"Impassable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of a low morning bank, and we were wallowing along under stupendous cliffs. As the lights brightened, we could see certain abutments and buttresses on their front where wood clustered and grass grew brightly. But the whole brow seemed quite impassable, and my heart sank at the sight. Two thousand feet of rock making 19 degrees (the Captain guesses) seemed quite beyond my powers. However, I had come so far; and, to tell you the truth, I was so cowed with ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... break upon the floor of the crypt that holds them. They could not lie more fitly than on the shore of this sea they won and held for Genoa. San Fruttuoso is difficult to reach save by sea. In the summer the path from Portofino is pleasant enough, but at any other time it is almost impassable. And indeed the voyage by boat from Rapallo to Portofino, and thence to San Fruttuoso, should be chosen, for the beauty of the coast, which, as I think, can nowhere be seen so well and so easily as here. Then, in returning to Portofino, the road along the ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... wonders not a little how animal life—as well the flocks of antelope, elk, and deer in the mountains, as the cattle and horses of the rancheros—is preserved through the deep snows of the Northern winter. But even when the mountains are impassable, there is seldom snow in the valleys; and along the sides of the hills grow stunted tufts of bunch-grass, full of sweetness and nutriment. Horses always hunt for it in preference to the greener growth at the water's edge. And ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... two hundred horses, numberless herds of sheep and goats, and every thing else that belonged to these miserable people. Lamentable was the case of the women and children that escaped the butchery; the mountains were covered with a deep snow, the rivers impassable, storm and tempest filled the air and added to the horrors and darkness of the night, and there were no houses to shelter ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... my corner and hurried in the shadow down the road in the opposite direction to the course followed by my pursuers. Arriving at the last house at the foot of the street, I found myself confronted by a small river, quiet and apparently deep, with all the space from the last house to the river one impassable barrier of giant cactus, I had either to swim the river or turn back, and I ought to have plunged in as I was, revolver and all, the distance over being short; and, as I am an expert swimmer, I could easily have got across, loaded down as I was. ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... they found at its base a rapidly rising river. The melting snow which still lingered on the hilltops had swollen the stream and in places had made the road almost impassable. The two horsemen, by searching for fords, managed to make their way through the pass, and came out into the wide, smiling valley of Virginia, bounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Alleghanies. Here flowed that ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... the frontiers of Norway, under the orders of General Armfeldt, have had several skirmishes with the Danes, which have in general proved very favourable to the former; but nothing of importance has yet taken place, owing to the roads being almost impassable from the depth of snow and ice, which, even at this advanced season, cover them. Last Wednesday, accounts were received from Stockholm, of the surrender of Sweaborg! It was the more unexpected from the garrison having withstood two assaults, in which the Russians are said to ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... Vallejo. I had been there before, as related, in the business of the alcalde Nash. From Sonoma we crossed over by way of Napa, Suisun, and Vaca's ranch, to the Puta. In the rainy season, the plain between the Puta and Sacramento Rivers is impassable, but in July the waters dry up; and we passed without trouble, by the trail for Sutter's Embarcadero. We reached the Sacramento River, then full of water, with a deep, clear current. The only means of crossing over was by an Indian dugout canoe. We began by carrying across ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... 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, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... melancholy death, Sir Reginald, I am suddenly and unexpectedly elevated to be the head of our ancient and honourable family; but I know my own personal unworthiness to occupy that distinguished place, and feel how much better it would be filled by yourself. Although the law has placed a wide and impassable barrier between all of your branch of the family and ourselves, I shall ever be ready to acknowledge the affinity, and to confess that it does us quite as much honour ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... All of the gifted and unhappy Poe's life in New York came within the period of the Diary, but in it is to be found not a single mention of his name. There was no place at the Hone table for the shabby, impossible genius. There was an impassable gulf between the well-ordered household facing the City Hall Park, or at the Broadway and Great Jones Street corner, and the humble Carmine Street lodging, or the Fordham Cottage. Early references to Fenimore Cooper, whom Hone first met at an American ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... into the city with great slaughter. The suburb on the south bank of the Thames fell into the hands of the enemy, who burned down at least a part of it. William gained, however, no further success at this point. London was not yet ready to submit, and the river seems to have been an impassable barrier. To find a crossing the Norman march was continued up the river, the country suffering as before from the foraging of the army. The desired crossing was found at Wallingford, not far below Oxford and nearly fifty ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... recognise in Mr. D—— an ancient enemy, and make a vicious attack upon him with blank cartridges and much pomp and circumstance. Still it had no permanent effect on Mr. D——. Badinage could not wither him nor cussing stale his infinite variety. With all his exasperating traits, he had an impassable child-like faith in his doings and a soothing influence that made one smile ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... his native city with his new-made wife, had {now} come to the rapid waters of {the river} Evenus.[12] The stream was swollen to a greater extent than usual with the winter rains, and was full of whirlpools, and impassable. Nessus came up to him, regardless of himself, {but} feeling anxiety for his wife, both strong of limb,[13] and well acquainted with the fords, and said, "Alcides, she shall be landed on yonder bank through my services, do thou employ thy strength in swimming;" and the Aonian {hero} entrusted to ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... service, of course. But you will find it a hard trip. Indeed, if we drive, we shall have to cross the river and take the other side. The canyon on this side is impassable in places for ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... you see from one to six of the inmates. As you come near Gardiner there is a steady rise of the country, and somewhere near the edge of the Park the elevation is such that it imposes one of those mysterious barriers to animal extension which seem to be as impassable as they are invisible. The Prairie-dog range ends near the Park gates. General George S. Anderson tells me, however, that individuals are occasionally found on the flats along the Gardiner River, but always near the gate, and never elsewhere in the Park. On this basis, ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... descent, with the means at their disposal, was impossible. Which meant, in plain language and few words, that, sooner or later, they would try to get down, and either be dashed to pieces in the attempt or perish miserably of starvation upon the edge of some ghastly impassable precipice. ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... they were safely away from weather which, in his delicate state, would very probably have killed their father. I think this was our very first thought when the snow began to fall, only two or three weeks after they left, and went on falling till the roads were almost impassable, and remained lying for I am afraid to say how long, so intense was the frost ...
— My New Home • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... ravish'd wife Brought to his shores a long protracted war. Quick was he follow'd by confederate ships Ten hundred, and the whole Pelasgian race. Nor had their vengeance borne so long delay, But adverse raging tempests made the main Impassable; and on Boeotia's shores, In Aulis' port th' ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... not to have been palliated by those precautions and that presence of mind which, even in defeat, reflects lustre on a commander. In rapid retreats from a pursuing enemy cumbrous and useless baggage is abandoned, and bridges and roads are destroyed and rendered as impassable as possible, in order to impede the progress of the pursuers; but General Proctor encumbered himself with a cumbrous load of baggage, and left the bridges and roads in his rear entire, to the advantage of his ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... her; and her high, light, colorless soprano had something in it of the sexless timbre of the boy chorister. With her blond hair pressed meekly to her shapely head she was the delight and despair of poets, painters and musicians, for she turned an impassable cheek to their pleadings. Mrs. Minne would never remarry; and it was her large income that made water the mouth of the impecunious ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... had made an admirable disposition, and taken every precaution that military skill could suggest. His centre extended along a rising ground, uneven in many places, intersected with banks and ditches, joined by lines of communication, and fronted by a large bog almost impassable. His right was fortified with intrenchments, and his left secured by the castle of Aghrim. He harangued his army in the most pathetic strain, conjuring them to exert their courage in defence of their ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... strives to cover the very memory of bygone school years. Money, influence, position, make havoc, striving in the freest land to set up classes and aristocracies separated from what is common by impassable barriers,—as though there were any other aristocracy than that of character ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... in Northern lands, more especially in such plains as Lithuania, Courland, and Poland, travel in winter is easier than at any other time of year. The rivers, which run sluggishly in their ditch-like beds, are frozen so completely that the bridges are no longer required. The roads, in summer almost impassable—mere ruts across the plain—are for the time ignored, and the traveller strikes a bee-line from place to place across a level of ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... insolence on Miraudin's part to have addressed him at all without previous introduction. It was true that the famous actor was permitted a license not granted to the ordinary individual,—as indeed most actors are. Even princes, who hedge themselves round with impassable barriers to certain of their subjects who are in all ways great and worthy of notice, unbend to the Mime who today takes the place of the Court-jester, and allow him to enter the royal presence, often bringing his ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... continent, also, we see the same fact; for on the opposite sides of lofty and continuous mountain-ranges, and of great deserts and even of large rivers, we find different productions; though as mountain chains, deserts, etc., are not as impassable, or likely to have endured so long, as the oceans separating continents, the differences are very inferior in degree to ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... of the harbor and the town; the whole of the treasure had been landed; the galleon was sunk in the mouth of the harbor; a floating barrier of masts and spars was laid on each side of her, near to the forts and castles, so as to render the entrance impassable; within this breakwater were the five zabras, moored, their treasure also taken out; all the women and children and infirm people were moved to the interior, and those only left in the town who were able to aid in its defense. A ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... of tracks extending from Willow Street along Front to Germantown Road, and thence by various streets to what was then known as the Cohocksink Depot; and it was thought that in time this mode of locomotion might drive out the hundreds of omnibuses which now crowded and made impassable the downtown streets. Young Cowperwood had been greatly interested from the start. Railway transportation, as a whole, interested him, anyway, but this particular phase was most fascinating. It was already creating widespread discussion, and he, with others, had gone ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... candle I began my scrutiny. I found a fleshy membrane pierced by so small a hole that large pin's head could scarcely have gone through. Victorine encouraged me to force a passage with my little finger, but in vain I tried to pierce this wall, which nature had made impassable by all ordinary means. I was tempted to see what I could do with a bistoury, and the girl wanted me to try, but I was afraid of the haemorrhage which might have been dangerous, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... temper himself, stood on the shores of Holland looking hopefully toward free England, from which he was separated by the narrow belt of water that was the defence of the island kingdom, and might yet be an impassable barrier to his own high aims; for the French king at that moment could control the sea if he would. Louis, holding all the power of France in his single grasp, facing eastward as before, saw the continent gathering against him; while ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... and even an echo of her own prejudices. For this strange young girl shared Madame Ferailleur's rather bigoted opinions. Again and again she asked herself if her birth and past had not created an impassable abyss between Pascal and herself. And she had not felt satisfied on this point until the day when the gray-haired magistrate, after hearing her story, said: "If I had a son, I should be proud to have him beloved ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... once a suspicious personage, liable everywhere to jealous scrutiny. The main roads were already becoming so cut up as to be traversed only with great toil and difficulty by ordinary vehicles, while the cross roads were simply impassable by wheels. The principal turnpikes still hard enough to carry a "stage," e. g., that from Washington to Leonardstown, were more carefully guarded, and picketed at certain points, especially bridges. At any one of these points, a search might be apprehended, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... last night to witness the debut upon metropolitan boards of the young tragedian who has of late been winning such golden opinions in the amphitheatres of the provinces. Some sixty thousand persons were present, and but for the fact that the streets were almost impassable, it is fair to presume that the house would have been full. His august Majesty, the Emperor Aurelius, occupied the imperial box, and was the cynosure of all eyes. Many illustrious nobles and generals of the Empire graced the occasion with their presence, and not the least among ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... woke to the fact that at his back was an extremely solid wall; on his right an equally impassable fence; on his left his implacable brother and at his front—nothing but the ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... were placed in the centre, the stronger in front and rear, and the disastrous march began. Some of the men could hardly bear the weight of their arms; others, worn out with toiling through the nearly impassable roads, lay down and died; many perished from hunger and exhaustion, there being no food but roots and berries gathered by the way and the flesh of horses killed by the emperor's order; many were drowned in the streams, swollen by the severe rains; many were killed by the ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... and hastened along Notre Dame street. But I was approaching the Seminary; and a resolution was suddenly formed to go and ask the pardon and intercession of the Superior. Then the character of Bishop Lartigue seemed to present an impassable obstacle; and the disagreeable aspect and harsh voice of the man as I recalled him, struck me with horror. I recollected him as I had known him when engaged in scenes concealed from the eye of the world. The thought of ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... fish-hooks which pleased them. As to crossing the large creek, they said it was not advisable to wade over, as the water was as high as our shoulders or higher, as one of them showed us, and the current was so swift as to render it impassable. He said that not far from their house lived a sackemaker who had in the creek a canoe with which he had set a man across the day before, who had a horse which he swam over; but the sackemaker was not pleased at his doing so without his permission. We promised him a guilder to take ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... inscrutableness and the wisdom of the ways of God. If, two thousand years ago, we had been permitted to watch the slow settling of the slime of those turbid rivers into the polluted sea, and the gaining upon its deep and fresh waters of the lifeless, impassable, unvoyageable plain, how little could we have understood the purpose with which those islands were shaped out of the void, and the torpid waters enclosed with their desolate walls of sand! How little could we have known, any more than of what now seems to us most distressful, ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... storehouse for the basket-makers. They made paniers, hampers, mews or wicker cages in which the hunting birds were kept when moulting, and even small boats from the osiers and reeds. But the greater part of the swamp was impassable to a boat and too insecure for foot-travel. In very rainy weather any one looking down upon it from a height could see that there was a sort of islet in the middle, but no one could have reached it with a boat unless in flood-time; and in very dry ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... to take up arms as that of the middle classes. Kildare as a landlord was not popular. Beauty, charm, did not help her with them as it had with their husbands. There was the further barrier, which all aliens in a rural community reach soon or late: the well-nigh impassable barrier of strangeness. They would have none of her. They looked askance at her winning sweetness; they accepted her ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... growth of low water willows, with half a hundred sorts of thorny or fetid bushes, savage strangers alike to the "language of flowers" and to the botanist's Greek. They were hung with countless strands of discolored and prickly smilax, and the impassable mud below bristled with chevaux de frise of the dwarf palmetto. Two lone forest-trees, dead cypresses, stood in the centre of the marsh, dotted with roosting vultures. The shallow strips of water were hid by myriads of aquatic plants, under whose ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... quiet water. From that point on the Yuga flows into a gorge—or rather one gorge after another; and sometime they'll likely be almost as famous as some of the great gorges of your country. The walls are just about straight up on each side, and of course are absolutely impassable. I don't know how many miles the first gorge is—but for nearly two hundred miles the river is considered impassable for boats. Two hundred and fifty miles or so below there is an Indian village—but they never try to go down the river from here. A few white men, however, ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... he would soon see him return safe: which providentially, and beyond our expectation, happened accordingly, for in a few days after, Emanuel, having contrived to make his escape from the people in the barge, returned by ways that were impassable to any creature but an Indian. All that we could learn from Emanuel relative to his escape was, that he took the first opportunity of leaving them, which was upon their putting into a bay somewhere to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... Dide. Perhaps she would know who this Miette was who had such black eyes and such red lips. But, since she had lived in the house in the alley, the old woman had never once given a look behind the wall of the little yard. It was, to her, like an impassable rampart, which shut off her past. She did not know—she did not want to know—what there might now be on the other side of that wall, in that old enclosure of the Fouques, where she had buried her love, her heart and her ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... which are certainly descended from the same aboriginal species, such as the races of the fowl, pigeon, many vegetables, and a host of other productions, are extremely fertile when crossed; and this seems to make a broad and impassable barrier between domestic varieties and natural species. But, as I will now attempt to show, the distinction is not so great and overwhelmingly important ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... and his army over the Delaware River that bitter cold night in 1777, when the fate of our country wuz a-hangin' over that sea of broken ice—ruin on this side, and possible success on the other, but the impassable gulf of bitter cold water and the crashing masses of ice between—who ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... whatever." The very root of American slavery consists in the assumption, that law has reduced men to chattels. But this assumption is, and must be, a gross falsehood. Men and cattle are separated from each other by the Creator, immutably, eternally, and by an impassable gulf. To confound or identify men and cattle must be to lie most wantonly, impudently, and maliciously. And must we prove, that Jesus Christ is not in favor of palpable, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Australia, the roads leading to the mines are almost impassable, as the soil is light and the water easily penetrates to a great depth. Teams, with half a dozen yoke of cattle, can scarcely draw a heavy cart, as the brutes sink to their knees in mud at every step, and the wheels of the vehicle are buried to the axletree most ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... Batoka 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
... castle, I left Dublin. I was again astonished by the beauty of the prospects, and the excellence of the roads. I had in my ignorance believed that I was never to see a tree in Ireland, and that the roads were almost impassable. With the promptitude of credulity, I now went from one extreme to the other: I concluded that we should travel with the same celerity as upon the Bath road; and I expected, that a journey for which ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... place by the side of the baroness. An animated discussion now began concerning the weather, which was completely changed; a strong south wind had risen in the night, so there was now a thaw. The snow was all melted—the torrents were flowing once more, and the roads impassable. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... by the enemies of the council and the Catholic religion. One of their accusations, if well founded, would be truly crushing. Some scientists, who claim to be very profound, deem it necessary to abjure the Catholic faith, because the Vatican Council has placed an impassable gulf between religion and science, faith and reason. The council anticipated and met this accusation which is so vigorously and persistently urged by the false science of the day. Let us quote from its "Constitution:" ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... the road. Come, the hedges of Nature are not as impassable as the hedges of man. Through these scrub oaks and wild pears, between this tangle of thickets, over the clematis and blackberry bush,—and here we are under the pines, the lofty and majestic pines. How different are these natural hedges, growing in wild disorder, from the ugly ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... venerable old man, of whom he inquired the route to the territories of Amir bin Naomaun, and was informed that they were at no great distance; but only to be entered by a range of rugged and steep mountains composed of iron-stone, and next to impassable; also, that should he succeed in overcoming this difficulty, it was in vain to hope to attain the princess. The prince inquiring the reason, the old man continued, "Sultan Amir bin Noamaun has resolved that no ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... also made subservient to the means of prolonging human life; but how an art which determines the fate of mortals, and ascertains the impassable limits of the grave, could consistently be made subservient to such a purpose, we are rather at a loss to conceive, unless accounted for as follows. The teachers of divination maintained, that not only men, but all natural bodies, plants, animals, nay even whole countries, including every ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... public room, but it is at a separate table, on his separate repast; he is served with what viands, at what hour, he pleases, but no contiguity of position or interchange of friendly offices can remove the impalpable but impassable partition which divides him from his neighbors. He feels something of the air of the penitentiary in the very refinements of his luxurious hostelrie. But these are incidents not without their attendant ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... passed, the remainder of the ascent was very simple. At the summit, 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 without ropes. ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... through the entire previous day and night, details of men from Battery C had pulled one cannon by ropes across a muddy, almost impassable, meadow. So anxious were they to get off the first shot that they did not stop ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... inaccuracies, which, while they mislead the ignorant (i.e., the majority?), are an unpardonable offence to the historically-minded reader. Moreover, the writer of such Fiction, though he be a Thackeray or a Scott, cannot surmount barriers which are not merely hard to scale, but absolutely impassable. The spirit of a period is like the selfhood of a human being—something that cannot be handed on; try as we may, it is impossible for us to breathe the atmosphere of a bygone time, since all those thousand- and-one details which went to ...
— A Guide to the Best Historical Novels and Tales • Jonathan Nield
... said, 'Having crossed that impassable fastness (the world) which has purposes for its gadflies and mosquitoes, grief and joy for its cold and heat, heedlessness for its blinding darkness, cupidity and diseases for its reptiles, wealth for its one danger on the road, and lust and wrath its robbers, I have entered ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... in view, I felt the pressure of those thick London facts almost to suffocation. Nothing but my denser ignorance saved me from their density, as I hurried with my friend through air that any ignorance less dense would have found impassable with memories. ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... many of the Sun River and ranch people came, for the night was terrible, even for Montana, and the roads must have been impassable in places. Even here in the post there were great drifts of snow, and the path to the theater was cut through banks higher than our heads. It had been mild and pleasant for weeks, and only two nights before the ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... rough attentions. To add to the disagreeable nature of their situation, the rain began to fall in torrents before they had accomplished one half of the distance. They were then in the midst of a tract of wooded land that was almost impassable for a lady in the darkness, on account of the yielding nature of the soil, and the numerous ruts and hollows that were soon transformed into miniature pools and streams. Oriana strove to treat the adventure as a theme for laughter, and for awhile chatted gaily with her companions; but it was ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... had plunged through the stream, swollen by continuous rains, at two points near Crookham. The two divisions met at Branxton, after having waded through a marsh which extended from Branxton nearly to the Till, and which the Scots had thought impassable. ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... beautiful Lake Erie, computed at about one hundred and sixty miles in circumference. From the embouchure of this latter lake commences the Chippawa, better known in Europe from the celebrity of its stupendous falls of Niagara, which form an impassable barrier to the seaman, and, for a short space, sever the otherwise uninterrupted chain connecting the remote fortresses we have described with the Atlantic. At a distance of a few miles from the falls, the Chippawa finally empties itself into the ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... 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 ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... with his own—are more abundant than they would be without his care, yet, as his power of taking this care is limited, the increase which has taken place is also fixed, and has long been restrained within impassable boundaries. Again, though in civilized countries man, and all the animals useful to him, are more numerous than in other places, yet their numbers never become excessive, for the same power which brings them into being destroys them as soon ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... 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 ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... 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 sufficient, the soldiers might have been marched ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... to the arm-pits, and from thence it seemed to deepen still more abruptly. Another step forward, and the water rose over his shoulders, the bottom still sloping downwards. The lagoon was evidently impassable. ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... the defeat of General McClellan's magnificent army, and the failure of the Peninsular campaign. And what a lesson is here to be learned! The fate of the contending armies was suspended in a balance. The hour when a particular bridge was to be completed, or rendered impassable by the rising floods, was to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... placed guards at Tuckasege, Toole's, Cowan's and Beattie's Fords. When Cornwallis approached the Catawba, on the evening of the 28th of January, he found it considerably swollen and impassable for ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... Battalion, after a hot meal, began to advance through almost impassable country. The guns must have been pounding away at the same range for a long while; the ground was worked and kneaded until it was soft as dough, though no rain had fallen for a week. Barclay Owens ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... sound which sends a thrill of delight through hell—the sound of exultation which rises from the tongues of bigots when the martyr's soul mounts upward from the flames in which his body is consumed. Again the scorpion attempts to escape, and again it is turned back by that impassable barrier of fire. The shouts of the children deepen. At last, finding that there is no way by which to fly, the hated thing retreats to the center of its flaming prison and stings itself to death. Then it is that the exultation ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... 