, as I have been this evening. The cause of these feelings lies in the fact of your having become dissatisfied with that pledge. I tremble, lest, in some unguarded moment, under the assurance that old habits are conquered, you may be persuaded to cast aside that impassable barrier, which has protected your home and little ones for so ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... to the old house will have to be patched up some. Then I think we ought to have a roadway constructed from the front gate to the house. The road at present is pretty nearly impassable. My idea is that we ought to have a road-bed of coal cinders rolled down and covered with fine gravel. This kind of road in private grounds is, I understand, practically everlasting. Then, we have got to have a front gate, the old affair having gone all to pieces. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... punishment, the endless Gehenna, the pitiless angels, the yawning hell, the roaring stream of fire, the unquenchable flame, the dark prison, the rayless darkness, the bed of live coals, the unwearied worm, the indissoluble chains, the bottomless chaos, the impassable wall, the inconsolable cry. And none to stand by me; none to plead for me; none to snatch me out." Now, no Temporary ever possessed anything like that in his own handwriting among his private papers. A meditation like that, written out with his own hand, and hidden ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... with 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 ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... should have stout Gilbert de Clare and all the rest of them wild 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, we will keep our ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the 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 ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... to be softened, how the people of the Central Powers are to be brought to feel that they are not to remain divided from us by an impassable gulf, this is not the occasion to suggest. It is enough to repeat that the question is not one simply of the letter of a treaty but is one of the spirit in which it is made. Conditions change in this world with a rapidity that is often startling. The fashion ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... Deputy calmly broke the seal and hurriedly ran his eyes over the missive. Esperance and Zuleika eagerly and breathlessly watched his countenance while he read, but it was as impassable as a countenance chiseled from marble; when he had finished he turned to Esperance and without a word handed him the letter. For a moment the young man trembled so he could not read; cold perspiration stood in heavy beads upon his forehead, and vivid flashes of red passed before his eyes like ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... happy and sluggish amidst its old-time peacefulness, with its narrow, pebble-paved streets and its bleak houses with dressings of marble. The old roofs were still all massed on the eastern side of the castle; the Rue de la Grotte, then called the Rue du Bois, was but a deserted and often impassable road; no houses stretched down to the Gave as now, and the scum-laden waters rolled through a perfect solitude of pollard willows and tall grass. On week-days but few people passed across the Place du Marcadal, such ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Pixley vaguely, as though the name were new and strange to him. Or perhaps it was an endeavour on his part to express the impassable gulf which lay between his visitor and his ward, and the profound amazement he felt at any attempt on his visitor's part to abridge it. He also made a little involuntary preliminary cut at him with the pince-nez, as much as to say, "If this my weapon were of a size commensurate with my ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham |
