"Impassable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to recount the miseries of the five miles' walk that we had to make before arriving at Port Neuf, over ground that was literally next to impassable. About nine o'clock we reached the house, and remained there for the rest of the day. Here, for three days, we were hospitably entertained by the Canadian family inhabiting the place; during this time it rained and thawed so heavily that ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... are bare, still pour forth a considerable stream to the ocean. These fords are continually changing by reason of the shifting of the sands, so that one day's path may on the morrow prove a dangerous and impassable quicksand. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... journalists "who exploit the public misery," bellicose intellectuals, the soldiers unite in showing a contempt which is free from violence but knows no bounds. To them has come "the revelation of the great reality": a difference between human beings, a difference far profounder and with far more impassable barriers than those of race: the sharp, glaring, and inalterable distinction, in the population of every country, between those who profit and those who suffer, those who have been compelled to sacrifice everything, those who give to the uttermost of their ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... temper with himself as well as with his "principal," and he went to shut himself in his rooms with a half-formed resolve to throw up the "Pioneer" and Mr. Brooke together. Why should he stay? If the impassable gulf between himself and Dorothea were ever to be filled up, it must rather be by his going away and getting into a thoroughly different position than by staying here and slipping into deserved contempt as an understrapper of Brooke's. Then came the young dream of wonders that he might do—in ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... were occupied in traversing this mountainous country. The rain and snow falling almost continuously, made the roads in places impassable. The Regiment all got together at Lexington, about the ...
— History of the Seventh Ohio Volunteer Cavalry • R. C. Rankin
... 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 ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... had come to a dead stop in consequence of a fit of sleepiness and crossness on the part of Brian—Agatha roamed about the old castle by herself; creeping into all the queer nooks with a childish pleasure, mounting impassable walls so as to find the highest point of view. She always had a great delight in climbing, and in feeling herself at the top ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... a Russian steppe has tumuli and gold ornaments; also many a scene that looks desert and rock-bound from the distance, will unfold itself, when visited, into rare valleys. Nay, in any case, would Criticism erect not only finger-posts and turnpikes, but spiked gates and impassable barriers, for the mind of man? It is written, 'Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.' Surely the plain rule is, Let each considerate person have his way, and see what it will lead to. For not this man and that man, but all men make up mankind, and their united tasks the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... the Dale, and up anigh to the jaws of the pass whereby the Folk had first come into Silver- dale, and we had those with us who knew every cranny of that way, while to strangers who knew it not it was utterly impassable; night was coming on also, and even those murder-carles were weary with slaying; and, moreover, on this last day, when they saw that they had won all, they were fighting to keep, and not to slay, and a few stubborn carles and queens, of what use ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... up the mountain of Santa Cruz was so dangerous and impassable, that I undertook to repair it; accordingly, I agreed with a Shilluh to make it safe and convenient for transporting goods for shipment; and such was the eager desire of the people for the establishment of the port, that hundreds brought stones and assisted ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... can make swords best, others pitchers, so, on the larger survey, there will be found those who can use those swords, or, again, think, teach, pray, or lead an army, a whole body of swordsmen, best, thus defining within impassable barriers three essential species of citizenship—the productive class, the military order, the governing class thirdly, ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... little connected line among the many crevasses; we saw that we could go a long way, but we also saw that the glacier forbade us to use it in its full extent. Between the first and second terraces the ice was evidently impassable. But we could see that there was an unbroken ledge up on the side of the mountain; Don Pedro would help us out. On the north along the Nansen Mountain there was nothing but chaos, perfectly impossible to get through. We put ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... Peake. The creek being still impassable, I remained here another day. Yesterday the horse that was carrying my instruments broke away from the man who was leading him, burst the girths, and threw the saddlebags on the ground. The instruments were very much injured, in fact very nearly ruined; the sextant being ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... in terrible anxiety. The firing had ceased, and yet neither Ayrton nor Pencroft had reappeared. Was the islet invaded? Ought they not to fly to the help of Ayrton and Pencroft? But how? The tide being high at that time, rendered the channel impassable. The boat was not there! We may imagine the horrible anxiety which took possession of Harding ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... island that extend their long slopes of moor to the west. The vast Atlantic spreads out before us, blackened by tempest, a solitary waste, unenlivened by a single sail, and fenced off from the land by an impassable line of breakers. Even from the elevation where I now write—for my little cottage stands high on the hill-side—I can hear the measured boom of the waves, swelling like the roar of distant artillery, above the melancholy moanings of the wind among the nearer crags, and the ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... quenchless fires Which in one moment can enwrap their stronghold In one red ring of ruin. My counsel is, That ere the hour of midnight comes we place Around the palace walls on every side Such store of fuel and oils and cunning drugs As at one sign may leap a wall of fire Impassable, and burn these hateful traitors Like hornets in ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... were in such danger, it may easily be believed that no shopkeeper's till or stock could be safe. From Bow to Hyde Park, from Thames Street to Bloomsbury, there was no parish in which some quiet dwelling had not been sacked by burglars. [327] Meanwhile the great roads were made almost impassable by freebooters who formed themselves into troops larger than had before been known. There was a sworn fraternity of twenty footpads which met at an alehouse in Southwark. [328] But the most formidable band of plunderers consisted of two and twenty horsemen. [329] It should seem that, at this time, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... being gradually loosened by it; next the beautiful hedges of elder and thorn, which embraced, as though within two green and flowery arms, the house of which we have spoken; and then, in the spaces between those houses, forming the groundwork of the picture, and appearing an almost impassable barrier, a line of thick trees, the advanced sentinels of the vast forest which extends in front of Fontainebleau. It was therefore easy, provided one secured an apartment at the angle of the building, to obtain, by the main street from Paris, a view of, as well as to hear, the passers-by and ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... realization of her hazardous undertaking by a sudden roar of water, and the abrupt termination of the ridge in a deep gorge. Grasping a tree she leaned over to look down. It was fully an hundred feet deep, with impassable walls, green-stained and damp, at the bottom of which a brawling, brown brook rushed on its way. Fully twenty feet wide, it presented an insurmountable barrier to further ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... bearing a dish which he set in the middle of the table, and he then modestly resumed his seat next to Andrea, whom he served first. As soon as he had tasted the mess, the Count felt that an impassable gulf divided the second mouthful from the first. He was much embarrassed, and very anxious not to annoy the cook, who was watching him narrowly. Though a French restaurateur may care little about seeing a dish scorned if he is sure of being paid for it, ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... the slope, and seemed to be making deductions. The valley was level now, and there were nothing but little breaks in the rim of the wash. Link drove mile after mile, looking for a place to cross, and there was none. Finally progress to the south was obstructed by impassable gullies where the wash plunged into the head of a canyon. It was necessary to back the car a distance before there was room to turn. Madeline looked at the imperturbable driver. His face revealed no more than the same old hard, immutable character. ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... waterways that intersected each other over the whole surface of the country. In these days the journey between Bagdad and Bassorah, a distance of some three hundred miles, involves a long detour to the east along the foot of the mountains, in order to avoid impassable marshes and bands of wandering Arabs devoted to murder and pillage. The flat country is infested with mounted brigands who strip unprotected travellers, but in ancient times it swarmed with traffic, every road ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... out of these materials an army was formed such as no Roman general had hitherto led. It performed extraordinary marches, carried its water-supplies with it in skins, and followed the enemy across sandy deserts hitherto found impassable. In less than two years the war was over. The Moors to whom Jugurtha had fled surrendered him to Sylla, and he was brought in chains to Rome, where he finished ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... ocean impassable to mankind, and the worlds that are beyond it are governed by the same commands of their ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... were low and ill shaped. These when removed by fires or other causes, are generally replaced with handsome brick buildings, which is making a great improvement in the appearance of the city. The streets, likewise, which were formerly nearly impassable from rocks, hills and chasms, are rapidly improving; hollows have been filled up, and rocks cut away; so that although the hills in some parts are still steep, yet carriages drive through most part of the city with the ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... entered into the minds of the majority of them. It was likely that ere long they might be called upon to stand a siege, but, acquainted as they were with the strength of the place—its deep and seemingly impassable moat, its massive walls, and protecting towers and bastions—it had seemed to them that Rhodes was capable of withstanding all assaults, however numerous the foe, however oft repeated the invasion. The bailiff was, as all knew, ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... quivering as if it were built of air and shaken by a wind. The river, which flowed quite near me, began to take a roaring and ominous tone, and I grew anxious lest the ford we meant to attempt three or four miles below should have become impassable by the time we reached it. To have passed through the village would have betrayed the fact that we were going in an opposite direction to the one proposed, and might have excited suspicion and immediate inquiry and pursuit. While the river growled in a more and more menacing tone beside me, ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... revived without restriction in one section, while fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surrendered at all by the other. Physically speaking, we can not separate. We can not remove our respective sections from each other nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country can not do this. They can not but remain face to face, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • 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, ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... brush, threading the paths with the ease of woodsmen. It was necessary to keep to the high inland ridges for the simple reason that the pole trail had by now become impassable. Wallace Carpenter, attempting to follow them, ran, stumbled, and fell through brush that continually whipped his face and garments, continually tripped his feet. All he could obtain was a vanishing glimpse of his companions' backs. Thorpe and ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... histories of American literature. It is one of the penalties of Protestantism that the audiences, after a while, outgrow the preacher. The development of the historic sense, of criticism, of science, makes an impassable gulf between Jonathan Edwards and the American churches of the twentieth century. A sense of profound changes in theology has left our contemporaries indifferent to the literature in which the old theology ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... a felon, as yet undetected. Between him and his kind there stood but a thought,—a veil air-spun, but impassable, as the veil of ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in the world to go to astray, but always difficult to return, Martin Green was astray, but how was he to get into the right path again? A barrier that seemed impassable was now lying across the way over which he had passed, a little while before, with lightest footsteps. Alone and unaided, he could not safely get back. The evil spirits that lure a man from virtue never counsel aright when to seek to return. They magnify the perils that beset the road by which ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... to us. There lay, to the westward, a long stretch of naked yellow mountains, basking in the hot glare of the sun, and through the centre, deep down in the heart of the arid landscape, a winding line of living green showed the course of the Barrada. We followed the river, until the path reached an impassable gorge, which occasioned a detour of two or three hours. We then descended to the bed of the dell, where the vegetation, owing to the radiated heat from the mountains and the fertilizing stimulus of the water ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... on such a walk the path by the river would be impassable by reason of the shadow of a tall, dark man that would fall across it, and she would not be able to sit and watch the dancers because in any moment of stillness she would be revisited by thoughts of the madness that had made her say those dreadful things, at ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... resource of emigrating—"For indeed," as Stein remarked, "where could they go, and how could they get away?" No doubt they did not even desire to get away. The world (which is circumscribed by lofty impassable mountains) has been given into the hand of the high-born, and this Rajah they knew: he was of their own royal house. I had the pleasure of meeting the gentleman later on. He was a dirty, little, used-up old man with evil eyes and a weak ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... complete.... The trail of war is visible throughout the valley in burnt-up gin-houses, ruined bridges, mills, and factories... and in large tracts of once cultivated land stripped of every vestige of fencing. The roads, long neglected, are in disorder, and having in many places become impassable, new tracks have been made through the woods and fields ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... two miles we entered upon a level plain three miles wide, which, with the exception of a patch here and there, was entirely covered with snow. The uncovered parts of this plain were so wet as to be almost impassable for the cart; and we were now as desirous of keeping on the snow as, at the beginning of our journey from Winter Harbour, we had been anxious to ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... universal face was clothed with living green. And every part was fertile as well as beautiful. It was no where deformed by rough or ragged rocks: it did not shock the view with horrid precipices, huge chasms, or dreary caverns: with deep, impassable morasses, or deserts of barren sands. We have not any authority to say, with some learned and ingenious authors, that there were no mountains on the original earth, no unevennesses on its surface, yet it is highly probable that they rose and fell, ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... will support a few hundred cattle, by cutting all its meadows for winter feeding. The grazing of the interior is very limited, owing to the density of the forest growth, its numerous swamps, and almost impassable deadfalls. ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... sat I could see that the bed of fire which encircled the crater; and the wall of vapour which crowned the flames, were about three hundred feet wide. Of course this barrier was absolutely impassable. There was no way of getting through it into the ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... however, the brow of the cliff hung over and was pierced by a single narrow path cut through it by water, in such fashion that a single boulder rolled into it at the top would make the cliff quite impassable to men ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... 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 did officially, and ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... weather, which made the roads almost impassable, helped Robin. She threw herself into her studies with a determination almost as upsetting to Percival Tubbs as her former indifference. And when the studies were over she buried herself in the great divan before the library fire with books ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... 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 ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... of honest men to do the country's business at home, instead of making the country do theirs and being paid for it into the bargain. Let us put men into Congress who will cover the seas with our ships again, as well as make our harbors impassable with a competition of cheap ferry-boats. Begin here, as you began here more than a hundred years ago, and as you succeeded then you will ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... mafu explored the trail and reported that it was impassable but, after an examination of some of the worst barriers, we decided that they could be cleared away and ordered the caravan to start at half past ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... slopes in a great rush. This predicament was a terrible one—the onrushing Germans 500 feet in front of them and the swollen river making successful retreat impossible, with the ground between almost impassable with mud and slush. French reserves had improvised a pontoon bridge across the Aisne at Missy, in the rear of their now precarious position. This bridge was just strong enough to carry the men and ammunition; but not the heavy guns. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... saloons, which in half an hour would be almost impassable, were only sprinkled with guests, who, however, were constantly arriving. Mr. Wilton looked about him in vain for the person who, he was quite sure, could not then be present. He lingered by the side of Lady Montfort, who bowed to those who came, but who ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... aroused the attention of the naturalist. Many examples of these are to be found in the Pacific Archipelago. Seas and shallows, once navigable, become in the process of time so filled by these living animals, as to become impassable, their stony skeletons forming hard, massy rocks and impenetrable barriers, which, rising from the bottom of the sea and shallows, constitute solid masonry of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... however. The Government caused further soundings to be made off the coast of Ireland, which effectually dispelled all the fears which had been entertained of a submarine mountain which would prove an impassable barrier in the path of an ocean telegraph. In addition to this, it caused the organization of a board of distinguished scientific men for the purpose of determining all the difficult problems of submarine telegraphy. This ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... eighteen or twenty ridges, formed of little else but precipitous rocks, they saw before them nothing but the same savage and inaccessible country. Tier after tier of ranges rose in view, divided by abrupt and impassable chasms and gorges. The only natives they saw fled at their approach, and, saving for the presence of some large red kangaroos, little sign of animal life was met with. Away to both north and south, the same iron range could be traced, showing ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... flats impassable after the deluge, Mac left the track, having decided to stick to the ridges all day; and all that had gone before was smoothness itself in comparison to what was ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... the weather, which had been fine and clear during the previous week, changed on the very day that McClellan started. The rain came down in torrents, and the roads became almost impassable. The columns struggled on along the deep and muddy tracks all day, and bivouacked for the night in the forests. The next morning they resumed their march, and on reaching the first line of intrenchments formed by the Confederates found them deserted, ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... was I couldn't figure out. I watched him covertly. Whenever we came to the end of a march, instead of sighting his landmarks, making sure of his bearings—he would go off by himself. Next day, he would know exactly where he wanted to go—but sometimes the "way" would be across an impassable gorge, a rapids, or ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... Balboa resolved to make a name for himself and to be the discoverer of the other sea. He set off in 1513. The land is not more than forty-five miles wide at Panama, but it is almost impassable even to this day. For twenty-two days the hardy adventurers advanced through a forest, dense with thickets and tangled swamps and interlacing vines—so thick that for days the sun could not be seen—and over rough and slippery mountain-sides ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... 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
... kept a strict watch during the night. The weather was much less cold than it had been; indeed, there were evident signs of the coming of spring, and it became more than ever evident that we must push on before the frozen-up torrents should again burst forth, and render many spots impassable. After a hurried breakfast, we were once more on our way; we marched in true military order, with an advanced and a rear guard; the first carried spades, and acted as a pioneer corps. This morning I was in the rear guard, with Obed and Short, and all the Indians with their old chief. We ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the Southern people" become alienated from the Union and wish to "escape from it, we will do our best to forward their views." A volume could be filled with the like writing of his prolific pen at this time, and every sentence of such purport was the casting of a new stone to create an almost impassable obstruction in the path along which the new President must soon endeavor to move. Thurlow Weed, editor of the Albany "Evening Journal," and the confidential adviser of Seward, wrote in favor of concessions; ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... men, that Stackpole's cunning over-reached itself, as was fully shown in the event; and it would have been happier for himself and all if his discretion, instead of plunging him among difficult and almost impassable bogs, where a precious hour was wasted in effecting a mere temporary security and concealment from observation, had taught him the necessity of pushing onwards with all possible speed, so as to leave pursuers, ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... safely anchor in six or seven fathoms on fine grey sand. The isle of St Catharine is about eight leagues and a half long, but no where exceeds two leagues broad; and at one place the channel between it and the continent is only a quarter of a mile broad. The island is covered all over with impassable woods, except where cleared for the plantations. Even the smallest island about it is covered in like manner with a great variety of trees, between which the ground is entirely covered with thorns and brambles, which hinder all ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... not look in any direction in the city but what mass after mass of flame stared you in the face. To get about one had to dodge from one street to another, back and forth in zigzag fashion, and half an hour after going through a street, it would be impassable. One after another of the magnificent business blocks went down. The newer buildings seemed to have withstood the shock better than any others, except well-built frame buildings. The former lost some of the outside shell, but the ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... commerce is my chief source of anxiety, and for my part I am trying to avoid a rupture. But there are the resolutions of the two Chambers which cripple the negotiators and above all our minister of commerce. These are impassable limits to the best will. The negotiations will doubtless begin again in Paris, in about a fortnight, but it is not yet certain. The incident you point out is very curious, and England becoming Protectionist, and England ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... barren, waste earth. The elements had crumbled the 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, ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... as well as Daru, objected to him, "the season, the want of supplies, a sterile desert and artificial road, that from Twer to Petersburg, running for a hundred leagues through morasses, and which three hundred peasants might in one day render impassable. Why keep proceeding northward? why go to meet winter, to provoke and to defy it?—it was already too near; and what was to become of the six thousand wounded still in Moscow? were they then to be left to the mercy of Kutusoff? That general ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... that the flight of the outlaw and his captive was now much more rapid, and he quickened his own pace. The chasm grew wilder. At times it appeared impassable, but always the trail of the fugitives led straight to some hidden cleft through which the boy followed, holding his breath in tense expectancy of what might happen at ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... dining-room there were hat racks, and in time they held "hard hats." The stamping of the social die had begun its work. Indeed, after a time there came to be in the great dining-room of the Stone Hotel little groups bounded by unseen but impassable lines. The bankers and the loan agents sat at the head of the hall, and to them drifted naturally the ministers, ever in search of pillars. Lawyers and doctors sat adjacent thereunto, and merchants ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... unknown shores of Grinnell Land, which lay in sight to the west of Smith Sound. With the seaman Godfrey as a companion and a dog-team as the means of transportation, Hayes struggled through the almost impassable floes and bergs of the main strait and finally attained Cape Hayes, on the western coast, in about 79 deg. 45' N. latitude. The return journey to the Advance was possible only by abandoning everything that in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... those of the neighbourhood. Hutton, writing of this town in 1770, says,—'The inhabitants set their dogs at me merely because I was a stranger. Surrounded with impassable roads, no intercourse with man to humanize the mind, no commerce to smooth their rugged manners, they continue the boors of nature.' Life, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... seemed less certain, and the genius of Dupleix roused better hopes for France; yet India, defenceless as it was against European forces, was bound to fall a prize to the masters of the sea, unless some European state could control its almost impassable overland approaches. Clive, perhaps, was almost as much the brilliant adventurer as Dupleix, but he was supported at need by an organized government more susceptible than the French ancien rgime to the pressure of commercial interests and of ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... wreck of friendship is the result of a moral breakdown in one of the associates. Worse than the separation of the grave is the desolation of the heart by faithlessness. More impassable than the gulf of distance with the estranging sea, more separating than the gulf of death, is the great gulf fixed between souls through deceit and shame. It is as the sin of Judas. Said a sorrowful Psalmist, who had known this experience, "Mine own familiar friend ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... army very different from any that has since been seen among us. At present the pay of the common soldier is not such as can seduce any but the humblest class of English laborers from their calling. A barrier almost impassable separates him from the commissioned officer. The great majority of those who rise high in the service rise by purchase. So numerous and extensive are the remote dependencies of England, that every man who enlists in the line must expect to pass many years in exile, and some years in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... marched over the mountain-barrier into the neighbouring province of Szechuan and seized the city of Chungking—which would have barred the advance of the Northern troops permanently as the river defiles even when lightly defended are impassable here to the strongest force. It was largely due to the hardships of forced marches conducted over these rugged mountains, which raise their precipitous peaks to the heavens, that Tsao-ao subsequently lost his life, his health being undermined by exposure, tuberculosis ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... immediately left the office. The brilliant prospect was clouded. With but eight months more study the young student could commence the practice of medicine and be an honor to his preceptor and to himself, but the lack of money was a seemingly impassable barrier. It was a dark day to the student, but he had learned "never to let his energies stagnate." One resource was left him. He determined to open a select school for advanced scholars. In four days from that time he entered the school ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... march was infinitely worse than the first, for it lay along a series of abruptly shaped hills with deep ravines between them; each ravine had its swamp and each swamp its river. This bit of country must be absolutely impassable for any human being, black or white, except during the dry season. There were representatives of the three chief forms of the West African bog. The large deep swamps were best to deal with, because they make a break in the forest, and the sun can come down on their surface ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... highways like drowning sailors to a life raft. When an excursion into the woods is proposed, all sorts of exaggerated or imaginary dangers are conjured up, filling the kindly, soothing wilderness with colds, fevers, Indians, bears, snakes, bugs, impassable rivers, and jungles of brush, to which is always added quick ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... Eudocia, "between your sister and myself there is a gulf impassable. If ever I can forgive her, it must be when those sweet and tender eyes, that speak a heart all steeped in gentleness and love, have smiled upon my hopes, and made me at peace with all the world. Dearest Eudocia, will you accept the devotion of my ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... the way with the Emperor. He would chat with you as with a friend and a brother, and then when he had wiled you into forgetting the gulf which lay between you, he would suddenly, with a word or with a look, remind you that it was as impassable as ever. When I have fondled my old hound until he has been encouraged to paw my knees, and I have then thrust him down again, it has made me think of the ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... family lived more apart from the world, and been purer from all alien admixture. Confined by conquest within forgotten islands and peninsulas, it has reared an impassable barrier against external influences; it has drawn all from itself; it has lived solely on its own capital. From this ersues that powerful individuality, that hatred of the foreigner, which even in our own days has formed the essential feature of the Celtic peoples. Roman civilisation ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... fact, all the efforts of our well- endowed life, beginning with our food, dress, houses, our cleanliness, and even down to our education,—every thing has for its chief object, the separation of ourselves from the poor. In procuring this seclusion of ourselves by impassable barriers, we spend, to put it mildly, nine- tenths of our wealth. The first thing that a man who was grown wealthy does is to stop eating out of one bowl, and he sets up crockery, and fits himself out with a kitchen and servants. And he feeds his ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... the last farms in the passes of the Rockies, that ancestry has followed the frontier westward from where Celoron planted the emblems of French possession along the Ohio to where Chevalier la Verendrye looked upon the snowy and impassable peaks of ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... sure?" said he, with the deep sweet look I had noticed. "Do they never come now, in the way of their duty, to an impassable barrier of danger or difficulty, through which the same hand opens their path? Did you never find that they do, in your ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... of the city are in poor condition, and are very uneven. During the rainy season, they are almost impassable, and should ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... comparatively narrow, looking straighter than it really was, from the towering Coast Range that rose in vast massive ridges, several of the peaks piercing the clouds and reaching far up into the snow line. This was indeed an impassable barrier to their further progress beyond the valley, had they wished to make the attempt; for among those wild regions, where at midsummer the snow is whirled in blinding eddies, and the storm howls ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... posta on the road to Buenos Ayres stands on its banks, a little above there is a ford for horses, where the water does not reach to the horses' belly; but from that point, in its course to the sea, it is quite impassable, and hence makes a most useful barrier against ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... existed. Navigation, therefore, was extremely difficult, and the greatest caution was necessary to escape running on shore. Still, the depth of water was considerable, so that we had no fear of being stopped by impassable sandbanks or shoals. In several places which had before been overspread by the water we saw native huts, with the inhabitants—who gazed at us with astonishment as we passed—collected round them. Some followed us in canoes, but ignorant that we were ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... rain and mud we ploughed on towards the river. When we reached the Caledon River we saw that the water was rising rapidly, and began to fear that the Orange River, which was still thirty miles off, would be impassable. Well, we were going to try. We increased our speed, and left behind scores of ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... blest," perfect happiness appeared not to be secured even by Macadam. Ruts began to be formed—rain fell, and mud was generated at a prodigious rate; repairs were needed, and the road for a while was rough and almost impassable. Then it was found out that the change had only led to a different kind of noise, instead of destroying it altogether; and the perpetual grinding of wheels, sawing their way through the loose stones at the top, or ploughing through the wet ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... not only by their native courage, but by the resentment which, since their disgrace, had been festering in their breasts. They made their way into the camp; where, every one repeating, that here was not Caudium, nor the forks, nor the impassable glens, where cunning haughtily triumphed over error; but Roman valour, which no rampart nor trench could ward off;—they slew, without distinction, those who resisted and those who fled, the armed and unarmed, freemen and slaves, young and ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... job of work before him, and therefore he rode on, not stopping to embarrass him by any inspection of his work. In process of time no doubt so much of the top of Ballydahan Hill was carried to the bottom as made the whole road altogether impassable for many months. But the great object was gained; the men were fed, and were not fed by charity. What did it matter, that the springs of every conveyance in the county Cork were shattered by the process, and that the works ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... A victorious line of march had been prolonged above a thousand miles from the rock of Gibraltar to the banks of the Loire; the repetition of an equal space would have carried the Saracens to the confines of Poland and the Highlands of Scotland; the Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames. Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... twenty-seven battalions of good French infantry, twelve squadrons, and twenty-four pieces of cannon. Strong entrenchments had been thrown up round our position, but these were not altogether completed. Blenheim, moreover, had been surrounded by very heavy and strong palisades, altogether impassable by infantry, and, as the allies could not hope to get cannon across the stream and swamps, it seemed to defy any attack. From Oberglau the army of Marshal de Marcin and the Elector stretched to the village of Lutzingen. We had some five-and-twenty ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... my thoughts were less of Charlemagne and his paladins—though the Breche de Roland was now within reach—than of the stupendous grandeur of the scene. It required very little exercise of fancy to imagine that we had arrived at the end of the world—so perfectly impassable appeared the barrier which suddenly rose before us. The frowning walls of granite which form the lowest grade of this vast amphitheatre, rise to a height of twelve hundred feet perpendicularly, and extend to nearly three-quarters of a league, increasing in width as they ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... other two; in this situation it may easily be believed that they longed most ardently for the dawn, and as soon as it appeared they set out for the tent: They were obliged, however, to make their way along the seashore, for the inland country was impassable; nor was this the worst, for they were frequently stopped by high steep bluff points, which they were obliged to swim round at a considerable distance; for if they had not taken a compass, they would have been dashed to pieces against the rocks by the surf, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... self-loathing, to escape from the odious monotony and the indecent realism of life—what a relief! How desirable to be confronted no longer by that impassable gulf between one's own soul and all other living souls! How desirable to cross the abyss which separates the "something" which is the substance of our being from the "something" which is the ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... worthless; I knew that I had fifty books in me immeasurably better than it, and savagely and sullenly I desired to trample upon them, to rub their noses in their feebleness; but oh, it was I who was feeble! and full of visions of a wider world I raged up and down the cold walls of impassable mental limitations. Above me there was a barred window, and, but for my manacles, I would have sprung at it and torn it with my teeth. Then passion was so strong in me that I could scarce refrain from jumping off the counter, stamping my feet, and slapping my friends in the face, so tepid were their ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... for she had never kept any one waiting without good cause, since she had been in charge of the gate, but she bent her head obediently and said nothing. It seems to be a general rule with religious houses that no one is ever to wait in the street for admittance; the barrier, which is often impassable, is the door that leads inward from ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... with ships full of huts, clothing, and fuel, the men at the front were dying in hundreds from wet, cold, and insufficient food. Between them and abundance extended an almost impassable quagmire, in which horses and bullocks sank and died in thousands, although laden only with weights which a donkey in ordinary times could carry. Had the strength of the regiments in front been ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... her, if it were not an index of a vastly more serious barrier, a proof that he had never loved her. If he had loved her truly, he would never have forgotten her in three short months,—three long months they had heretofore seemed to her, for in them she had lived a lifetime of experience. Another impassable barrier lay in the fact that his mother had met her, and that she was known in the neighborhood. Thus cut off from any hope that she might be anything to him, she had no wish to meet her former lover; no possible good could come of such a meeting; and yet ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... protested against these aimless, fruitless rambles; all day had he held back with a high head and a hard mouth, while whip and spur pressed him through laurel almost impenetrable, and through crevices of crags almost impassable. For were there not all the fair roads of the county to pace and gallop upon if one must needs be out and jogging! Unseen objects, vaguely discerned to be moving in the undergrowth affrighted the old plough-horse of the levels—infinitely reassured and whinnying ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... street was packed with watchers as early as 9 o'clock. The crowd was so dense that pedestrians with difficulty forced their way through it and twice a squad of blue-coats descended on the mob and routed it. Five minutes after the police had retired the street was as impassable as before. ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... Tangulda. Cutting through a thick scrub. Want of water. Impeded by a lofty range of mountains. Marks of natives' feet. Maule's river. A grilled snake. View on ascending the range of Nundewar. Native female. Proposed excursion with packhorses. Native guide absconds. The range impassable. Return to Tangulda. Prepare to launch the boats ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... the object of my Existence?" He becomes dissatisfied with the answers the world has to give him to these questions, and he cries aloud in despair—and but the answer of his own voice comes back to him from the impassable walls with which he is surrounded. He does not realize that his answer must come from Within—but so ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... trembling. Each felt happy at the sight of the other, but neither thought of speaking, still less of making any advances. Okoya was aware of the fact—which he felt deeply and keenly—that a wide breach, a seemingly impassable chasm, existed between him and the girl. That gap was the relation in which he stood toward Tyope, the girl's father. Or rather the relation in which he fancied himself to stand toward him. For Tyope had hardly ever spoken to ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... though it might have a certain significance in his eyes. To Steve, however, it only meant that there must be more chances of game holding forth amidst these dark and gloomy depressions, where trees and heavy undergrowth combined to make an almost impassable stretch. ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... gone out to Ellida, but Ellida kept them at a distance with the smooth respectfulness of the iron hand in the glove of velvet; and Clementina first learned from her to imagine the impassable gulf ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... in, making the water fly. That stream was nothing for him, though it seemed impassable to Helen. She had not the strength left to lift her stirrups and the water surged over them. Ranger, in two more plunges, surmounted the bank, and then, trotting across the green to where the other horses stood steaming under some pines, he gave ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... 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 ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... gentlemen" who desired the passage of this measure; declared they intended by its passage "to destroy the Institution of Slavery or to destroy the Union," and exclaimed: "Pass this Amendment and you make an impassable chasm, as if you were to put a lake of burning fire, between the adhering States and those who are out. You will then have to make it a War of conquest and extermination before you can ever bring them back under the flag of the Government. ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... blessedness; and "the men of the world, which have their portion in this life," to a place of unmitigated suffering. Whatever be the comprehension of the word Hades (rendered in our version by the word hell), there is an impassable gulf between Lazarus in Abraham's bosom and the rich man in torment. The "great gulf fixed" may be a figure; but it represents an awful reality; and that reality is, that there is no transition from the one state ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... cliffs overhanging which were crested by the enemy. A sergeant, with eleven men, chanced to become separated from the rest by taking the wrong side of a ravine, which they expected soon to terminate, but which suddenly deepened into an impassable chasm. The officer in command signalled to the party an order to return. They mistook the signal for a command to charge; the brave fellows answered with a cheer, and charged. At the summit of the steep mountain was a triangular ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... 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 long and happy ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... with her set, Lady Clonbrony suffered a different kind of mortification from that which Lady Langdale and Mrs. Dareville made her endure. She was safe from the witty raillery, the sly inuendo, the insolent mimicry; but she was kept at a cold, impassable distance, by ceremony—"So far shalt thou go, and no further," was expressed in every look, in every word, and in a thousand ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... to allow to become our life? Suppose we selected a given area of our environment and determined once for all that our correspondences should go to that alone, fencing in this area all round with a morally impassable wall? True, to others, we should seem to live a poorer life; they would see that our environment was circumscribed, and call us narrow because it was narrow. But, well-chosen, this limited life would be really the fullest life; it would be rich ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... wanting those who lent me their sepulchre, in the city, for a season—a kindness always peculiar and affecting, but also needful in this instance, because of the great snows which made the roads to Mount Auburn impassable for several days. Nor can I forget that, when Saturday evening closed upon us, words and tokens of kindness came from the younger members of my congregation, who had provided for the last earthly things which the ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... in her graceful form, some of the fire in her blue eyes, and in her girlish laugh a suggestion of the freedom of the mountain and glen. I think it was in that moment of intensity that I crossed the bridge which separates the boy from the man. An impassable gulf was fixed between this girl's station in life and mine. She was the daughter of a florist, and I was the son ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... by Wren. There are two roads by which coaches could approach the house: 'one,' as the famous John, Lord Hervey, wrote to his mother, 'so convex, the other so concave, that, by this extreme of faults, they agree in the common one of being, like the high road, impassable.' The rumbling coach, with its plethoric steeds, toils slowly on, and reaches the dismal pile, of which no association is so precious as that of its having been the birthplace of our loved Victoria Regina. All ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... merely imaginary narrative. And still less could He be justified in so doing, if, being perfectly informed upon the subject, He knew that there is no such place as that in which He puts the luxurious Dives, and no such impassable gulf as that of which He speaks. It will not do, here, to employ the Jesuitical maxim that the end justifies the means, and say, as some teachers have said, that the wholesome impression that will be made upon the vicious and the profligate justifies an appeal to ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... much popularity. I can only attribute it to the love interest associated with the beggar. He was, we may imagine, the Alderman Thomas Firris who, as a penniless youth, came to bid farewell to his betrothed, who lived somewhere on the opposite side of the river. Finding the stream impassable, he is said to have determined that if he came back from his travels as a rich man he would put up a bridge on the spot he had been prevented from crossing. It is not a very remarkable story, even if it be true, but it has given ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... darkened into the blackness of night. To men of contemplative habits, and many such there were, though clad in blouses, the scene was strongly suggestive. Our states emblemed in the lights of the valleys and the mountain ridge as the much talked of "impassable barrier." But faith in the success of a cause Heaven founded, saw gaps that we could control in that mountain ridge which would ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... the daughters of this land, Who lived in times of old in castles set Amidst rich groves and cool, pellucid streams, And woodlands broad and fair to roam at will; But these by moats and battlements enclosed Were made impassable that the eyes impure Of man might not upon their beauty gaze, And so defile their virgin purity. For all that here delighted woman's eyes Was freely lavished by their royal sires; And countless guards to watch all day were there, And maidens numberless to sport ...
— Tales of Ind - And Other Poems • T. Ramakrishna
... sorrows of women at the absence of their husbands after the rains have set in. The rainy season is in India looked on as the season of love, and separation from the lover at this time is particularly bewailed, all the more as the rains soon make the roads impassable. ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... here, there, and everywhere turned into a quagmire by the torrents that could find no adequate egress to the northward swamps. For over a mile above the barracks it looked like one vast canal, and by nine o'clock it was utterly impassable. No cars were running on the dilapidated road to the "half-way house," whatever they might be doing beyond. There was only one means of communication between the garrison and the town, and that, on horseback along the crest of the levee, and people in the second-story ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... from which our great establishments had just escaped were yet fresh in remembrance, a system of fortifications was begun, which now, though not quite complete, fences in our important points with impassable strength. More than four thousand cannon may at any moment, within strong and permanent works, arranged with all the advantages and appliances that the art affords, be turned to the protection of the ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... 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
... endure the terrible strain of that first winter. At times, when the mud was nearly waist deep, he would throw away his overcoat, blanket and other personal effects, but never would he give up his beloved gun. When trenches were absolutely impassable he would climb up on top, scorning bullets and shells, intent on the one job in hand—to get to his appointed station without delay. He was a constant source of inspiration to all of us, often inciting the older heads to undertake and achieve the apparently ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... at hand. In the course of 1839, the little cloud showed itself in the outlook of the future; the little rift opened, small and hardly perceptible, which was to widen into an impassable gulf. Anglicanism started with undoubted confidence in its own foundations and its own position, as much against Romanism as against the more recent forms of religion. In the consciousness of its strength, it could afford to make admissions and to refrain from tempting but unworthy arguments ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... offices disgorge their employes, when idlers come to lounge and stare, and between foot-passengers, trams, taxis and carts, the thoroughfare was almost impassable. During a block Mrs. Krauss suddenly roused from her condition of happy contemplation, and said, as she ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... night. But how unsatisfactory, how cruelly ungrateful was all that grew under his pencil! Each moment he found himself checked and repulsed in the new path he fain would have trodden by the wretched mechanical tricks to which he had so long habituated himself. They stood on his road, an impassable barrier. In spite of himself he recurred to the old commonplace forms; the arms would arrange themselves in one graceless position; the head assume the old hackneyed attitude; the folds of dress refused to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... was enabled to travel comfortably. My little Gustava had entreated one of my husband's adjutants, Captain Edmonston, not to leave us on the way. The confiding manner of the child touched him and he gave his promise and faithfully kept it. I travelled always with the army and often over almost impassable roads.... ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... secret interview between the mother and son now takes place, which ends by the imprisonment of the latter; why is not explained at the moment; nor, indeed, till the next scene, when it is quite apparent; for if one sees an impregnable castle, rigidly guarded by supernumeraries, with an impassable river, bristling with chevaux-de-frise it is impossible to get over, and a moat that it would be death to cross, a prison-escape may be surely calculated upon. In the present instance, this formulary is not omitted, for Wilhelm jumps ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... Maurice loved her—and, alas! for her—she knew also that she loved him. And between them a great gulf was fixed; deep, and wide, and impassable as the waters ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... parishioners if they could have 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 in it ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... next appointment was Manitowoc, the charge extending from Port Washington to Two Rivers, and requiring one hundred and fifty miles of travel to each round of appointments. Through these dense forests, as I have had occasion to remark in a former chapter, the roads were almost impassable, with long distances intervening between residences, and involving great fatigue and exposure. Like the good Brother Frink, who preceded him in this field, he was compelled to swim rivers, suffer hunger and endure fatigue, that would appall a man of less nerve. During the winter his horse ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... England the control of the sea, and relieved her from all danger of a French invasion. Even the "wet ditch," as Napoleon was wont contemptuously to call the English Channel, was henceforth an impassable gulf to his ambition. He might rule the continent, but the sovereignty of the ocean and ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... down to the end of the lake, where the stream started. It wound in and out, as it followed the uneven edges of Little Moose Lake, running over mossy knolls, through rivulets, past waterfalls, and around impassable obstructions. Thus the detouring added greatly to the distance ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... there was little trouble in going up the stream. Before long an old homestead came in sight on a hill to our left, and we knew that it must be Lower Weyanoke. But an impassable marsh stretched along the stream, and there was no sign of a landing or of a roadway that might lead to the house. We kept on, curious now to see how far our houseboat could go. Suddenly we found out. She turned a bend and, there ahead, hummocks and stumps ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... jungle. I rushed forward, as I was uncertain whether they were in advance or retreat. Leaving a small sample of my nose upon a kittar thorn, and tearing my way, with naked arms, through what, in cold blood, would have appeared impassable, I caught sight of two elephants leading across my path, with the herd following in a dense mass behind them. Firing a shot at the leading elephant, simply in the endeavor to check the herd, I repeated with the left-hand barrel at the head of his companion. ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... Amber drew back. The beach was impassable; here was no wide and easy road to the east, such as he had thought to find; to gain the sandbar he had now to thread a tortuous and uncertain way through the bewildering dunes. And the prospect was not a little disconcerting; afraid neither ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... sea-wall's end—Mobile Point—a dozen leagues due south from the town—sat Fort Morgan, keeping this gate, the port's main ship-channel. Here, north-west from Morgan, beyond this main entrance and the league of impassable shoals, Fort Gaines guarded Pelican Channel, while a mile further townward Fort Powell held Grant's Pass into and out of Mississippi Sound, and here along the west side, out from Mobile, down the magnolia-shaded Bay Shell ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... must not forget, and you must not let me forget. If you will give me your word I shall trust you, fully, completely. But it must be given. There is no other way by which I can accept your protection; there can be no equality between us—only an impassable barrier of race." ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... of the Bogue forts. The old ruins still remain, mute witnesses of the completeness of our cannonade during the Chinese war. At a short distance from the old, a much stronger and more formidable structure is reared, which in the hands of Europeans would form an almost impassable barrier. In addition to the large fort, two small islands off in the river are also strongly fortified with ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... that he could see the line pouring in above his head, when there was a sudden cessation of motion in the press, and one leaf of the outer iron doors swung forward, meeting the other, already closed to bar the crush, and two green-painted panels stood, impassable, between him and the last of ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... different conception, different melodic structure and deeper effect. The ninth symphony, which the first players called impossible, has lived to be counted not simply the greatest of all of Beethoven's works, but the greatest of all instrumental music. It has been named as an impassable barrier beyond which no later composer might pass and compose an instrumental symphony. Nothing could be more unjust or mistaken. Every composition of Beethoven is a fantasia, which in his earlier work indeed has the form of the sonata, the accepted serious form ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... know what influence the other side has upon us or we upon the human beings beyond this boundary. We think it is opaque, impassable. I am writing of the other wall. There was a puzzle! The wall ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... with veins of sand and gravel. Through the centre was a wet ravine, which served as a natural outlet for the springs, and which was so full of black alders as to make an excellent cover for woodcock. Until the land was drained, this ravine was impassable in the hay season even, except by a bridge which I built across it. Now it may be crossed at any season and ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... level uplands that neither lose nor receive material from surface washing are very deficient in phosphorus and much poorer than ours in potassium and magnesium; and your undulating and steeply sloping lands are more or less broken, with many rock outcrops on the points and some impassable gullies, which as a rule compel the cultivation of the land in small irregular fields. A three-cornered field of from two to fifteen acres can never have quite the same value per acre as the land where forty or eighty acres of corn can be grown in a body with ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... to these sheep we saw three moose feeding in a small green valley at the base of the opposite hills. The river was impassable for some miles, and although they were hardly more than a mile away in a straight line, they were quite unapproachable, so we sat and watched them with much interest until they slowly fed ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... though the weather was very dry, for oyster-shells, fish heads and bones, potato-skins, and cabbage-stalks littered the roads; but dirty was a word which does not give the faintest description of the almost impassable state in which I found them, when I waded through them ankle-deep in ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... reverses of fortune that have happened since 1789 to men and to nations, we subscribe to the wisdom of the hackneyed Greek sentiment, that no man should be called fortunate until the seal of death shall have placed an everlasting and an impassable barrier between him and the cruel sports of Mutabilities which are played ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... relented in the least. He had met her once or twice at the Featherstones' and, although she had not treated him with any open coolness, he felt that henceforth there must be an impassable barrier between them. Now and then, even while she forced herself in public to listen to him, the invincible horror and repugnance she felt would be suddenly revealed by a chance look or intonation—and he saw it and writhed in secret. And yet he went everywhere that there ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... to the means of prolonging human life; but how an art which determines the fate of mortals, and ascertains the impassable limits of the grave, could consistently be made subservient to such a purpose, we are rather at a loss to conceive, unless accounted for as follows. The teachers of divination maintained, that not only men, but all natural bodies, plants, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... the name indicated, was an Indian of the mountains; he continued to fix his eyes on the mestizo, whom he had intentionally jostled. The latter, whose anger was unbounded, had seized a poignard at his girdle, and was about to have rushed on the impassable aggressor, when a guttural cry, like that of the cilguero, (a kind of linnet of Peru,) re-echoed in the midst of the tumult of ...
— The Pearl of Lima - A Story of True Love • Jules Verne
... hurling of this firebrand, three of the five department heads drew their pay-envelopes and went away. Then Griswold proceeded to make the breach impassable by calling upon the sheriff for a guard of deputies. Raymer shook his head gloomily when the thrower of firebrands sent the 'phone message to the ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... intended attack, so that the canoas found great difficulty in getting upstream. Trees had been felled so as to fall across the river, and Indian spies had been placed here and there along the river-bank to warn the townsmen of the approach of the boats. A mile below the town the river had been made impassable, so here the pirates went ashore to wait till daybreak. When it grew light they marched forward, to attack the strong wooden breastworks which the Spaniards had built. Captain Sawkins was in advance, with about a dozen pirates. Captain Sharp followed at a little ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... the traveller is often overtaken by the most severe weather, even after days of cloudless beauty, when the glaciers glitter in the sunshine, and the pink flowers of the rhododendron appear as if they were never to be sullied by the tempest. But a storm suddenly comes on; the roads are rendered impassable by drifts of snow; the avalanches, which are huge loosened masses of snow or ice, are swept into the valleys, carrying trees and crags of ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... had grown among progressive persons in various countries, not excluding Germany, that civilisation was building up almost impassable barriers against any great war. These barriers were thought to be of various kinds, even apart from the merely sentimental and humanitarian developments of pacific feeling. They were especially of an economic kind, and that on a double basis, that of Capital and that ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... to confess myself worldly, and that I never was! No, Walter; I admire you; if you could be trusted not to misunderstand, I might even say I loved you! I shall always be glad to see you, always enjoy hearing you read; but there is a line as impassable as the Persian river of death. Talk about something ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald |
