"Isthmus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in granting this favor to the Portuguese fenced it around with their usual caution, and placed many restrictions upon them. The point upon which Macao stands, is almost separated from the Island, the connection being an Isthmus of about three hundred feet; across which, about three miles from the Praya, a wall is built through which is a gateway, guarded by Chinese soldiers, and beyond which the Portuguese were not allowed to pass; and their municipal ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... Commission, special tests are made to determine the liability of the explosive to exude nitro-glycerine, and to deteriorate in unfavorable weather conditions. These tests are necessary, because of the warm and moist climate of the Isthmus ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... Spanish stock died out and in its stead grew up a motley race given to revolt, revolution, and corruption. Even when the provinces became free, they weren't able to unite and form a strong nation. The Isthmus of Panama became a pest-hole where the scum of the Four Seas settled. The people became mean and unhealthy in mind and body and morals, preserving nothing except the cruelty of their forefathers. Here and there, to be sure, one comes across the old Castilian breed, like a silver thread ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... illustration be the case of Columbus, who, from the figure of the earth, inferred that there must be a way of arriving at the Indies by a voyage directly west, in distinction from the very complicated way hitherto practiced, by sailing up the Mediterranean, crossing the isthmus of Suez, and so falling down the Red Sea into the Indian Ocean. He weighed all the circumstances attendant on such an undertaking in his mind. He enquired into his own powers and resources, imaged to himself the various obstacles that might ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... only too well to doubt his willingness to undertake such a trip as this. In times gone by, and especially when they were down in South America with their aeroplane, seeking Professor Bird, who had been lost, with the balloon in which he was conducting experiments on the isthmus, they had bravely faced just as serious perils as this promised to be; yes, and wrenched victory from the jaws of apparent defeat ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... objections to the use of wax in this country, which were discovered during the early voyages to California. The intense heat of the Isthmus of Panama melted the wax, and letters were irretrievably glued together, to the loss of the address and the confusion of the postmaster. So the glued envelope—common, cheap, and necessary—became the almost prevailing fashion for all ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... tell the entering visitor briefly of the milestones along the way of time up to the digging of the Canal. Its enrichment of sculpture, painting and inscription summarizes the story of Panama and of the Pacific shore northward from the Isthmus. The architect has expressed in its upper decorations something of the feeling of Aztec art. The four inscriptions on the south faces of the arches tell how Rodrigo de Bastides discovered Panama in 1501; how Balboa first saw the Pacific ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... the land of America was very wide in those parts, as wide as south of the isthmus where no man had yet crossed it. Then he told us of a sea-captain who had travelled inland in Mexico for five weeks and come to a land where gold was as common as chuckiestones, and a great people dwelt who worshipped a god who lived in a mountain. ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... note: strategic location on eastern end of isthmus forming land bridge connecting North and South America; controls Panama Canal that links North Atlantic Ocean via Caribbean Sea ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... huge barges passed us towed by a steamer and crammed with hundreds of the poor souls torn from their homes to work at the Isthmus of Suez, or some palace of the Pasha's, for a nominal piastre a day, and find their own bread and water and cloak. One of my crew, Andrasool, a black savage whose function is always to jump overboard whenever the rope gets ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... cars through the streets were running filled with happy people going home to christmas in the adirondacks the hunters all were gunning big ships were sailing down by the isthmus ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... southern parts of Louisiana, Arkanzas and Texas, a great part of Mexico, particulary the northen part, as well as California, the southern part of Mexico, and the countries comprehended between that state and the isthmus of Panama; the great iles of the Antilles, Haiti, Cuba and Jamaica, though formerly explored, are now scarcely represented ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various
... who succeeded him as Strategus, displayed rather more energy and courage, and made preparations to defend Corinth. Metellus had hoped to have had the honor of bringing the war to a conclusion, and had almost reached Corinth, when the Consul L. Mummius landed on the Isthmus and assumed the command. The struggle was soon brought to a close. Diaeus was defeated in battle; and Corinth was immediately evacuated, not only by the troops of the League, but also by the greater part of the inhabitants. ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... possibly the voice could come: but looking toward the sea-beaten shore we beheld a vast wave pillared in heaven, so that the view of the heights of Sciron was taken from mine eye:[45] and it concealed the Isthmus and the rock of AEsculapius. And then swelling up and splashing forth[46] much foam around in the ocean surf, it moves toward the shore, where was the chariot drawn by its four horses. But together with its breaker and ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... Harold was not dismayed, but gave orders to sail to the inner end of the fiord. He knew that it ended near the North Sea, only a narrow isthmus dividing them. Then, with great trouble and labor, he managed to have his ships dragged across the isthmus and launched on the sea waters, and away he sailed in triumph, leaving Sweyn awaiting ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... I was on board the "Ada Gray," a small schooner off the coast of Florida, bound for the Isthmus. There were seven of us in all, including the captain and mate, the latter an old pal of mine who had arranged to get me in as one of the crew. In some way he had learned that the captain was to take with him some two thousand in gold, and although we had no plans, we intended ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... friend of mine landed at Gibraltar for a few hours, and he was anxious to be able to say that he had been to Spain. So he walked along the Isthmus to Ceuta, where the British and Spanish sentries faced one another, and directly the Spanish soldier turned his head he hopped quickly over into Spain. Then the sentry turned round, and he hopped back ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various
... J.A. Mosquito Destruction in the Tropics. Jour. Amer. Med. Assn., LI, p. 26, Dec. 26, 1908. Occurrence and habits of Anopheles, methods of destruction. Results of anti-malarial work on the isthmus. Discussion by various doctors. ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... Tahiti, or Otaheite, is the largest of a group known as the Society Islands. It is about fifty miles long, consisting of two peninsulas joined by a narrow isthmus. It contains a mountain rising twelve thousand feet above the level of the sea. The other islands of the group are mostly lofty. They are Eimeo, Huaheine, Ulitea, Bolabola, and others. They are volcanic, and mostly fertile in ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... of religious literature is what are called the Passions, Las Pasiones, which are found among the natives of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. These prose chants took their rise at an early period among the sodalities (cofradias), organized under the name of some particular saint. Each of these societies possessed a volume, called its Regulations (Ordenanzas), containing, ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... be speedily transported from the Atlantic States to meet and to repel the invader? In the event of a war with a naval power much stronger than our own we should then have no other available access to the Pacific Coast, because such a power would instantly close the route across the isthmus of Central America. It is impossible to conceive that whilst the Constitution has expressly required Congress to defend all the States it should yet deny to them, by any fair construction, the only possible means by which one of these States can be defended. Besides, the ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... those of the Bay of Biscay are perhaps the best nourished. An isthmus is a piece of land which saves another piece of land from being an island. The principal exports of Germany ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... pass the fortifications, which lay across the isthmus which parts the Mediterranean from the Red Sea, and which were intended to protect Egypt from the incursions of the nomad tribes of the Chasu, he was subjected to a strict interrogatory, and among ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... work, I enjoy the plant all right. There isn't anything like this equipment anywhere else. Lots of the fellows are here to fit themselves for work on the Isthmus. A good many of them are going to fail out on the finals. For all it's a rich man's son's school it's only fair to say the standard is kept up and I am told that over fifty failed to get through last half. I have been fortunate enough to get a position under the assistant foreman in the coil ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... which remains to be undertaken on this continent is of such consequence to the American people as the building of a canal across the Isthmus connecting North and South America. Its importance to the Nation is by no means limited merely to its material effects upon our business prosperity; and yet with view to these effects alone it would be to the last ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... menace to the world. Moreover, airplanes sent to the polar continent had reported fresh masses mobilizing for the advance northward. A second wave would probably burst through the Amazon forest barrier and sweep over the Isthmus ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... consideration, but also all the senators, all the representatives in Congress, all the governors of States with their staffs, if they had any, all eminent citizens and their families throughout the Union and Canada, and finally every private individual, from the North Pole to the Isthmus of Panama, who had ever shown him a civility or was able to control interest enough to ask for a card. The result was that Baltimore promised to come in a body, and Philadelphia was equally well-disposed; New York provided several scores of guests, ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... Captain Sharp, and to go home around the southern part of the continent. Before the mutineers were put ashore, the ship had come north almost to the equator, so that the journey of the deserters was materially lessened. Two of the mutineers reached the Isthmus, crossed it and subsequently published some ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... thus saving my contract by one hour. But they did not commence taking them on board, so the captain of the barge put a demurrage of $20 per day for detention. In the meantime, I had bought my ticket to sail by the steamer Georgia to the Isthmus to go on the 1st of July which was but a few days off. They, seeing that I had them on my contract, came to me and said that my houses should go on their ship according to contract, if they had ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower
... argumentative writing. The fiery editorial that urges voters to the polls, the calm and polished essay that points out the dangers of organized labor, the scientific treatise that demonstrates the practicability of a sea-level canal on the Isthmus are attempts to change existing conditions and ideas, and thus come ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... largest users of explosives in the world, and, in the purchase of the enormous quantities required, it was found necessary to establish a system of careful examination and inspection. This was done in order to insure the safety of the explosives delivered on the Isthmus, and also to make certain that the standards named in the contract were being maintained at all times. With its established corps of chemists and engineers, it was natural that this important work should be taken up by the Technologic Branch of the United States Geological Survey, and, during ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... determined to bridge the Hellespont by a firm and compact structure, which it was thought would secure the communication of the army from interruption by the elements; and at the same time it was resolved to cut through the isthmus which joined Mount Athos to the continent, in order to preserve the fleet from disaster at that most perilous part of the proposed voyage. These remarkable works, which made a deep impression on the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... the early campaigns of Buonaparte, besides the other claims it has on the traveller's attention as the birth place of Virgil. This place is of immense strength, as a military post; being situated on a small isthmus of land, separating two lakes, and communicating with the rest of the country by an exceeding narrow causeway. This position, added to the strength of the fortifications, render the fortress impregnable, if well garrisoned and provisioned. The city ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... the morning, after a comfortless breakfast of poor coffee without milk, and hard bread, we turned our back on the Ocean Queen, without regret. A stout, half-naked negro shouldered our baggage, and we were actually treading the soil of the Isthmus ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... A district on the isthmus of Crimea, guarded by a wall and a ditch, the name meaning "Cross-ditch." The whole isthmus ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... (Thus we translate a general invitation) All country gentlemen, esquired or knighted, May drop in without cards, and take their station At the full board, and sit alike delighted With fashionable wines and conversation; And, as the isthmus of the grand connection, Talk o'er themselves the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... rigidly adhered to than ever, the principal departure from it being the signature and ratification of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty in 1850. By the terms of this treaty we recognized a joint British interest in any canal that might be built through the isthmus connecting North and South America, undertook to establish the general neutralization of such canal, and agreed to invite other powers, European and American, to unite in protecting the same. Owing to differences that soon arose between the United States and England as to the ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... tedious. He had always hated the humdrum life of the drill ground. Now he was shifted, after a few months, to a camp at San Francisco. The distance was so great, travelling as they did by way of the Isthmus of Panama (this was long before the railroads), that he could not take his wife with him. His slender pay also ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... which first opened off Cape St Louis,[116] in the direction of S. 53 deg. E., thinking that it was an island, and that we should find a passage between it and the main. We now discovered this to be a mistake; and found that it was a peninsula, joined to the rest of the coast by a low isthmus. I called the bay, formed by this peninsula, Repulse Bay; and a branch of it seemed to run a good way inland towards the S.S.W. Leaving this, we steered for the northern point of the peninsula, which we named Howe's Foreland, in honour of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... all the trade and treasure of Spanish America from California to the Straits of Magellan, was concentrated, the products of Peru and Chili being conveyed annually by sea to Panama, and from thence across the isthmus to Porto Bello, part of the way on mules, and part of the way down the Chagres river. The storehouses of Porto Bello, now a decayed and miserable town, retaining no shadow of former greatness, were filled with merchandise, and its streets thronged with opulent merchants ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... dozen Doric columns, belonging to a very old temple, are the only considerable relics of ancient Corinth. And as we had a long afternoon's work before us, we set off before twelve. We galloped at good speed across the Isthmus, about an hour's ride; Dhemetri, who understood the management of Greek horses, driving us before him like a flock of sheep. We paused a moment at the Isthmic sanctuary of Poseidon, passed through the village of Kalamaki, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... seaboard, taking to piracy when hard pressed; Egyptian merchants were accustomed to penetrate by easy stages into the interior. The accounts they gave of their journeys were not reassuring. The traveller had first to face the solitudes which confronted him before reaching the Isthmus, and then to avoid as best he might the attacks of the pillaging ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... army continued its march on El-Arish, where we arrived on the 17th of February. The fatigues experienced in the desert and the scarcity of water excited violent murmurs amongst the soldiers during their march across the isthmus. When any person on horseback passed them they studiously expressed their discontent. The advantage possessed by the horsemen provoked their sarcasms. I never heard the verses which they are said to have repeated, but they indulged in the most violent language against the Republic, the men ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Coelus. But in these histories every degree of relation has been founded upon idle surmises: and is uniformly to be set aside. The Cyclopian Deity was [552]Ouranus, and the Cyclopians were his priests and votaries: some of whom had divine honours paid to them, and were esteemed as Gods. Upon the Isthmus of Corinth was an antient temple; which seems to have been little more than a [Greek: taphos] or high altar, where offerings were made to the Cyclopian [553]Deities. People of this family settled upon the southern coast of Sicily at Camarina; which some have supposed to have been the Hupereia of ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... the Isthmus of Panama to shorten the distance, and save taking the passage round the Horn. Travellers left their ship at one side of the Isthmus, and took the train over to the other, where they went on board another ship, which would take them the rest of ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 15, February 18, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... the Government, and its fears of internal dissensions and civil war in all the great cities of the North. They needed blood and the prestige of a victory to rouse the enthusiasm of their followers, and cement the rising Confederacy. They wanted a new and powerful slave empire, extending to the Isthmus of Panama, and for this a direct issue must be made with the free States. In vain did a member of Congress, who afterward became a distinguished Union general, offer in Richmond to raise an army of twenty thousand men in the North to fight the abolitionists, if the South would consent to ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... of the tierra caliente around Vera Cruz, and such is he in all other parts of Mexico, from its northern limits to the Isthmus. ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... George MacDonald. And all the world over, when things do go wrong, the natural and instinctive desire of the human animal is—to find a scapegoat. When the great French nation in the lump embarks its capital in a hopeless scheme for cutting a canal through the Isthmus of Panama, and then finds out too late that Nature has imposed insuperable barriers to its completion on the projected scale—what does the great French nation do, in its collective wisdom, but turn round at once to rend the directors? It cries, "A Mazas!" just as in '71 ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... the seventeenth century it figures as the "Lacus Niger Major," an appellation which not inaptly describes its appearance under a high sun, when the sombre tone of its apparently smooth interior is in striking contrast to that of the isthmus on which the formation stands. It will repay observation under every phase, and though during the last thirty years no portion of the moon has been more diligently scrutinised than the floor; the neighbourhood includes a very great ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... Aspinwall was reached. At that time the streets of the town were eight or ten inches under water, and foot passengers passed from place to place on raised foot-walks. July is at the height of the wet season, on the Isthmus. At intervals the rain would pour down in streams, followed in not many minutes by a blazing, tropical summer's sun. These alternate changes, from rain to sunshine, were continuous in the afternoons. I wondered how any person could live many months in Aspinwall, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... where it fell away in sand-dunes to the estuary of the Urumea, had the whole flank of the fortress in view. Just now, at half-tide, it rose straight out of the water on the farther bank— a low, narrow-necked isthmus that at its seaward end climbed to a cone-shaped rock four hundred feet high, crowned by a small castle. This was the citadel. The town, through which alone it could be taken by force, lay under it, across the neck of the isthmus; and this again ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... to be re-crossed on the other arm of the bend, each carried his raft across the neck or isthmus, where a similar fording was made, that brought them once more on the path they were following. Thus every day—almost every hour—our travellers were astonished by some new feat of their hunter-guide, and some new purpose to which the noble ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... perhaps by cutting back, would belong entirely to the Negro branch of the Amazon. To the west of the Casiquiare there is a much shorter and more facile connexion between the Orinoco and Amazon basins, called the isthmus of Pimichin, which is reached by ascending the Terni branch of the Atabapo affluent of the Orinoco. Although the Terni is somewhat obstructed, it is believed that it could easily be made navigable for small craft. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... man named James, of Dijon. I may observe that on this occasion we had an opportunity of ascertaining that good Burgundy, well racked off, and in casks hermetically sealed, does not lose its quality on a sea voyage. Several cases of this Burgundy twice crossed the desert of the Isthmus of Suez on camels' backs. We brought some of it back with us to Frejus, and it was as good as when we departed. James went with ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... wheezed, "I'm subject to this; caught it crossin' the Isthmus in '49. As I was a-sayin', there's no country in the world that offers such inducements to the immygrunt as Californy. With her fertile soil, her unrivalled climit, her magnificent bay, and the rest of it, there is enough ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... this he lived to be a man of seventy. In 1850, drawn with the tide of adventurers surging to California, he took ship to Panama, crossed the isthmus, and at last came to the Golden Gate. He lived in California for seven years, added to his wealth, and went back for the second time to New Orleans. Again he made the long trip to the West, but this time he fared further and came on into ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... was of importance because it was a step in the plan for cooeperation with the British armies which were pushing their way north from the region of the Persian Gulf. It had the further important result of interrupting Turkish plans for an invasion of Egypt by way of the Isthmus of Suez, as Turkey was compelled to concentrate her power for the defense of ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson
... and their supplies transported by the Colorado. Instead of calling upon Captain Johnson and chartering his steamboat, the Colorado, Ives ordered his steamer constructed in Philadelphia, and shipped in sections via the Isthmus of Panama to San Francisco, and thence around Cape Lucas into the Gulf of California, to the mouth of the Colorado River. Yet he was able to report, doubtless with a clear conscience, that Johnson's company "was unable to spare a boat, except for a compensation ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... arm of the sea, reaching up so far into the land, and which tried to convert Nova Scotia into an island (as man proposes to make it, by channeling the isthmus), was known to early explorers as La Baie Franoise, its present cognomen being a corruption of ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... Government, would have only a limited influence on the industry as a whole. Our government now publishes a weekly paper in Panama, which takes no advertisements, and is furnished free to every government employee on the Isthmus. It is a model paper in many respects, but manifestly its example is not apt to be followed extensively before the dawn of the Cooeperative Commonwealth. It may be that the practice newspapers conducted by the schools of journalism connected with our great universities ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... extremely unlikely that all these instances of the occurrence of the emblem carry with them reference, such as that in my text, to the prize at the athletic festivals. For Peter and James, intense Jews as they were, had probably never seen, and possibly never heard of, the struggles at the Isthmus and at Olympus and elsewhere. The Book of the Revelation draws its metaphors almost exclusively from the circle of Jewish practices and things. So that we have to look in other directions than the arena ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... named Balboa, set out to explore the Isthmus of Panama.[5] One day he climbed to the top of a very high hill, and discovered that vast ocean—the greatest of all the oceans of the ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... word for word: "Whilst things were thus, Mnesiphilus, an Athenian, asked Themistocles, as he was going aboard his ship, what had been resolved on in council. And being answered, that it was decreed the ships should be brought back to Isthmus, and a battle fought at sea before Peloponnesus; he said, If then they remove the navy from Salamis, you will no longer be fighting for one country for they will return every one to his own city. Wherefore, if there be any way left, go and endeavor to break this resolution; and, if it be possible, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... says, "by way of the Isthmus of Panama—the route had just been opened—reached San Francisco in August, and spent five months in the midst of the rough, half-savage life of a new country. I lived almost entirely in the open air, sleeping on the ground with my saddle for a pillow, and sharing the hardships ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... inappropriately likened to an inverted cornucopia. Its greatest length from northwest to southeast is almost exactly two thousand miles, and its greatest width, which is at the twenty-sixth degree of north latitude, is seven hundred and fifty miles. The minimum width is at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, where it contracts to a hundred and fifty miles. The area of the entire republic is probably a little less than eight hundred thousand square miles. Trustworthy statistics relating to Mexico are not attainable. Even official reports ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... told us to drop our luggage there, and amuse ourselves until we heard further from him. This town of San Juan del Sur is entirely the creation of the Nicaragua Transit Company, and is the Pacific terminus of the Isthmus portage-road. It consisted of half a dozen board hotels, and a litter of native grass-thatched huts, and lay at the foot of a high, woody spur, which curves out into the sea and forms the southern rim of a beautiful little harbor, completed by another less ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... an easy slope to the isthmus, but was quite steep on either side, having, in fact, control of the isthmus, as well as commanding a full view of Boston and the surrounding country. Morton's Hill, at Moulton's Point, where the British landed, was but thirty-five feet above sea level, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... touching that but for a moment, death is no state, it is an act. It is not a condition, it is a transition. Men speak about life as 'a narrow neck of land, betwixt two unbounded seas': they had better speak about death as that. It is an isthmus, narrow and almost impalpable, on which, for one brief instant, the soul poises itself; whilst behind it there lies the inland lake of past being, and before it the shoreless ocean of future life, all lighted with the glory of God, and making music as it breaks even upon these dark, rough ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Balboa on the isthmus until the death of that valiant commander, when he united his fortunes with those of the governor, Pedrarias, and headed various expeditions along the Pacific coast and to the islands beyond, in quest of pearls and gold. He was occupied in this ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... the naval battle they conducted themselves thus and incurred the greatest part of the danger, and by their own valor gained freedom for themselves and the rest. Afterwards when the Peloponnesians were putting a wall across the Isthmus and were content with their own safety, supposing they were rid of the danger by sea, and intending to watch the rest of the Greeks falling into the power of the barbarians, (45) the Athenians were angry and advised them if they ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... 'because you landed 10,000 men, and occupied the isthmus which connects Kinburn with the main land. The garrison saw that they were invested, and had no hope of relief. They were not Quixotic enough, or heroic enough, to prolong a hopeless resistance. Scarcely any garrison ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Nombre de Dios and Cartagena, and, as the historian relates, got together "a pretty store of money," an evidence that his purpose was not wholly revenge. He marched across the Isthmus of Panama and obtained his first view of the Pacific Ocean. "Vehemently transported with desire to navigate that sea," he fell upon his knees, and "implored the Divine Assistance, that he might at some time or other ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... of the Suez Canal was begun. This canal extends across the Isthmus of Suez, and connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, opening a waterway between ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 38, July 29, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... of fevers, crossing the trail, or building the railroad, or digging insufficient ditches for De Lesseps. Some of her best went farther back than that. They were thick with the ghosts of old Spaniards and the crimson hands of Morgan's buccaneers. Really that tiny strip across the isthmus is crowded with souls snatched too quickly from torn and tortured bodies. If you are sensitive you feel they are ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... the north pole. To the system of the Mare Acidalium undoubtedly belong the temporary lake called Lacus Hyperboreus and the Lacus Niliacus. This last is ordinarily separated from the Mare Acidalium by means of an isthmus or regular dam, of which the continuity was only seen to be broken once for a short time in 1888. Other smaller dark spots are found here and there in the continental area which we may designate as lakes, but they are certainly not permanent lakes like ours, but ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... my object, and brought them back in triumph through the Red Sea, across the Isthmus of Suez, and so by way of the Mediterranean, the Bay of Biscay, the English Channel, Southampton Water, the South-Western railway, and Alice's new dark-blue barouche, safe and sound to Clere and the castle, where they all are at this present speaking, ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... better for him that the thing were settled. He will miss me less during the session, when he is in London with all his old friends about him. It would not take long, going by the Isthmus. I'll ride back at once, and see how he bears the notion. Say nothing to Mr. Dynevor till you hear from me; but I think he will consent. He will not endure that she should be left unprotected; her father perhaps dying, left to the mercy ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... forests, following the course of the river and the shores of a lake. So it went on until on the third evening from high land we saw the sea beneath us, a different sea from that which we had left, for it seemed that we had been crossing an isthmus, not so wide but that if any had the skill, a canal might be cut across it ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... reported that the British government has granted $100,000 per annum to the royal company of Atlantic steamers, for the establishment of a post route to the Pacific, across the Isthmus of Panama. ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... of companions, the additional letters of Bellomont, make the story live again, even though no new evidence appears that is perfectly conclusive as to the still-debated question of his degree of guilt. The wonderful buccaneering adventures of Bartholomew Sharp and his companions, 1680-1682, at the Isthmus of Panama and all along the west coast of South America, are newly illustrated by long anonymous narratives, artless but effective. And indeed, to speak more generally, it is hoped that there are few aspects of the pirate's trade ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... might be from the want of attention, or of information in the new colonists, the plants never succeeded under their management; so that, disgusted with the troublesome and unprofitable cultivation, they soon substituted indigo." Yet forests of cacao trees grow wild in Guiana, the Isthmus of Darien, Yucatan, Honduras, Guatemala, Chiapa, and Nicaragua; while in Cuba, St. Domingo, and Jamaica, it was once an ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... a larger craft and sailing down Kilbrannan Sound and so round the Mull of Kintyre, by the way he had gone with the galleys. But he now adopted a speedier way and a much safer one. The great peninsula of Kintyre, which at the north joins to Knapdale, forms at Tarbert a narrow isthmus of but a mile broad. Landing at the head of Tarbert Bay, Kenric bade Aasta carry the paddles and her basket of fish, and himself taking up the little boat in his two strong arms and raising it upon ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... Red Sea to Suez, returning to Australia, and thence to England. Since I commenced business in England, in 1859, I went in 1862 to St. Thomas' in the West Indies, thence to Aspinwall, across the Isthmus to Panama, thence to Acapulco in Mexico, on to San Francisco in California, and thence to Vancouver Island, returning by the same route as far as Aspinwall, whence I went to New York. In 1865 I went ...
— A start in life • C. F. Dowsett
... we left a little on our left-hand at Dunbritton, where it widens into an aestuary or frith, being augmented by the influx of the Leven. On this spot stands the castle formerly called Alcluyd, washed, by these two rivers on all sides, except a narrow isthmus, which at every spring-tide is overflowed. The whole is a great curiosity, from the quality and form of the rock, as well as from the nature of its situation — We now crossed the water of Leven, which, though nothing near so considerable as the Clyde, is much more transparent, pastoral, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... and nearest in situation to Owhyhee, is Mowee, which lies at the distance of eight leagues N.N.W. from the, former, and is one hundred and forty geographical miles in circumference. A low isthmus divides it into two circular peninsulas, of which that to the east is called Whamadooa, and is double the size of the western peninsula called Owhyrookoo. The mountains in both rise to an exceeding great height, having been seen by us at the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... nature; we have raised it high above the waters, and it has stood there, frowning hostility and effecting separation. In the course of time, however, the necessities of man, and the silent workings of nature, have conspired to break down this mighty structure, till there remains of it only a narrow isthmus, standing ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... the operation should be carried out without war. The only measures of a military nature to which the British Government consented were the establishment in Thessaly of outposts for the control of the crops, and the occupation of the Isthmus of Corinth, should King Constantine attempt to move his army out of the Peloponnesus: unless the King committed acts of hostility, no violence should be used. Having thus satisfied their conscience, the British Ministers abstained ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... Allies are being landed at three points—at Enos, at Suol, a promontory on the west of the Gallipoli Peninsula, and at the Bulair Isthmus. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... on the south part of the isthmus which joins Peloponnesus to the continent. From its situation between ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... a regular steam railroad for passengers and freight, was built across the narrow part of the Isthmus, as indicated in the map, in 1850 to 1855, and at that time negotiations were definitely entered into looking toward ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 10, March 10, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... a fossil horse, of the mastodon, possibly of an elephant, [4] and of a hollow-horned ruminant, discovered by MM. Lund and Clausen in the caves of Brazil, are highly interesting facts with respect to the geographical distribution of animals. At the present time, if we divide America, not by the Isthmus of Panama, but by the southern part of Mexico [5] in lat. 20 degs., where the great table-land presents an obstacle to the migration of species, by affecting the climate, and by forming, with the exception of some valleys and of a fringe of low land on the coast, a broad barrier; we ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... with the bungling manner in which he made this first attempt at piracy, we cannot say, but he soon gave his conscience a holiday, and undertook some very successful robbing enterprises. He received information from some natives, that a train of mules was coming across the Isthmus of Panama loaded with gold and silver bullion, and guarded only by their drivers; for the merchants who owned all this treasure had no idea that there was any one in that part of the world who would commit a robbery upon them. But Drake and his men soon ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... At a point where the Seine bends sharply and a small stream cuts through the line of limestone cliffs on its right bank to join it, a promontory of rock three hundred feet above the water holds the angle, cut off from the land behind it except for a narrow isthmus, and so furnished the feudal castle-builder with all the conditions which he required. The land itself belonged to the Archbishop of Rouen, but Richard, to whom the building of a fortress at the place was a vital necessity, ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... in readiness, the expedition sailed in December, 1670, the ultimate destination of which was to pay the promised visit to the governor of Panama—the richest city of Spanish America. Preliminary, however, to their landing upon the isthmus, a detachment of the fleet was sent against a fortress at the mouth of the Chagu—which river it was necessary to ascend before disembarking for Panama. This fortress was built upon a steep rock, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... will doubtless continue to excite a very general interest throughout the country. In its political, its commercial, and its military bearings it has varied, great, and increasing claims to consideration. The heavy expense, the great delay, and, at times, fatality attending travel by either of the Isthmus routes have demonstrated the advantage which would result from interterritorial communication by such safe and rapid means as a ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... the next town of consequence on the Lake. It is situated at the mouth of the Miami River; and as a railroad has already been commenced across the isthmus, so as to avoid going round the whole peninsula of Michigan, it is fast rising into importance. Three years ago the land was purchased at a dollar and a-half per acre; now, it is selling for building lots at one hundred dollars per foot. They handed ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... circuit of the temples, having seated himself in that of Vesta, when he attempted to rise, the skirt of his robe stuck fast; and he was instantly seized with such a dimness in his eyes, that he could not see a yard before him. In Achaia, he attempted to make a cut through the Isthmus;[154] and, having made a speech encouraging his pretorians to set about the work, on a signal given by sound of trumpet, he first broke ground with a spade, and carried off a basketful of earth upon his shoulders. He made preparations for an ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... earnest, they deceived him and sailed away. He thereupon retired again from the sea, and established his army in the peninsula of Rhegium; there Crassus came upon him, and considering the nature of the place, which of itself suggested the undertaking, he set to work to build a wall across the isthmus; thus keeping his soldiers at once from idleness, and his foes from forage. This great and difficult work he perfected in a space of time short beyond all expectation, making a ditch from one sea to the other, over the neck of land, three hundred furlongs ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Department to Panama to "go, look, see," and straighten out a certain conflict of authority among the officials of the canal zone. While I was there the yellow-fever broke out, and every self-respecting power clapped a quarantine on the Isthmus, with the result that when I tried to return to New York no steamer would take me to any place to which any white man would care to go. But I knew that at Valencia there was a direct line to New York, so I took a ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... them," answered the doctor. "See here, I'll give you the route of this mahogany-tree: it was carried to the Pacific Ocean by some river of the Isthmus of Panama or of Guatemala; thence the current carried it along the coast of America as far as Behring Strait, and so it was forced into the polar waters; it is neither so old nor so completely water-logged that we cannot set its departure at some recent date; it escaped all the obstacles of the ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... "Old Adams" in calling upon me was this. I had purchased one-half interest in his California menagerie from a man who had come by way of the Isthmus from California, and who claimed to own an equal interest with Adams in the show. Adams declared that the man had only advanced him some money, and did not possess the right to sell half of the concern. However, the man held a bill of sale for one-half of the "California ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... the insurrection had spread to the narrow territory of Megaris, situated to the north of the isthmus. The Albanian population of this country, amounting to about ten thousand, and employed by the Porte to guard the defiles of the entrance into Peloponnesus, raised the standard of revolt, and marched to invest the Acrocorinthus. In the Messenian territory, the Bishop of ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... a copy, as an emanation of him. Moderation is doubtless an establishment of greatness; but there is a steadiness of temper which is likewise requisite in a minister of state; so equal a mixture of both virtues, that he may stand like an isthmus betwixt the two encroaching seas of arbitrary power, and lawless anarchy. The undertaking would be difficult to any but an extraordinary genius, to stand at the line, and to divide the limits; to pay what is due to the great representative of the nation, and neither to enhance, ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... railway station, whence the line runs across the isthmus, connecting Auckland with Onehunga on the Manukau Harbour, where the West Coast traffic is carried on, and thus placing Auckland, like Corinth, upon two seas. The railway also extends southwards to the Waikato.[1] Onehunga is only some half-dozen miles ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... destruction of the cause. The event, however, was ordered otherwise. Where the greatest effort was made, it was met and defeated. Entering the Morea with an army which seemed capable of bearing down all resistance, the Turks were nevertheless defeated and driven back, and pursued beyond the isthmus, within which, as far as it appears, from that time to the present, they have not been able to ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... any where. Some thought them perfect, to their tastes; While others hinted that the waists (That in particular of the he thing) Left far too ample room for breathing: Whereas, to meet these critics' wishes, The isthmus there should be so small, That Exquisites, at last, like fishes, Must manage not to breathe at all. The female (these same critics said), Tho' orthodox from toe to chin, Yet lacked that spacious width of head To hat of toadstool much akin— That build of ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... be admired and loved, as well as respected, in the social circle. But at present she is at a sad disadvantage. I noticed her a few minutes ago at the top of the iron staircase, and said to myself that she would have just time enough to come down, for there was an isthmus of sand some twenty feet wide as yet to be obliterated by the crawling tide. A quickly-tripping foot would have accomplished it, but the fair-fat-and-forty lady occupied one whole minute in coming down. Now that she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... work Eurystheus was pleased, and after he had regarded the animal for a time with pleasure, set it free. No longer under Hercules' management, the ox became wild again, wandered through all Laconia and Arcadia, crossed over the isthmus to Marathon in Attica and devastated the country there as formerly on the island of Crete. Later it was given to the hero Theseus to become ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... Magicienne and the Thorn, and some transports. This mole, or harbour, is formed by the high land of the island on the right hand going in, and on the left by a peninsula, joined by a narrow sandy isthmus to the island at the head of the mole. It is strongly fortified. The harbour is a fine one, and would contain the whole British fleet. The town has a common appearance and has nothing remarkable in it. We remained here three weeks, at ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... the Earl rowed up all the fjords, inwards along one shore and outwards along the other faring night and day, and he sent scouts on to the upper way across the isthmus,Sec. & south in the Fjords, & likewise north where Eirik was ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... nations of the Peloponnese closed the isthmus of Corinth by a wall. Outside the isthmus, the Beeotians, Phocidians, Locrians, Megarians, and AEtolians formed a coalition under the leadership of the Athenians; and, as their ancestors had done scarcely two hundred years before against Xerxes and the Persians, they advanced ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... had attained to its present elevation over the sea. Further, however, we know from the history of Diodorus the Sicilian, that at a period earlier by at least two hundred years, St. Michael's Mount, in Cornwall, was connected with the mainland at low water, just as it is now, by a flat isthmus, across which, upon the falling of the tide, the ancient Cornish miners used to carry over their tin in carts. Had the relative levels of sea and land been those of the old coast-line at the time, St. Michael's Mount, instead of being accessible at low ebb would have been separated ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... beautiful and rich bend of the Tarra, forming a spacious peninsula. Joshua erected a fence across the isthmus, leaving the rest of his land open to the trespass of cattle, which were, therefore, liable to be driven away. But he did not drive them away; he impounded them within his bend, and at his leisure selected the fattest for slaughter, thus living literally ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... over it it was being paved, or macadamized, and a steam-roller was doing in a few days what the moccasined or sandalled feet of the first travellers there would not have accomplished in a thousand thousand years. I shall speak later of what has grown upon this narrow isthmus (now crossed not merely by trail and highway, but by canal as well), but I now must hasten on where the impatient priest and his sturdy, practical companion are leading, ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... the message from Arlington, and it was not until his message came by cable that those at Arlington knew that the words they had spoken had traveled five thousand miles. Other receiving sets had been located at San Diego and at Darien on the Isthmus of Panama, and at these points also the words were ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
... DEAR SQUIB:—I imagine your pathetic inquiry as to my whereabouts—pathetic, not to say hypothetic—for I am now where I cannot hear the dulcet strains of your voice. I am on board ship. I am half seas over. I am bound for California by way of the Isthmus. I am going for the gold, my boy, the gold. In the mean time I am lying around loose on the deck of this magnificent vessel, the Mercy G. Tarbox, of Nantucket, bred by Noah's Ark out of Pilot-boat, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... seen that the works could be naturally divided into two parts, connected by the isthmus. In relation to the wall across the isthmus it has been thought to have been the means of defending one part of the work, should an enemy gain entrance to the other. It has also been supposed that at first the fort was only built to the cross wall on the isthmus, ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... supplies of water into the city by an aqueduct, for cutting a new passage for the Tiber from Rome to the sea, and making an enormous artificial harbor at its mouth. He was going to make a road along the Apennines, and cut a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth, and construct other vast works, which were to make Rome the center of the commerce of the world. In a word, his head was filled with the grandest schemes, and he was gathering around him all the means and resources necessary for the ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... had a pet scheme during the war for establishing a colony of contrabands at the Chiriqui Lagoon, with a new transit route across the Isthmus to the harbor of Golfito, on the Pacific. The first company of emigrants, composed of freeborn negroes and liberated slaves, was organized, under President Lincoln's personal supervision, by Senator Pomeroy, of Kansas, and would have started, but the diplomatic representative ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... the governor died in the middle of his term and directions were given to his quaestor and to his assessor (whom, as I have said,[16] we call legatus) that the latter should administer the government as far as the isthmus, and the former the rest of it. Herod [17] of Palestine, who was accused by his brothers of some wrongdoing, was banished beyond the Alps and his portion of the Palestinian domain reverted to the State. [Augustus suffered from old age and infirmity, so ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... daily thoroughfare such as the Isthmus, must have been far more suitable for the collecting of historical evidence than Skillus, where the crowd came by only once in four years. And then his grown-up sons could find something more serious to do than hunting deer, boars, and hares in the glades of Elis. He may have known, too, that his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... the most remarkable geographical positions on the earth. Constantinople on the Bosphorus, the Straits of Gibraltar, Singapore on the Strait of Malacca, and the Isthmus of Panama, are the only ones which seem to present a parallel. The two former have been for ages renowned as the most important in the commercial world. Singapore has rapidly become the key and centre of Asiatic navigation, at which may be found the shipping and people of all commercial ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... house, the upper section only being exposed through the roof. The Shack was in a position too sheltered for my purpose, so I built a place for the anemo-biagraph behind a low rock well out on the isthmus. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... commerce has led to an urgent demand for shortening the great sea voyage around Cape Horn by constructing ship canals or railways across the isthmus which unites the continents. Various plans to this end have been suggested and will need consideration, but none of them has been sufficiently matured to warrant the United States in extending pecuniary aid. The subject, however, is one which will immediately engage ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. VIII.: James A. Garfield • James D. Richardson
... to testify that a Hindu king was reigning in Champa (Annam) about 150 A.D. These dates are not so precise as one could wish, but if there was a Hindu kingdom in that distant region in the second century it was probably preceded by settlements in nearer halting places, such as the Isthmus of Kra[5] or Java, at a considerably anterior date, although the inscriptions discovered there are not earlier than the fifth ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... some forty or fifty miles off, rose the lofty peaks of the Cordilleras, covered with eternal snows; or I should say, perhaps, the southern end of that mighty chain which rises abruptly from the Isthmus of Panama, and extends the ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... period till his coming was one of preparation, and it all converged on the epoch of the forerunner. The eagerness to flock into the Kingdom which characterised his time would have been impossible in the earlier days. He closes that order of things, standing, as it were, on the isthmus between prophecy and fulfilment, belonging properly to neither, but having affinities with both, and being the transition from the one to the other. Then our Lord closes His words concerning John with the distinct statement, which He expects His hearers to have difficulty in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... march "towards the Bridle Drift at the junction of the Doornkop Spruit and the Tugela, and to cross at that point." Here was yet another ambiguity. As there were two "Iron Bridges" so also were there two "Bridle Drifts," one on each side of the isthmus of the river loop, and yet another at the head of it. The West Drift was unfordable on the morning of December 15, and a hasty sketch which had probably been filled in from hearsay evidence and which was Hart's only map, ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... defending themselves as they could; but the sight of their women flying in shrieking crowds, pursued by the Roman horse, was too much for them, and the whole host were soon rushing in despairing wreck down the narrowing isthmus between the Meuse and the Rhine. They came to the junction at last, and then they could go no further. Multitudes were slaughtered; multitudes threw themselves into the water and were drowned. Caesar, who was not given to exaggeration, says that their original number was 430,000. The only ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... we ride by the Shubenacadie lakes, a chain—a bracelet—binding the province from the Basin of Minas to the seaboard. The eye never tires of this lovely feature of Acadia. Lake above lake—the division, the isthmus between, not wider than the breadth of your India shawl, my lady! I must declare that, all in all, the scenery of the province is surpassingly beautiful. As you ride by these sparkling waters, through the flowery, bowery, woods, you feel as if you like to pitch tent ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... of the days when England and Spain struggled for the supremacy of the sea, and England carried off the palm. The heroes sail as lads with Drake in the expedition in which the Pacific Ocean was first seen by an Englishman from a tree-top on the Isthmus of Panama, and in his great voyage of circumnavigation. The historical portion of the story is absolutely to be relied upon, but this, although very useful to lads, will perhaps be less attractive than the great variety of exciting adventure through which the young adventurers ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... Castro, who was at Panama when Bachicao arrived, fled immediately across the isthmus to Nombre de Dios on the Atlantic, where he embarked accompanied by Diego Alvarez de Cueto and Jerom Zurbano. Doctor Texada and Francisco Maldonado escaped likewise to the same port, where they all ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... of three coastal canals; including the Corinth Canal (6 km) which crosses the Isthmus of Corinth connecting the Gulf of Corinth with the Saronic Gulf and shortens the sea voyage from the Adriatic to Peiraiefs (Piraeus) by 325 km; and three ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... eloquent efforts.—The treaty between Great Britain and the United States, negotiated at Washington, has been ratified by the Senate. It is highly honorable to both countries, and advantageous to the interests of commerce throughout the world. The neutrality of the Isthmus, in case of war, is mutually guaranteed.—The war between Faustin and the Dominicans is still continued: a vessel fitted out at New York, and laden with cannon and munitions of war, for the emperor, has been seized by the U. S. authorities, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... all-daring love according to necessary laws and so framed man. And, fearing to pollute the divine element, they gave the mortal soul a separate habitation in the breast, parted off from the head by a narrow isthmus. And as in a house the women's apartments are divided from the men's, the cavity of the thorax was divided into two parts, a higher and a lower. The higher of the two, which is the seat of courage and anger, lies nearer to the head, between the midriff and the neck, and assists ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... half-century was that which forms an isthmus rather than a bridge between the Middle Ages and the times termed Modern. Exit the Last of the Barons—enter the printing-press. Exit Boabdil el Chico—enter Columbus and Da Gama. The plot thickened as the cinquecenti hove in view. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... on both sides to coasting navigation. But the most important of all Grecian gulfs are the Corinthian and Saronic, washing the northern and north-eastern shores of Peloponnesus, and separated by the narrow barrier of the Isthmus of Corinth. The former, especially, lays open AEtolia, Phokis, and Boeotia, as the whole northern coast of Peloponnesus, to water approach.... It will thus appear that there was no part of Greece proper which could be considered ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... thus run away, and yet I knew I owed an apology for Harold's finding me and the old servants in possession, so I began to say that my old friend had sent the carriage for me.—I had been taken by surprise, their journey (one of the first across the Isthmus) had been so much quicker than I had expected, or I should have left the ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lay the isthmus, known as the Tana, some three miles in length, communicating with the mainland by a tongue of land ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... which it was intended at first to call New Ireland, but which was eventually called New Brunswick, was to include all that part of Nova Scotia north of a line running across the isthmus from the mouth of the Missiquash river to its source, and thence across to the nearest part of Baie Verte. This boundary was another triumph for the Loyalists, as it placed in New Brunswick Fort Cumberland and the greater part of Cumberland county. The government of the province ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... had cushions. Didn't the rowers who were marched across the Isthmus to man the ships which were to surprise the Piraeus, carry their ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... place. We could cross the isthmus to Chagres; but before going to England, I should like to call at La Guayra, and find out whether my friend Carmen ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... ashamed to say that he did not suppose that geography had anything to do with the river at the Boy's Town, for it was not down on the map, like Behring Straits and the Isthmus of Suez. But he saw that Jim Leonard really knew something. He did not see the sense of carrying the raft two miles through the woods when you could get plenty of drift-wood on the river shore to make a raft of. But he did not like to say it for fear Jim Leonard would think he was afraid to be ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells
... H., smiling; 'for I would undertake to cut through the Isthmus, and I cannot engage that I shall enter this ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... of St. Giles, the column raised to Lord Hill, and the Abbey Church and buildings. On the other is the town, with its spires and towers and red-stone castle rising from an eminence above the river. The station occupies a narrow isthmus of the latter within the precincts of the castle, and is a handsome structure, of the Gothic style of architecture. The castle was built by the first Earl of Shrewsbury, who obtained so many favours of ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... three ships gone to two, gone ultimately to one—is henceforth what Spanish War there officially is. Anson could not meet those Vernon-Wentworth gentlemen "from the other side of the Isthmus of Darien," the gentlemen, with their Enterprise, being already bankrupt and away. Anson, with three inconsiderable ships, which rotted gradually into one, could not himself settle the Spanish War: but he did, on his own score, a series of things, ending in beautiful finis of the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... was confidently asserted that no steamship would ever succeed in crossing the Atlantic Ocean, and I can remember when it was learnedly demonstrated that it would be quite impossible to construct a canal across the Isthmus of Suez! How small the prophets must have felt when the ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... was ordered to join the sloop-of-war Cyane, Captain Robb. That ship was one of the home squadron, and in November, 1856, sailed for Aspinwall, to give protection to our citizens, mails, and freight, in the transit across the Isthmus of Panama to California, back and forth. At that period safe and rapid transit in that region of riots and revolution was much more important than now,—the Pacific Railroad existing only in the brains of a few sagacious men,—and ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... was discovered in California he started a line on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus of Darien and secured from the government of Nicaragua the privilege of crossing the Isthmus for a transportation system through its territory, and then established a line of steamers on the Pacific to San Francisco. In a short time ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... to effect their return to Peloponnesus. Hyllus, the eldest of them, inquired of the oracle at Delphi respecting their return; he was told to return by the narrow passage and in the third harvest. Accordingly, in the third year from that time Hyllus led an army to the Isthmus of Corinth; but there he was encountered by an army of Achaians and Arcadians, and fell in single combat with Echemus, king of Tegea. Upon this defeat the Heracleidae retired to northern Greece; there, after much wandering, they finally took ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Themiscyra, on the banks of Thermodon, where lies the rugged Salmydessian sea-gorge, a host by mariners hated, a step-dame to ships; and they will conduct thee on thy way, and that right willingly. Thou shalt come too to the Cimmerian isthmus, hard by the very portals of a lake, with narrow passage, which thou undauntedly must leave, and cross the Maeotic frith; and there shall exist for evermore among mortals a famous legend concerning thy passage, and after thy name it shall be ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... abilities, and of the abilities of each other. The General spoke Italian, and Dr. Johnson English, and understood one another very well, with a little aid of interpretation from me, in which I compared myself to an isthmus which joins two great continents. Upon Johnson's approach, the General said, 'From what I have read of your works, Sir, and from what Mr. Boswell has told me of you, I have long held you in great veneration.' The General talked of languages being formed on the particular ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... a speckled native, who confidentially gives me to understand that he is the only strictly honest person in Aspinwall. The rest, he says, are niggers—which the colored people of the Isthmus regard as about as scathing a thing as they can ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... along a kind of isthmus, at the peninsular extremity of which the tower was situated, with that exclusive attention to strength and security, in preference to every circumstances of convenience, which dictated to the Scottish barons the choice of their ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... clear of the land, the crews of the two frigates were employed in making them look as much like French frigates as possible, both as to rigging and hulls. The Philippines, belonging to Spain, consist of a number of islands, the largest of which is Luzon, and is divided into two parts joined by an isthmus about ten miles wide. The capital, Manilla, where the cheroots are made, is situated on a bay of that name. It is a large place, consisting of several suburbs or towns surrounding the city proper, which is built on the banks of the ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... be made in three ways. One was by sailing-vessels around Cape Horn. This route took from five to seven months. Another way was to sail from some Eastern port to the Isthmus of Panama, and crossing this, to take ship to San Francisco. The third route was overland, from what is now St. Joseph, Missouri, and required three or four months. This could not be taken until spring, and some who were unwilling to wait started at once ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... establishment, where they never expected to see us again. Some Indians who had followed us in a canoe, up to the moment when we undertook the passage across the evening before, had followed the southern shore, and making the portage of the isthmus of Tongue Point, had happily arrived at Astoria. These natives, not doubting that we were lost, so reported us to Mr. M'Dougal; accordingly that gentleman was equally overjoyed and astonished at beholding us safely landed, which procured, not only for us, but ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... however, not the first occasion on which the sea had made inroads into the coast lands. Before the works of destruction commenced a narrow isthmus connected Great Britain with the Continent. The North Sea was then—comparatively speaking—calm; vast chains of sandy downs ran parallel to the coast, and stretched from this isthmus to the coast of Jutland; they were of considerable height, those on ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... to the song and chariot-fight, Where all the tribes of Greece unite On Corinth's isthmus joyously, The god-loved Ibycus drew nigh. On him Apollo had bestowed The gift of song and strains inspired; So, with light staff, he took his road From ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... interoceanic canal is by no means a modern one, as travelers and navigators observed that there was a great depression among the hills of the Isthmus of Panama. As Professor T.E. Nurse, of the U.S.N., says ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... ordinarily about two months after its departure from Cadiz. On its arrival, the general forwarded the news to Porto Bello, together with the packets destined for the viceroy at Lima. From Porto Bello a courier hastened across the isthmus to the President of Panama, who spread the advice amongst the merchants in his jurisdiction, and, at the same time, sent a dispatch boat to Payta, in Peru. The general of the galleons, meanwhile, was also sending ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... taken, and Hongi left naught in their villages but bones, with such flesh on them "as even his dogs had not required." He invaded the Waikato and penetrated to a famous pa—a triple stockade at Mataki-taki (Look-out). To get there he dragged his war-canoes overland across the Auckland isthmus, straightened winding creeks for their passage, and, when the Waikatos felled large trees across one channel, patiently spent two months in cutting through the trunks. At length the Look-out fortress was stormed with ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... from the isthmus or city of that name, or the Red Sea; more properly from the former, as it makes its passage through it," Mr. Woolridge began. "Our old friend, Ramses II., of whom we have heard so much in the last four weeks, is said to have been the first to dig out ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... that the cutting through the Isthmus of Panama, which the world has so often wished, and supposed practicable, has at times been thought of by the government of Spain, and that they once proceeded so far, as to have a survey and examination made of the ground; but that the result was, either ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... basket, Mary, if you like it. It came from Panama, or perhaps it was bought at Aspinwall by John's Uncle, many years ago, when he came home on a visit from California, by way of the Isthmus, to visit old friends and relatives. John's Mother always kept it standing on the floor in one corner of the room ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... feasts of nurses, feasts of youth, of women, of trades. Then there were the great national festivals, celebrated every four years at Olympia and Delphi, and every three and five years at Nemea and the isthmus of Corinth. The Panathenaeic festival at Athens was held every five years in honor of Athene, with magnificent processions, cavalcades of horsemen, gymnastic games, military dances, recitations of the Homeric poems, and competition in music. On the frieze of the Parthenon was represented ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke |
