"Morass" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... late afternoon the journalist and the neophyte went to the Luxembourg, and sat down under the trees in that part of the gardens which lies between the broad Avenue de l'Observatoire and the Rue de l'Ouest. The Rue de l'Ouest at that time was a long morass, bounded by planks and market-gardens; the houses were all at the end nearest the Rue de Vaugirard; and the walk through the gardens was so little frequented, that at the hour when Paris dines, two lovers might fall out and exchange the earnest of reconciliation ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... western frontiers of his kingdom, at a place whose name has been immortalized by its having been for some time the place of his retreat. It was called Athelney.[1] Athelney was, however, scarcely deserving of a name, for it was nothing but a small spot of dry land in the midst of a morass, which, as grass would grow upon it in the openings among the trees, a simple cow-herd had taken possession of, and built ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... thee in all thy ways, With our blame, with our praise, Our shame to feel, our pride to show, Glad, angry—but indifferent, no! Whether it be thy lot to go, 660 For the good of us all, where the haters meet In the crowded city's horrible street; Or thou step alone through the morass Where never sound yet was Save the dry quick clap of the stork's bill, 665 For the air is still, and the water still, When the blue breast of the dipping coot Dives under, and all is mute. So, at the last shall come old age, Decrepit as befits ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... men into the neighboring forest to cut timber for that purpose. Captain Little, with fifty British regulars, was deputized to protect these men at their labors. This supporting party was posted on a narrow ridge leading to the fort, with a morass on one side, a creek on the other, and ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... haste if you mean to go with me,' said the West Wind; and away it went over hill and dale, and moor and morass, and Halvor had enough to do to ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... the assault was to begin on the right and left flanks of the enemy's works, while Major Murfey amused them in front; but a deep morass covering their whole front, and at this time overflowed by the tide, together with other obstructions, rendered the approaches more difficult than was at first apprehended, so that it was about twenty minutes after twelve before the assault began. Previously to which I placed myself at ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... chillness, like a clouded lantern-ray, The forest's heart of fog on mossed morass, On purple pool and silky cotton-grass, Revealed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... wilderness like a restless spirit, and speaking to herself in language which will endure no translation. She rambled for hours, seeking rather than shunning the most dangerous paths. The precarious track through the morass, the dizzy path along the edge of the precipice or by the banks of the gulfing river, were the roads which, far from avoiding, she sought with eagerness, and traversed with reckless haste. But the courage arising from despair was the means of saving the life which (though deliberate ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... runnels, burying themselves in the mud at the shock of a footstep; but the tadpoles sported recklessly in the sunny water, for as yet their legs as well as their troubles were to come. I confess that this long morass by the sparkling Bene, frequented by the heron, the snipe, the water-hen, and other creatures that seek the solitude, interested me more than the caverns which I had set out to see. I nevertheless followed ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... of the upward-life comes freedom from the dangers of water, morass, and thorny places, and the ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... Julian, I must ask you what there could be to make me leave such a paradise and return to the morass where I (in a lowered voice) spent twenty-five years of my life. What could I possibly expect out of the theater anyhow? I am not made for elderly parts. The heroic mother, the shrewish dame and the funny old woman are equally little to my liking. I ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... the glen That never crossed their eagle ken: But a' unfrettit turn and say, 'Hoots, but the sport's been grand the day!' For none but Scotsmen born and bred, When ither folk lie snug in bed, Would face yon cauld and watery pass, The eerie peat-hag's dark morass, Where wails the whaup wi' mournful screams, Tae wade a' day in icy streams An' flog the burn wi' feckless flies Though ilka trout declines tae rise, Then hameward crunch wi' empty creel Tae sit and hark wi' unquenched zeal Tae dafties' tales o' lonesome tarns Cramfu' ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... the secret of success was to get near enough to beat down the hostile fire by a multitude of projectiles. The bomb-vessel Thunder anchored in the situation assigned her; but her shells, though well aimed, were ineffective. "Most of them fell within the fort," Moultrie reported, "but we had a morass in the middle, which swallowed them instantly, and those that fell in the sand were immediately buried." During the action the mortar ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... drove their infantry before them. Warrener's Horse and the irregular cavalry moved on the flank, the infantry marched straight the swamps, and while some of the guns kept on the solid road, others had to be dragged and pushed with immense labor through the morass. As the British advanced the enemy fell back, abandoning gun after gun. The general of the Sepoy force was on an elephant, on rising ground in the rear of his troops, and Captain Maude, who commanded the artillery, by a well-aimed shot knocked the ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... He was stoned to death by the spectators, but the result of his self-devotion was an edict putting a final stop to the gladiatorial shows. The emperor now fixed his residence, which had been at Milan, at Ravenna, a city that was covered on the land side by a wide and impassable morass, over which was an artificial causeway, easily destroyed in case it could not be defended. It had served him as an asylum during the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... that unsteady bridge,' said I, 'see, where the caiman lies ready to devour us! If, by the least divergence from the path, we should be snared in a morass, see, where those myriads of scarlet vermin scour the border of the thicket! Once helpless, how they would swarm together to the assault! What could man do against a thousand of such mailed assailants? And what a death were that, to ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... turbot might flap its snowy flakes on the emperor's table broader than its broad dish of gold. Many a swelling hill, clad in the dark oak coppice, had echoed to ringing shout of hunter and deep-mouthed bay of hound, ere the wild boar yielded his grim life by the morass, and the dark, grisly carcass was drawn off to provide a standing dish that was only meant to gratify the eye. Even the peacock roasted in its feathers was too gross a dainty for epicures who studied the art of gastronomy under Caesar; ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... and more towards their journey's end, the monotonous desolation of the scene increased to that degree, that for any redeeming feature it presented to their eyes, they might have entered, in the body, on the grim domains of Giant Despair. A flat morass, bestrewn with fallen timber; a marsh on which the good growth of the earth seemed to have been wrecked and cast away, that from its decomposing ashes vile and ugly things might rise; where the very trees took the aspect of huge weeds, begotten of the slime from which ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... Hundreds of groups were being put through squad-drill and the manual, while other groups were having special kinds of exercises—climbing up walls, digging trenches, making roads, shooting at targets. It rained every other day, and the ground was a morass, but no one paid the least attention to that; the men came in plastered with mud, and steaming like lard-vats. They seemed to enjoy it; nothing ever interfered with ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... insulting answer: "He would yield no passage through his dominions to the Ostrogoths; if they would go by that road they must first fight with the unconquered Gepidae" Traustila then took up a strong position near the Hiulca Palus, whose broad waters, girdled by fen and treacherous morass, made the onward march of the invaders a task of almost desperate danger. But the Ostrogoths could not now retreat; famine and pestilence lay behind them on their road; they must go forward, and with a reluctant heart Theodoric gave the signal for ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... motor-boat had arrived at her destination, which was unfortunately not in his immediate vicinity. He crept stealthily along in the direction of the possible anchorage, fighting his way through roots and undergrowth; it was all of no use—a barrier of morass and elephant grass proved absolutely impassable, so he turned back towards his camp, pausing now and then to listen. He could make out voices—one in an authoritative key summoning "Mung Li." Well, he had at least discovered something definite—he was in the vicinity ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... persons who have discussed the nature and character of the plague, that the cultivation of a country, the draining of the lands, and other agricultural improvements, tend to eradicate or diminish it; but, at the same time, we have seen countries depopulated where there was no morass, or stagnate water for many days' journey, nor even a tree to impede the current of air, or a town, nor any thing but encampments of Arabs, who procured water from wells of a great depth, and 180 inhabited ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... watery pastures, enclosed by the Ems and Lippe—the "fallacious fields" described by Tacitus. Here Hermann, first of Teutonic heroes, had dashed out of existence three veteran legions of tyrant Rome. Here the spectre of Varus, begrimed and gory, had risen from the morass to warn Germanicus, who came to avenge him, that Gothic freedom was a dangerous antagonist. And now, in the perpetual reproductions of history, another German warrior occupied a spot of vantage in that same perilous ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to disengage herself by the assistance of Mrs. Scott's hand. Mrs. Scott exerted her utmost power for many minutes, first to assist her friend, and next to prevent herself from being pulled into the morass, as her distressed companion would not disengage her hand. After other assistance was procured by their united screams, Mrs. Scott walked to a chair about twenty yards from the brook, and was seized with an apoplectic stroke: which continued many days, and terminated in a total loss ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... deserts, Through dense scrub and tangled brier, They passed with hearts undaunted, And with steps that would not tire; Through morass and flooding waters, Undismayed by toil and fears, At their chief's command, with salient ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... stream the march was resumed. The steamer kept pace along the river. The boggy ground delayed the columns, but by two o'clock seven more miles had been covered. Only the flag at the masthead was now visible; and an impassable morass separated the force from the river bank. It was impossible to obtain supplies. Without food it was out of the question to go on. Indeed, great privations must, as it was, accompany the return march. The necessity was emphasised by the reports of captured ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... returned Challis, and then the conversation was interrupted by the necessity of skirting a tiny morass of wet leaf-mould that ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... of their ship, had starved in Calcutta, had built him a wooden hut in the jungles of the Delta, had become indigo planter in the swamps of Dinapoor that he might preach Christ without interference, had been forced to think of seeking the protection of a Buddhist in the Himalaya morass—was driven to begin anew in the very heart of the most densely peopled part of the British Empire, under the jealous care of the foreign European power which had a century before sent missionaries to Tranquebar and taught Zinzendorf ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... defended him, the man who sat at the table below the dock and turned over a sheaf of papers with a faint, cynical smile at the corners of his thin lips. This man, they said, had done the impossible. He had dragged the prisoner out of his morass by sheer titanic effort. Obviously Percival Field had believed firmly in the innocence of the man he had defended, or he had not thus triumphantly ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the rock we commenced the descent of the Echemamis. This small stream has its course through a morass and in dry seasons its channel contains, instead of water, merely a foot or two of thin mud. On these occasions it is customary to build dams that it may be rendered navigable by the accumulation of its waters. As the beavers perform this operation very effectually ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... the idea of reclaiming the Great Dismal Swamp, and actually explored it with reference to that ultimate purpose. Through his agency, the incorporated company known as the Dismal Swamp Company was organized. "This vast morass was about thirty miles long and ten miles wide, and its interior but little known" until Washington explored it, and found a lake six miles long and three miles wide ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... censors passionate; Amid coquettes who pray to God And abject slaves who kiss the rod; In haunts of fashion where each day All with urbanity betray, Where harsh frivolity proclaims Its cold unfeeling sentences; Amid the awful emptiness Of conversation, thought and aims— In that morass where you and I ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... perceive that corresponding areas would never be marked out in the pathless forests, and that noblemen could not be found nor created to take up their stand, like chessmen, each in his lonely and inaccessible morass or mountain or thicket, and exercise the prerogatives of the paper preamble over trees and panthers and birds of the air! How could men of such radiant intelligence as Locke and Shaftesbury unquestionably were, show themselves so radically ignorant of the nature of their ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... Though great its cost; and gat him on his feet, And, mile by mile, ascended through the woods Till stunted were its growths; and still he clomb Printing with sandalled foot the dewy steep: But when above the mountain rose the moon Brightening each mist, while sank the prone morass In double night, he came upon a stone Tomb-shaped, that flecked that steep: a little stream Dropped by it from the summits to the woods: Thereon he knelt; and ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... and work of one of the most marvellous groupings of genius since the Athens of Pericles. The revolution of 1848 called from the mud the sewermen. Flaubert, his face to the past, gazed sorrowfully at Carthage and wrote an epic of the French bourgeois. Zola and his crowd delved into a moral morass, and the world grew weary of them. And then the faint, fading flowers of romanticism were put into albums where their purple harmonies and subtle sayings are pressed into sweet twilight forgetfulness. Berlioz, mad Hector of the flaming locks, whose ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... Wednesday, the nineteenth, found their vanguard in a deep forest of pines, less than a mile from Fort Caroline, and near the low hills which extended in its rear, and formed a continuation of St. John's Bluff. All around was one great morass. In pitchy darkness, knee-deep in weeds and water, half starved, worn with toil and lack of sleep, drenched to the skin, their provision spoiled, their ammunition wet, their spirit chilled out of them, they stood in shivering groups, cursing the enterprise and the author of it. Menendez ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... 50). Were it not for this passage, one would have thought that, in the days of Tiberius, Germany was almost as bare of roads as the present interior of Arabia and Chinese Tartary; and that each tribe in that enormous wilderness of wood and morass was approached, as the present people of Dahomey, Ashantee and Timbucto, by a single path; and that it was only, after the lapse of centuries, when, in the due course of things, Germany had assumed a more civilised character, that there were two, three, or more roads; so that we can quite understand ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... rebellious spirit of their officers. Never have I suffered more than from the heat that poured down on us from that blazing sun; the gun barrels burned to the touch, and the tortures of thirst became terrible. In places we sank ankle deep in the hot sand, and beyond this came upon a broad morass almost impossible of passage. Men fell exhausted, and were dragged out by their comrades. Scarcely able to breathe in the hot, stagnant air, caked with foul mud to the waist, we attained the higher ground, and dropped helpless. Even from here the enemy ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... Altinum, Concordia, and Cremona, which yielded to his arms; increased his forces by the accession of thirty thousand auxiliaries; and, without meeting a single enemy in the field, advanced as far as the edge of the morass which protected the impregnable residence of the Emperor ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... divine in their characters? What supernatural in their deeds? What wisdom poured forth from their lips which did not come from other philosophers? What immense structures have been founded on these shifting sands, on this morass of ignorance and childish fable? How long can these structures endure, aided by the bolstering up of the theologists, and how long must it be before the light of reason will pierce these foundations of blindness and force them to topple over? How much longer ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... the wind among the bushy grounds, Far in the distance rose the yell of hounds: The flame-wisps, starting from the sedge and grass, Hung, 'mid the vapours, over the morass. Up to him came a beldame, wildly drest, Bearing a closely-folded feather-vest: She smil'd upon him with her cheeks so wan, Gave him the ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... that he was glorying in the discovery; he told himself that he was not made of the human stuff that can forgive bitter wrongs or forget them until cancelled. He painted in lurid colours his past griefs; through a ghastly morass of revenge grown stale, of memories deadened by time, he tried to struggle back to his original starting-point in vanished years, and feel as he felt when he flung Will ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... between us and the opposite mountains. The river was bordered with a fringe of willows and canes, among which were interspersed a few plants; and scattered about on the marsh was a species of uniola, closely allied to U. spicata of our sea- coast. The whole morass was animated with multitudes of water-fowl, which appeared to be very wild—rising for the space of a mile round about at the sound of a gun, with a noise like distant thunder. Several of the people waded out into the ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... great. Cain might not double back, but instead plunge headlong further and further into the concealing morass before him. No, Cain would not double back. Not now. For in Kriijorl he had met an even match, and ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... Next morning we rose at two, and had started on our jaguar-hunt at three. Colonel Rondon, Kermit, and I, with the two trailers or jaguar- hunters, made up the party, each on a weedy, undersized marsh pony, accustomed to traversing the vast stretches of morass; and we were accompanied by a brown boy, with saddle-bags holding our lunch, who rode a long-horned trotting steer which he managed by a string through its nostril and lip. The two trailers carried each a long, clumsy spear. We had a rather poor pack. Besides our own two dogs, neither of which ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... morning sun before it was finally dissolved. Consequently when the advance-guard of the force which was formed by the New Cavalry Brigade topped the great sloping glacis, inclining for all the world like an under-feature of the Sussex Downs, into the stagnant morass which is Houwater's most prominent feature, the last Boers were disappearing into the labyrinth of Minie Kloof beyond. But there was just sufficient excitement to take the cold and stiffness, bred of a miserable ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... journey. We had to make on foot nearly double the distance that the other tribes would make by canoe, so we gave ourselves no rest. The trail led by morass and fallen timber, and it was the season of stinging gnats and breathless days. The Sacs were always filthy in camp or journeying, and I turned coward at the food I was obliged to eat. But I did not dare leave them and trust them to come alone. They were a fierce, sullen people, ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... for the great struggle, which was to determine the fate of Scotland, the Bruce carefully avoided the errors which had led to Wallace's defeat at Falkirk. He selected a position which was covered, on one side by the Bannock Burn and a morass, and, on the other side, by the New Park or Forest. His front was protected by the stream and by the famous series of "pottes", or holes, covered over so as to deceive the English cavalry. The choice of this narrow position not only prevented ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... the trees shone rosily in the sun. But where Silver stood with his lieutenant, all was still in shadow, and they waded knee-deep in a low white vapour that had crawled during the night out of the morass. The chill and the vapour taken together told a poor tale of the island. It was plainly a damp, feverish, ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... beast probably made its way to the morass for water; but, by Mithras![3] the lad's arrow killed the brute; the barb passed through the eyeball into ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... anything was a relief to Denis; it was like a piece of solid ground to a man laboring in a morass; his mind seized upon it with avidity; and he stood staring at it and trying to piece together some logical conception of his surroundings. Plainly there was a flight of steps ascending from his own ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... jealousy? I hear the tragic note." The certainty of her ground became as morass again. In his turn he ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... was to be. Here, bordered by steep banks covered with bush, was swampy ground not more than two hundred yards wide, down the centre of which ran a narrow channel of rather deep water, draining a vast expanse of morass above. It was up this channel that the sea-cows travelled to the feeding ground where they loved to collect at ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... of the capsule or seed-vessel of the Nelumbium, these being articles of food which fall to the share of the poorest peasant. This very beautiful water lilly grows spontaneously in almost every lake and morass, from the middle of Tartary to the province of Canton; a curious circumstance, when we consider the very great difficulty with which it can be preserved, even by artificial means, in climates of Europe, whose temperature are less warm and less cold ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... with pistols and swords, bound the wretched man, hand and foot, threw him into the boat and rowed into the inlet. Just at the mouth of it there was a morass filled with gad-flies and other poisonous insects. Into this dreadful ditch they threw their former comrade, and then withdrew to a short distance to jeer at and mock him. In about an hour they drew him out again; he was still living, ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... easy as they had imagined it would be for, with only four to drive so many animals, several of the beasts were continually straying from the trail, and once a big steer, with part of the aeroplane on its back, wandered into a morass and they had to labor hard ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... Besides this, sawpits were established at various points in the jungle, and large trees were felled to be cut up into beams and planks. For hundreds of miles in every direction a magnificent forest extended over plain and mountain, rock and morass, and I arrived at the spot just as the rains began to diminish and the daily sunshine to increase; a time which I have always found the most favourable season for collecting. The number of openings, sunny places, and pathways were also an attraction to wasps and butterflies; ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... shoulder of one with a sword, and by a blow over the face forced the other to retire, and so with the assistance of his friends, who now came up, made his escape. Again, in Britain, when some of the foremost officers had accidentally got into a morass full of water, and there were assaulted by the enemy, a common soldier, whilst Caesar stood and looked on, threw himself into the midst of them, and after many signal demonstrations of his valor, rescued the officers, and beat off the barbarians. He himself, in the end, took to the water, and with ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... their crystal fountains; Up runnel and leaping cataract, Boulder and ledge, I climbed and tracked, Till I came to the top of the world and the fen That drinks up the clouds and cisterns the rain, And down through the floors of the deep morass The procreant woodland essences drain— The thunder's home, where the eagles scream And the centaurs pass; But, where it was born, I ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... not cut straight across the country, because the ridge of mountains called Oeta rose up and barred their way. Indeed, the woods, rocks, and precipices came down so near the sea-shore that in two places there was only room for one single wheel track between the steeps and the impassable morass that formed the border of the gulf on its south side. These two very narrow places were called the gates of the pass, and were about a mile apart. There was a little more width left in the intervening space; but in this there were a number of ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... whether they can be twisted as pliantly as their tales." A little below, but scarcely visible, was another gloomy dungeon-cell, wherein was what had once been men, but now with the faces of wolf-hounds, up to their lips in a morass, madly howling blasphemy and lies as often as they got their tongues clear of the mire. Just then a legion of devils passed by, and some attempted to bite the heels of ten or twelve of the devils that had brought them ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... therefore, assisting to support Jerry, moved on as fast as his weight and the nature of the ground would allow. Jerry's fall, however, had given an advantage to their pursuers, who were now making their way across the morass, sometimes stopped by a soft portion, and again moving faster where the ground was comparatively firmer. Still the Cossacks had somewhat gained upon them, and were scarcely fifty yards off, when Tom's welcome ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... to Salisbury is all straight road with moor, morass, and fenland on either side, broken only by the single hamlet of Aldersbury, just over the Wiltshire border. Our horses, refreshed by the short rest, stepped out gallantly, and the brisk motion, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hermit, "is easy to hit. The path from the wood leads to a morass, and from thence to a ford, which, as the rains have abated, may now be passable. When thou hast crossed the ford, thou wilt take care of thy footing up the left bank, as it is somewhat precipitous; and the ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... consequence of their exposed flanks to retire at nightfall, and the Battalion was then holding the line without anyone in front. Rain commenced to fall, and the ground having been churned up by countless shells, the whole area soon became dissolved into a morass of spongy earth pitted with innumerable shell craters half full of water. The trenches that had been dug soon filled, and the men were wet through. They were utterly exhausted, and some of them had to get what sleep they could, huddled up in these wet trenches, with their feet ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... old fragments of blanket and paper, are stuffed into the broken glass; and their air is misery and desolation. It pains the eye to see the stumps of great trees thickly strewn in every field of wheat; and never to lose the eternal swamp and dull morass, with hundreds of rotten trunks, of elm and pine and sycamore and logwood, steeped in its unwholesome water; where the frogs so croak at night that after dark there is an incessant sound as if millions of phantom teams, with bells, were traveling through the upper air, at an enormous ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... heart, was cheered by the knowledge that so long as the world recognizes the divine right of Kings, no monarch by descent could lay better claim to a throne than he. And he was young, and in love, and ready to believe that youth and love can level mountains, make firm the morass, ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... way to Sah-luma's side,—and just then lights appeared, . . lights that were not of earth's kindling, . . strange, wandering flames that danced and flitted along the tapestried walls like will-o'-the- wisps on a dark morass, and flung a ghastly blue glare on the pale, uneasy faces of the scared people, till gathering in a sort of lurid ring round the throne, they outlined in strong relief the enraged, Titanesque figure of Zephoranim whose upraised ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the bay into which the White Water runs, and they could trace the yellow glimmer of the river stretching into the island through a level valley of bog and morass. Far away towards the east lay the bulk of the island,—dark green undulations of moorland and pasture; and there, in the darkness, the gable of one white house had caught the clear light of the sky, and was ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... to do any work, even route marching, and, having nothing to do but lie around and think of himself, Tommy began to grouse. Each camp had become a morass with mud a foot deep, and Tommy looked out upon it and behold it was not good, and he cursed both loud and long whoever he thought might be responsible for the conditions, and particularly Emperor Bill the cause of it all. The Canadian contingent had begun ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... muttered that he knew the way. The man turned to translate his answer to Beorn, when there was a sudden shout. At the moment that Osgod was making a long step from one tuft to another the boy stooped and caught his foot, and with a roar of surprise and fury Osgod fell head-foremost into the morass. At the same moment the lad darted away with a yell of defiance, leaping from tuft to tuft with the agility of a hare. Several of the men started after him, but unaccustomed to the treacherous bog four or five were immersed in it to their waist before they had ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... trembles When Marion's name is told. Our fortress is the good greenwood, Our tent the cypress-tree; We know the forest round us, As seamen know the sea. We know its walls of thorny vines, Its glades of reedy grass, Its safe and silent islands Within the dark morass. ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... however, spoke with Sir Patrick, and in a manner took possession of the young ladies. They were riding between walled courts, substantially built, with intervals of fields and woods, or sometimes indeed of morass; for London was still an island in the middle of swamps, with the great causeways of the old Roman times leading to it. The spire of St. Paul's and the square keep of the Tower had been pointed out to them, and ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wished to play her old part, to regain her lost dominion, to reconvert the smiling land into the pestilential morass, where she could play again her old antics. From the period of the Reformation in England up to the present time, she has kept her emissaries here, individuals contemptible in intellect, it is true, but cat-like and gliding, who, at her bidding, have endeavoured, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... years ago stooping down to look, which way the water oozed from a morass, as a labourer opened it with a spade, to detect the source of the spring, and inhaled a vapour, which occasioned an instant sense of suffocation. Immediately recoiling I believe I inhaled it but once; yet a few hours afterwards ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... about an hour before sunset, they came to the home of the Yellow Devil. The Nest was placed thus. It stood upon an island having an area of ten or twelve acres. Of this, however, only about four and a half acres were available for a living space; the rest was a morass hidden by a growth of very tall reeds, which morass, starting from a great lagoon on the northern and eastern sides, ran up to the low enclosure of the buildings that, on these faces, were considered to be sufficiently defended by ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... floundering out of Administration shack, plowing through the mud with waders only half strapped on as the line of low buildings began shaking and sinking into the morass. From the direction of Number Six dredge another crew was heading for the Tower. But the Tower was rapidly growing shorter as the buoys that sustained it ...
— The Native Soil • Alan Edward Nourse
... carries over into the novel a good deal of the windy moralizing of the pulpit. All of these German naturalists—and they are the only German novelists worth considering—share the weakness of Zola, their Stammvater. They, too, fall into the morass that engulfed "Fecondite," and ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... put together. On one occasion I saw a large company of them chasing an albino, the latter dashing wildly round a pine-tree, with the whole flock in furious pursuit. They drove him off, across an impassable morass, before I could get close enough really to see him, but I presumed him to be of their own kind. As far as I could make out he was entirely white. For the moment it lasted, it was an exciting scene; and I was especially gratified to notice with what extreme ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... almost thick here, the ground like a morass, with inches of clayey mud, which stuck to everything, whilst the sparse lanterns, hung to the prison walls and beneath the portico, threw practically no light into ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... November evening, and the dingy lighting of the bar seemed but to emphasize the bleak exterior. Drifts of fog and damp from without mingled with the smoke of shag. The sanded floor was kicked into a muddy morass not unlike the surface of the pavement. An old lady down the street had died from pneumonia the previous evening, and the event supplied a fruitful topic of conversation. The things that one could get! Everywhere were germs eager to destroy one. At any minute the symptoms might break out. And ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... voice—and ere that voice did pass, The night grew damp and dim, and, through a rent 2615 Of the ruin where we sate, from the morass A wandering Meteor by some wild wind sent, Hung high in the green dome, to which it lent A faint and pallid lustre; while the song Of blasts, in which its blue hair quivering bent, 2620 Strewed strangest sounds ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... mountain, struck out for the lake, resolving to follow the beach, trusting that our party had made their camp on the shore of the lake, in which case we should find them; but if camped at any considerable distance from the shore, we should not find them. Our ride over fallen timber and through morass for the distance of about two miles to the shore of the lake was probably performed more skillfully in the darkness of the night than if we had seen the obstacles in our path, and as we rounded a point on the smooth beach we saw at a distance of a little over ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... abandoned the Royal battery. Upon their flight, the English troops took possession of it, and by means of a well directed fire from it, seriously damaged the town. The main body of the army now commenced the siege. For fourteen nights they were occupied in drawing cannon towards the town, over a morass, in which oxen and horses could not be used. The toil was incredible, but men accustomed to draw the pines of the forests, for masts, could accomplish anything. By the 20th of May, several fascine batteries had been erected, one of which mounted five forty-pounders. These batteries, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... Goth the Christian religion and philosophy are baneful, baleful. As the result of their feeble policy was not Christ followed—the Germans claim—by the Dark Ages when mankind was obsessed by His superstitious worship? Lifting men out of this morass, the proper practical, scientific and warlike forces came at length into play and we have the magnificent modern regime ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... of us?" cried Miss Emma at length, when the shadows began to thicken, and out of the impenetrable forest and morass about them they could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... felt very nervous and excited. All sorts of odd fancies came into my head, and would not go away, but danced about like Will-o'-the-wisps on a morass. What did Prince Ivan mean? Was he mad? or had he drunk too much wine? What strange illusion had he in his mind about Zara and a demon? Suddenly a thought flashed upon me that made me tremble from head to foot. I remembered what Heliobas had said ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... turned against the men who had just been using them. No (*33) assistance coming to him, he (Barlow) intrenched under fire and continued to hold his place. Gibbon was not so fortunate in his front. He found the ground over which he had to pass cut up with deep ravines, and a morass difficult to cross. But his men struggled on until some of them got up to the very parapet covering the enemy. Gibbon gained ground much nearer the enemy than that which he left, and here ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... family has passed away, and its property merged in Banff. The laird was intensely disliked in the neighbourhood. Sir George Ramsay was, on the other hand, universally popular and respected. On one occasion, Sir George, in passing a morass in his own neighbourhood, had missed the road and fallen into a bog to an alarming depth. To his great relief, he saw a passenger coming along the path, which was at no great distance. He called loudly for ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... signal to rush out. Then the Roman horse were thrown into disorder by the assault of a new army, and the cohorts sent out to support them, broken in upon by the body of troops that fled, had augmented the consternation, and were now being pushed into the morass—a place well known to the pursuers, but dangerous to those unacquainted with it—had not Germanicus drawn out the legions in order of battle. Hence the enemy became terrified, our men reanimated, and both retired without advantage on either side. Germanicus, soon after, returning with the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... in our Engine, he would not only not have attackt the Confederates when they past the Morass and Rivulet in his Front, but not have attackt them at all, nor have suffer'd them to have attackt him, it being his Business not to have fought at all, but have linger'd out the War, till the Duke of Savoy having been reduced, the Confederate Army must have been forced to have ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... the west this beautiful plain is bordered by the lonely mountain, from the edge of which it rolls down toward the fever coast; but how far it runs to the north I cannot say—eight days' journey, according to the natives, when it is lost in an untravelled morass. ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... MORASS. Nearly the same thing as a marsh or swamp. In tropical regions they are often overflowed with salt water, yet covered with mangrove ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... lively sketch of the colossal and patriotic works of the Earls and Dukes of Bedford, 'whereby they had drained and reclaimed three hundred thousand acres of land drowned in water, and brought them into cultivation, and thus converted into fertile fields a vast morass extending over seven counties in England.' Could the system which had inspired such enterprise be justly denounced ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... by adoring women to whom even virtue was well lost in return for his attention. Joan, like the spirit of spring, had come upon Palgrave at that time of his life when youth had left him and he had stood at the great crossroads, one leading down through a morass of self-indulgence to a hideous senility, the other leading up over the stones of sacrifice and service to a dignified usefulness. Her fresh young beauty and enthusiasm, her golden virginity and unself-consciousness, ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... Patsy equipped with two cavaliers of courage and address, one of whom had his entries everywhere, while the other possessed the supreme skill of sea, shore, morass, hill, and heather, which comes only after generations of practice. But against them they had a man infinitely subtle and wholly without scruple. Eben McClure was of that breed of Galloway Scot, which, having been kicked and humiliated in youth for lack of strength and courage, ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... circumstances mighty inclement. From the round holes in the shutters of the parlour, shafts of candle-light streamed forth; elsewhere the darkness was complete. The trees, the thickets, were saturated; the lower parts of the garden turned into a morass. At intervals, when the wind broke forth again, there passed overhead a wild coil of clashing branches; and between-whiles the whole enclosure continuously and stridently resounded with the rain. I advanced close ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... points, and where it was possible for it to be forded. Ginckle had found a peasant, who, for a large sum of money, disclosed the passage. It traversed the bog at its narrowest point, the hill of Kilcomeden here running out a shoulder far into it. Four regiments entered the morass, with orders to cross it, and make their way to the nearest hedges on the sloping ground, where they were to post themselves till the cavalry, who were to attempt the passage by Aughrim Castle, could come round ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... be taken in summer, after Berlin and Potsdam have been visited, than to the wild and beautiful Spreewald,—a combination of forest and morass not yet wholly redeemed to the civilization of Europe, but holding in its remoter depths a genuine relic of the old barbarism. The Goerlitz Railway skirts this forest for twenty-five miles before reaching Luebben, some two hours from Berlin in a southerly direction. This is the best point of ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... co-operate with the land forces, and oppose, in a narrow strait, the progress of the Persian fleet. The defile of Thermopylae itself, at the south of Thessaly, was between Mount OEta and an impassable morass on the Maliac Gulf. Nature had thus provided a double position of defense—a narrow defile on the land, and a narrow strait on the water, through which the army and the fleet must need pass ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... tincture of that heresy which was to attack him later on. It was now that, I fancy, he began, in his depression, to be angry with God. How much devotion had he given, how many sacrifices had he made, only to be left storming around this red morass with no one in all the world to care for him except one pale-faced child with its cheek ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... and it was well for him. So was he saved, so was his genius unfettered from the cloying weight of too much abstract thought, which at one time, save for his artistic instincts, would have plunged him into the morass of pedantry and turned his genius into a pillar of salt. A woman had saved him, and through the long years of their life ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... rise before them all heights of possible attainment; and, looking off over the valleys of human endeavor together, they will clear the forest, drain the morass, and improve the interval stirred by ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... the incidents narrated in the last chapter did Jack, and Peterkin, and Makarooroo, and I, push across the continent through bush and brake, over hill and dale, morass and plain, at our utmost possible speed. We did not, during the whole course of our journey, overtake the Portuguese slave-dealer; but we thought little of that, for it was not very probable that we should hit upon exactly the same route, and we entertained sanguine hopes that the energy ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne |