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 ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... the Promised Land to true believers. Some visions I beheld of its beautiful angels walking in shining robes; strains of its sweet melody were sometimes wafted across the distance; but I might never enter there. It was no land of promise to me. A gulf, dark and impassable, lay between. And beside all this, as I have already intimated, I considered myself out of danger. My life's lesson had been learned. I knew it by heart. What more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... Cork to the far-famed Lakes of Killarney. I had performed the same journey several years before; but I now travelled, after passing Macroom, by a road that had been made since my last visit, through Ballyvourney, a wild and mountainous district, formerly impassable. The territorial improvements there are now matter of history, it having been proved before the Commissioners of Land Inquiry, that land, valued at 3s. 9d. per acre, had been made permanently worth L.4 per acre by a small outlay, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... if any spot of indifference is found upon the broad highway between the past and the future, then no connection of any sort whatever, no continuous momentum, no identical passenger, no common aim or agent, can be found on both sides of the shunt or switch which there is moved. The place is an impassable chasm. ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... system enabled mounted troops to operate far into the vital interior of the country without returning to the railway. It must be understood that the main use of the blockhouse-line was not to stretch an impassable chevaux-de-frise from point to point, but to furnish a series of posts, which ensured the safety of the convoys that followed their trend. By this means it was possible to keep columns operating in the interior supplied with food and forage. So much so, that towards the end many columns ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... 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 ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Clear & bright. Went up on divide, met 3 punchers who said road impassable. Saw 2 trains stalled away across alkali flat. Very ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... in the attempt to retake Messines, out of which our cavalry had been driven some days before. French troops were also there, in lumps. One morning the country would be brilliant with the white horses, sky-blue tunics and red trousers, of the Chasseurs d'Afrique, and the roads impassable with French infantry and transport moving towards Ypres; and by the next evening nothing but khaki-clad British were seen, besides patches of Belgian infantry, largely stragglers and ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... Mr. Nimmo's road was but open so we might readily, but Mr. Nimmo's new road was not opened, and why, because it was not finished. Only one mile or so remained unfinished, and as that one mile of unmade unfinished road was impassable by man, boy, or Connemara pony, what availed the new road for our heavy carriage and four horses? There was no possibility of going round, as I proposed; we must go the old road, if road it could ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... sight, if it ever does so. Our captain will see what ought to be done, and he will remember that time presses. We cannot delay in these waters, and, after all, the one thing of real importance to us is to get out of the polar circle before the winter makes it impassable." ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... he heard a loud shout from the crowd, which was followed by a crash. Dashing once more across the passage, he saw that a lurid flame was piercing the smoke in the other room. The staircase he knew was impassable; probably gone by that time; but he had not time to think, so he drew the blanket over the girl's head and bounded towards the window. There was a feeling of softness under his feet, as if the floor were made of pasteboard. He felt it sinking beneath ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... The 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 ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... and the arms we carried represented all reasonable precautions against suffering and starvation; but, of course, if the course of the river proved very long and difficult, if we lost our boats over falls or in rapids, or had to make too many and too long portages, or were brought to a halt by impassable swamps, then we would have to reckon with starvation as a possibility. Anything might happen. We were about to go into the unknown, and no one could say ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... thoroughly out of 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
... mysterious body which we call a comet. Herschel shall construct a telescope which magnifies two thousand times, and add another planet to our system beyond the mighty orb of Saturn. Roemer shall estimate the velocity of light from the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites. Bessell shall pass the impassable gulf of space and measure the distance of some of the fixed stars, although such is the immeasurable space between the earth and those distant suns that the parallax of only about thirty has yet been discovered with our finest instruments,—so boundless is the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... and yet there is an impassable gulf between us,' she wrote. 'We hear that the seas are overrun with pirates and that no ship is safe. Our vessels are being fired upon and sunk. I would not mind being captured by a good Yankee captain, if it were ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... musical hubbub, and delicate banter. So the ladies and gentlemen fell one and all into the partridge pit dug for them by the Countess: and that horrible 'Hem!' equal in force and terror to the roar of artillery preceding the charge of ten thousand dragoons, was silenced—the pit appeared impassable. Did the Countess crow over her advantage? Mark her: the lady's face is entirely given up to partridges. 'English sports are so much envied abroad,' she says: but what she dreads is a reflection, for that leads off from the point. A portion of her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... together Jim Mason was stuck with his bags in the Dalesman's Daughter, and there was no communication between the two Dales. On the Mere Marches the snow massed deep and impassable in thick, billowy drifts. In the Devil's Bowl men said it lay piled some score feet deep. And sheep, seeking shelter in the ghylls and protected spots, were buried ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... cypress, fig, or mulberry tree. Soon the gardens cease, and lentisk, rosemary, box, and ilex—shrubs of Provence—with here and there a sumach out of reach, cling to the hard stone. And so at last we are brought face to face with the sheer impassable precipice. At its basement sleeps a pool, perfectly untroubled; a lakelet in which the sheltering rocks and nestling wild figs are glassed as in a mirror—a mirror of blue-black water, like amethyst or fluor-spar—so pure, so still, that where it laps the pebbles you ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... steppe, sometimes treeless, for an extent of fifty miles, and sometimes having a stunted covering of mezquite (acacia), of which there are two distinct species. This steppe is in several places rent by chasms a thousand feet in depth, and walled in on both sides by rugged impassable precipices. Vast masses of shapeless rocks lie along the beds of these great clefts, and pools of water appear at long intervals, while stunted cedars grow among the rocks, or cling from the ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... so favourable to the methods of fighting of its defenders, ran the three roads which connect Colenso and Ladysmith. Of these roads the western passed over three very strong and presumably entrenched positions. The central had become by disuse impassable.[217] Much of the eastern was only fit for ox-wagons. Along the face of this strategic fort ran the Tugela, an admirable moat, as completely commanded by the heights on its left bank as is the ditch of a permanent work by ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... through the tangled, almost impassable, forest had been very slow and toilsome, and having been involved in its shadow from daybreak, they were, of course, quite unaware of the approach of the steamer or the landing ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... and with all the means and appliances of the Lady Paulina, wearied besides as she had been with the fatigue of a day's march, performed over roads almost impassable from roughness, there was little reason to think that she would miss the benefit of her natural advantages. Yet sleep failed to come, or came only by fugitive snatches, which presented her with tumultuous dreams,—sometimes of the emperor's court in Vienna, sometimes of the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... stood at the doors gossiping and excited, as though no Sabbath pots were a-cooking; straggling groups possessed the roadway, impeding her advance, and as she got nearer to the school the crowd thickened, the roadway became impassable, a gesticulating mob blocked ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... Council could only quarrel among themselves. Wyatt advanced towards the Capital. Mary rose to the occasion, and herself addressed the populace, her speech going far to allay the panic. Wyatt found the bridge at Southwark impassable, and after some hesitation marched up the river, crossing at Kingston. The loyalists however had plucked up heart. The insurgents' column, in the advance to London, was cut in two. Wyatt at the head of the leading section made a desperate ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... at the rush of ice, man. 'T would be absolute madness to attempt a crossing. The plan was for Cadwallader's brigade to attack Burlington at the same time we made our attempt, but I bring word from there that the river is impassable and the plan abandoned. His Excellency cannot fight both the British ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... within. The windows are, for the same reason, sufficiently diversified in appearance, being ornamented with every variety of common blind and curtain that can easily be imagined; while every doorway is blocked up, and rendered nearly impassable, by a motley collection of children and porter pots of all sizes, from the baby in arms and the half-pint pot, to the ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... with her thin face between her hands, peered scrutinisingly into her visitor's face. There was a great contrast between them, the rich girl and the poor, each the representative of a class so widely separated that the gulf seems well-nigh impassable. ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... of God we mean the words, in which it is (inadequately) stated, and nothing more, the idea of God is separated by an impassable gulf from the being of God. Further, if we admit that the idea is, by its very nature, and by the very facts of the case, essentially different from the being of God, then it is of little use to continue to maintain that the being of ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... Augustus; but thinking of him, and of the strange 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 "to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... built in a position naturally strong, and one part of the wall passed over rocky precipices which were considered entirely impassable. There was a sort of glen or rocky gorge in this quarter, outside of the walls, down which dead bodies were thrown on one occasion subsequently, at a time when the city was besieged, and beasts and birds of prey fed upon them there undisturbed, so lonely was ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... above me some 1400 feet, of a brownish tint, presenting vertical strata of granite, which threw off the glittering rays of the morning sun. Clinging around its base was a range of sharp, upheaving crags, from one hundred to two hundred feet in height, which formed an almost impassable barrier to the mountain itself from the valley adjoining. These crags were separated from the mountain by a deep and narrow gorge, yet they must be considered as forming the projecting ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... his regular boatman, he gave the desired permission. Accordingly, after an early supper, Colin started out with Vincente to a section of the shore. The tall, sharp cliffs jutted straight out of the water, and far upon the crest were the characteristic flock of goats browsing along paths impassable to any other animal. Below the water lay the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... yet all proved failures. Bayou Sorrel, Lake Chicot, Grand River, and the Plaquemine itself, from both ends of the stream, were thoroughly explored, but only to find the bayous choked with driftwood impossible to remove, and until removed rendering the streams impassable. Two of these drifts in Bayou Sorrel were carefully examined by Captain Henry Cochen, of the 173d New York. The first he reported to be about a mile in length, "composed of one mass of logs, roots, big and ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... land, by certain physical conditions connected with climate, with altitude, with the pressure of the atmosphere, the weight of the water, etc.; and this is true even for animals of migratory habits, for all such migrations are periodical, and have boundaries as definite and impassable as those that limit the permanent homes of animals. There is a certain series established by the relations between different kinds of animals, as thus distributed over the globe, which agrees with the gradation in their rank, their growth, and their succession in time;—the law which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... town of Meshed i Sar serves as a port. It is the commercial capital of Mazandaran, and 26 m. distant from Sari and 90 m. from Teheran. Pop. about 50,000. Built in a low and swampy country and approached by deep and almost impassable roads, Barfurush would not seem at all favourably situated for the seat of an extensive inland trade; it is, however, peopled entirely by merchants and tradesmen, and is wholly indebted for its present size and importance to its commercial prosperity. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... a beautiful city. It reminds me of Genoa, but that most of its streets are so steep as to be impassable for wheeled vehicles, and some of them are merely grand flights of stairs, arched over by dense foliaged trees, so as to look like some tropical, colored, deep colonnades. It has covered green balconies with festoons of creepers, lofty houses, streets narrow enough to exclude ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... tropics. The long, low, white buildings, with piazzas and verandas on the water-side; the general impression of heat and lassitude, existence appearing to pulsate only with the sea-breeze; the sandy, almost impassable streets; and the firm, level beach, on which everybody walked who could get there: all these suggested Jamaica or the East Indies. Then the head-quarters at the end of the beach, the Zouave sentinels, the successive anterooms, the lounging aids, the good-natured and easy General,—easy ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... see the hills beyond? They are really islands cut off on all sides by the impassable mire, which has crawled round them in the course of years. That is where the rare plants and the butterflies are, if you have the wit to ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... night, pitching his little tent in the trail for pure cussedness, and defying aloud a traveling world to make him move until he got good and ready. He might have saved his vocabulary, for the road was impassable before him and behind; and had Casey managed to start the car, he could not have driven a mile in ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... warriors advancing unimpeded. Francois de la Verendrye remained at the camp to guard the baggage. Pierre went on with the raiders. In two weeks they were at the foot of the main range of the northern Rockies. Against the sky the snowy heights rose—an impassable barrier between the plains and the Western Sea. What lay beyond—the Beyond that had been luring them on and on, from river to river and land to land, for more than ten years? Surely on the other side of those lofty summits one might look down on the long-sought Western ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... Portland was distinguished, not only by being selected to hold the waxlight in the royal bedroom, but by being invited to go within the balustrade which surrounded the couch, a magic circle which the most illustrious foreigners had hitherto found impassable. The Secretary shared largely in the attentions which were paid to his chief. The Prince of Conde took pleasure in talking with him on literary subjects. The courtesy of the aged Bossuet, the glory of the Church of Rome, was long gratefully remembered ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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 Emperor and ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... were often compelled to force their passage; again it became clogged with masses of debris, dead branches, and dislodged fragments of stone, across which they were obliged to struggle desperately, while once they completely halted before a sheer smoothness of rock wall that appeared impassable. It was bridged finally by a cedar trunk, which Hampton wrenched from out its rocky foothold, and the two crept cautiously forward, to emerge where the sunlight rested golden at the summit. They sank face downward in the short grass, barely ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... half encircled the town and harbor. Here the first battery was to be planted; and from this point other guns were to be dragged onward to more advanced stations,—a distance in all of more than two miles, thought by the French to be impassable. So, in fact, it seemed; for at the first attempt, the wheels of the cannon sank to the hubs in mud and moss, then the carriage, and finally the piece itself slowly disappeared. Lieutenant-Colonel Meserve, of the New ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... memory, and then taking down a volume, he began to read. I waited long. At last he closed the book suddenly, said to himself, "I'll try it," and in half a moment my father's white hairs were separated from me by the impassable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... project of carrying a railway along, under, or over such a material as that of which it consisted, would certainly never have occurred to an ordinary mind. Michael Drayton supposed the Moss to have had its origin at the Deluge. Nothing more impassable could have been imagined than that dreary waste; and Mr. Giles only spoke the popular feeling of the day when he declared that no carriage could stand on it "short of the bottom." In this bog, singular to say, Mr. Roscoe, the accomplished historian of the Medicis, buried his fortune in the hopeless ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... Silent and Alexander Farnese. The Yser was dammed at Nieuport, the sluices were opened above Dixmude, and slowly the river rose above its banks and spread over the meadow-flats the Germans were striving to cross. Men were drowned and guns submerged, and presently an impassable sheet of water protected the Belgians on the railway from Nieuport to Dixmude. The Germans, however, made two more efforts to pierce the Belgian line north and south of the inundation. On the 30th they seized Ramscapelle, but were expelled by the French ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... the following day the expedition arrived off that not over-delightful spot. It contains about 2000 inhabitants, and is situated on perfectly level ground, so completely closed in by impassable forests or water, that a walk in any direction is impossible, unless along the sea-beach. The inhabitants consist of a few Englishmen, and a greater number of Germans and Americans, employed in the engrossing work ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston |
