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Mountain pass   /mˈaʊntən pæs/   Listen
Mountain pass

noun
1.
The location in a range of mountains of a geological formation that is lower than the surrounding peaks.  Synonyms: notch, pass.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Mountain pass" Quotes from Famous Books



... the magnificence of the scenery for a part of the way, where the road goes through a grand mountain pass, where all the vegetable glories of the tropics seem assembled, and one gets a new idea of what scenery can be; while beneath superb tree-ferns and untattered bananas, and palms, and bright-flowered lianas, and graceful trailers, and vermilion-colored ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... another question which he desired to evade. He is not permitted to ride off upon a speculative inquiry about the abstract rights of other men; he is pinned down to a personal practical duty. "A certain man went down from Jerusalem," &c. It is a narrow, dreary mountain pass. By nature it is fitted to be a haunt of robbers; if there are any robbers in the country, they will certainly gravitate to this spot. In point of fact it was notoriously unsafe for travellers in that day, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... vegetable matter, but soon it was succeeded by a pungent penetrating odour which made one wonder whence its source. This pungency remained for the remainder of the morning's ride, almost to the top of the mountain pass, some 9000 feet above sea-level, and we ascertained on our return that it proceeded from the enormous cabbages grown by the mountaineers for the markets on the ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid

... on all sorts of secret and difficult errands, and such errands had a curious way of becoming necessary when Nur Mahomed was on duty. Once, while he was taking a journey, a foot-bridge gave way under him; once he was attacked by armed robbers; a rock rolled down upon him in a mountain pass; a heavy stone coping fell from a roof at his feet in a narrow city alley. Altogether, Nur Mahomed began to think that, somewhere or other, he had made an enemy; but he was light-hearted, and the thought ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... the oldest of the hospice buildings. Formerly the monks had lived here and had for many years kept the travelers' shelter in the mountain pass. The traffic over the long Alpine road was now increasing from year to year. Simmen, the landlord of the hospice, had been for the past ten years managing the new tavern, which stood opposite to the old shelter, and he had at this time become a man ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... fort and the camp lay on the same side of the river; and the most direct route between them was by a narrow mountain pass, rising abruptly from the water's edge on the left, and, on the right, shut in by a steep and lofty hill, whose stony sides were overgrown with laurel and stunted cedars and pines. As it was altogether out of ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady

... mountain-top; all the stars seemed brighter than usual. The steeps were reflected in Brotherswater, and, above the lake, appeared like enormous black perpendicular walls. The Kirkstone torrents had been swoln by the rains, and now filled the mountain pass with their roaring, which added greatly to the solemnity of our walk. Behind us, when we had climbed to a great height, we saw one light, very distinct, in the vale, like a large red star—a solitary one in the gloomy region. The cheerfulness of the scene was in ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... mountain pass in a dark dawn: an angry cold wind whistles and screams, and wild wet clouds are flying. Wotan stands there; presently he summons Erda, who rises, as in the Rhinegold, with a "frosty light" about her; he asks her what will be the upshot of the day's doings. Her answer is no ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... the road as his more fortunate riders. To see a hill at a distance after having travelled so long over a dead level was refreshing; but when we began to wind round the base of precipitous cliffs, or clamber up some romantic mountain pass, the effect ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant

... was only an old gatherer of broken chairs, and got sixpence for each chair he mended, and lived on it; an indomitable old man who lived bravely and would die bravely, albeit not on any burning plain or in any wild mountain pass, leading his men, but in a garret, where he would mend his last broken chair, and look up unflinching in the Destroyer's face. Whenever he came stumping rapidly past, and turned that swift piercing eagle glance on Fan, she would shrink aside as if she felt the sting ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... cliff, one wound round to the left and dived into a picturesque wooded dell at the entrance to a mountain pass, then crossed the rocky bed of a dried-up stream and drove along an avenue of mulberry-trees, which in a few minutes conducted us to Saint-Pray, where one found the vintage in full operation. Carts laden with tubs ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly

... Stars Night Music Nocturne of Water The Long Moment Designs I-IV Argo Japanese Moon The Naiad Floodtide Mountain Pass in August ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott

... mountains near Lydenburg in a westerly direction. The day when I arrived at Hector's Spruit, President Steyn, attended by an escort of 100 men, went away by the same route. Meanwhile General Buller was encamped at Glyn's mines near Spitskop and the Sabi River, which enabled him to command the mountain pass near Mac Mac and Belvedere without the slightest trouble, and to block the roads along which we meant to proceed. Although the late Commandant (afterwards fighting General) Gravett occupied one of the passes with a small commando, he was himself in constant danger of being cut off ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen

... (A), one of the leading journals of the day, has spoken three times within two years of "passing under the Caudine Forks," evidently supposing them to be a "yoke" instead of a valley or mountain pass. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... the teams plodded toward the mountain pass. Hiram rode with Jerkline Jo in their movable schoolroom, and left Tweet to his own thoughts behind the blacks. They camped on the desert that night, at a ranch conveniently situated between Julia and the mountains, where was an abundance of artesian water. ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins

... sitting-room and hall, and one in the bed-room; these were lighted when passing through the tunnels. There were three hooks in the wall serving for hat pegs, and at the same time to support two flags for signals. A large map of the mountain pass from Cumberland to Wheeling hung over the sofa opposite the table. The table was covered with green baize stretched tightly over it. On the table were placed a large blotting-book, ink, and pens, three or four daily ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter

... the left hand, or south fork of the cross-roads, and gallopped on until they reached the branch road leading west. They turned into that road and pursued it mile after mile, through field and forest, mountain pass and valley plain, until, late in the afternoon, they reached another mountain range, and heard the roaring of a great torrent. They entered the black gap, and slowly and cautiously made their way through it. By the time they had emerged from the pass, the ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... this route, in which the traveller will be charmed with a succession of scenery on Nature's grandest scale. After leaving Meyringen and its beautiful valley, called the Vale of Hasli, he looks down from the top of a mountain pass upon a small compact, oval-shaped valley, named, we believe Hasligrund, into which he descends, and then climbs the mountains on the opposite side. Proceeding onward, he reaches a small place, Handek, formed of a few wood chalets, and giving its name to one of the finest waterfalls in Switzerland. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various

... greet. In what hard mountain pass Striv'st thou? In what importunate morass Sink now ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson

... heel and came back to him. He pillowed his head upon his arm, and was content. It was well to be so filled with fancies, so iron of will, so headstrong and gay; to be friends once more with a younger Haward, with the Haward of a mountain pass, of mocking comrades and an ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... And distant villages that high About the peaks of Mandar lie. Speed over Yavadwipa's land,(671) And see Mount Sisir(672) proudly stand Uplifting to the skies his head By Gods and Danavs visited. Search each ravine and mountain pass, Each tangled thicket deep in grass. Search every cave with utmost care If haply Rama's queen be there. Then pass beyond the sounding sea Where heavenly beings wander free, And Sona's(673) waters swift ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... known for a long time to come about this campaign is restricted to infrequent official statements made by the Russian and Turkish General Staffs, announcing the taking of an important town or the crossing of a mountain pass, up to then practically unknown to the greatest part of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... was once broken by the loud, hurried roll of the drum. Volunteers were invoked to go forth and prevent the British troops, under the pitiless Tarleton, from forcing their way through an important mountain pass. In an old fort resided a family, all of whose elder sons were absent with our army, which at the north opposed the foe. The father lay enfeebled and sick. By his bedside the mother called their three sons, of the ages ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... a wondrous spectacle—wall upon wall of lofty limestone, making what seems an impenetrable barrier, closing around us, threatening to shut out the very heavens; at our feet an ever-narrowing mountain pass or valley, the shelves of the ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... most popular excursions from Luchon are those to the Port de Venasque, the mountain pass at the head of the Pique Valley; the Vallee du Lys and the Cascades; and ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough

... mile along the road to Tyndrum, which is through a bare glen, {216} and over a mountain pass. It rained when we pursued our journey again, and continued to rain for several hours. The road which we were to take was up another glen, down which came a stream that fell into the lake on the opposite side at the head of it, so, after having crossed the main vale, a little above ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth

... them, and discovered a large and fertile oasis some miles in extent, and plentifully watered. It was by way of this oasis that Infadoos suggested we should return, and the idea seemed to us a good one, for it appeared that we should thus escape the rigours of the mountain pass. Also some of the hunters were in attendance to guide us to the oasis, from which, they stated, they could perceive other fertile spots far ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard

... the base of the hills, I had glimpses of rocky defiles which pierced the mountain wall; and through every defile poured infantry and artillery in unbroken columns, and over every mountain pass streamed endless files of horsemen. Railroad tunnels were choked with slowly moving trains piled high with artillery; viaducts glistened with helmets all moving westward; every hillock, every crag, every height had its group of tiny dark dots or ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... and jolly good-nature go together, and that music is incompatible with crime. An experience I once had in Switzerland brought home this fact to my mind in a forcible manner. I was taking a fortnight's tramp, all alone, and one day I came near the summit of a mountain pass where, some time previously, a solitary tourist had been robbed and murdered. There was no house within five miles, and I had not met a soul that morning until I approached this place, when I suddenly saw a shabbily dressed man coming down ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck

... blame men when beasts stampede! We should accept the evidence that some monstrous herd, making its way through a mountain pass, somehow went crazy and bolted for the plains and this settlement got in the way and it was too bad for the settlement. Everything's explained, except the ship that went to Weald. A cattle stampede, yes. Anybody can believe that! But there was a man-stampede! ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster

... familiarly every mountain pass, and, such were the sagacity and the resources displayed in his roving expeditions, that he was vulgarly believed to be attended by a familiar.11 With a character so extraordinary, with powers prolonged so far beyond the usual term of humanity, and passions ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... first, that a small brigade of raw troops—troops were all raw in those days—had been pushed in across the Ohio border and after various vicissitudes of fortune and mismanagement found itself, greatly to its own surprise, at Cheat Mountain Pass, holding a road that ran from Nowhere to the southeast. Some of us had served through the summer in the "three-months' regiments," which responded to the President's first call for troops. We were regarded by ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... on, along the mountain-sides, between the flower-covered banks and thickets full of birds' songs, he prayed to God to guide him in the right way. And so when, after some hours of solitary tramping, he saw a man coming towards him out of a lonely mountain pass, he felt sure this was someone sent ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay

... the sword." It would have seemed idle to have said this at the mouth of the mountain pass at Thermopylae with Leonidas and his immortal Spartan heroes all lying dead amid the wreck made by the mighty host of Xerxes. A century afterward, at Cannae, one sixth of the whole population of Rome lay dead on the battlefield by the ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... St. Bernard is a mountain pass in the Swiss Alps, and the monastery was built in the year 963 by a nobleman named Bernard de Menthon, for the use of pilgrims on their way ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... easily laid down their arms and surrendered, thus saving their lives; but this would have endangered Lee's army, so they fought and died like men. The roar of their howitzers and the rattle of their musketry were like the blasts of the horn of Roland when calling Charlemagne to his aid along the mountain pass of Roncesvalles, but, unlike the latter, we could not answer our comrades' call, and had only to leave them alone to "die in their glory." The brave Pettigrew fell while heading his troops in a charge to beat back some of the furious onslaughts of ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... part of the Tannu Ola was occupied by the Partisans from the village of Vladimirovka. Consequently they were forced to return. We inquired from them the whereabouts of these outposts and how many Partisans were holding the mountain pass over into Mongolia. We sent out the Tartar and the Kalmuck for a reconnaissance while all of us prepared for the further advance by wrapping the feet of our horses in our shirts and by muzzling their noses with straps and bits of rope so that they could not neigh. It was dark when ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski

... about it, and I'd be watching myself. That's too much trouble. My business is to watch others, not myself. But I do thank you for giving such a welcome to Honora and the babies. I hope you will soon be about again. I find it so much easier to imagine you riding over a mountain pass than sitting in the house ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... and were soon winding in and out of the narrow mountain pass. The chill of the overhanging snows fell ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... a Fate Driven; and thus before the Skaian Gate Stands he in pomp of dreadful calm, to die, As once in dreadful haste to slay. Thereby The walls were thick with men, and in the towers Women stood gazing, clustered close as flowers That blur the rocks in some high mountain pass With delicate hues; but like the gray hill-grass Which the wind sweepeth, till in waves of light It tideth backwards—so all gray or white Showed they, as sudden surges moved them cloak Their heads, or bare their faces. And none spoke Among them, for there stood not woman there ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett

... was made by Cecil's; and the little band rode through the mountain pass that night, toward the country of ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch

... of Petersburg. Longstreet with two divisions was at Fayetteville; the other division, that of Pickett, was left at Chambersburg to guard the trains. Hill's corps had reached Cashtown and Mummasburg, except Anderson's division, which was still back at the mountain pass on ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday

... next day, which was May Day, our cavalcade reached Stoneman's Lake. We had had another rough march, and had reached the limit of endurance, or thought we had, when we emerged from a mountain pass and drew rein upon the high green mesa overlooking Stoneman's Lake, a beautiful blue sheet of water lying there away below us. It was good to our tired eyes, which had gazed upon nothing but burnt rocks and alkali plains for so many days. Our camp was beautiful beyond description, ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes

... secret hope, forever Waiting upon the promised mysteries, Unknowing God, that urged them, turning still To some kind star,—they swept o'er the sea-weed In unknown waters, fearless swam the course Of nameless rivers, wrote with flying feet The mountain pass on pathless snows; impatient Of rest, for aye, from Babylon to Memphis, From the ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... Auranjabad was eight miles. I was already much fatigued, for I had visited the temples, ridden eight miles over the mountain pass, and mounted to the top of the fortress during the greatest heat; but I looked forward to the night, which I preferred passing in a house and a comfortable bed, rather than under an open verandah; and, seating myself in my waggon, desired the driver ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... rubbing themselves with pork-fat, oil of almonds or of sesame,[65] or turpentine. Having sent out a clever scout named Demokrates, who captured a native prisoner, they learned that Tiribazus was laying plans to intercept them in a lofty mountain pass lying farther on in their route; upon which they immediately set forth, and by two days of forced march, surprising in their way the camp of Tiribazus, got over the difficult pass in safety. Three days of additional march ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... air, and grass, All things he cherished, sweet and tender, As through our gorgeous mountain pass We bear ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... way amongst these, some way up a ravine, which wound to the right. The firing now seemed quite close; indeed, he could see smoke floating up to the dear sky. But surely El Obeid could not be there, in the middle of a mountain pass, commanded on all sides by higher ground! The army must surely have been attacked ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... character in the mountains. His great brown feet looking out beneath torn blue overalls, his dark-skinned chest wrapped in a blanket of many colors, his long straight hair falling from beneath a well-worn sombrero, formed a familiar sight all over those mountains. Those feet had tramped every mountain pass and rugged trail and had climbed every lofty peak for a hundred ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher

... path shut it out from view, the hammer-like fists of his comrade were still smashing down the naked creatures who danced like monkeys round him, and the warlike shouts of his stentorian voice reverberated among the cliffs and caverns of the mountain pass long after he was ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne

... beautiful for having been neglected. Garden, indeed, is hardly a proper word. In England it would rank as one of our noblest parks, from which it differs principally in this, that most of the fine trees are fruit trees. From this we came to a mountain pass which reminded me strongly of Borradaile, near Derwentwater, and through this defile we struck into the road, and rejoined ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... favorable to his purpose, especially those of the St. Bernard, the Simplon and Mount Cenis. Of these the first was the most difficult; but it was much the shorter, and Napoleon determined to lead the main body of his army over this ice-covered mountain pass, despite its dangers and difficulties. The enterprise was one to deter any man less bold than Hannibal or Napoleon, but it was welcome to the hardihood and daring of these men, who rejoiced in the seemingly impossible and spurned faltering ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall



Words linked to "Mountain pass" :   Donner Pass, mountain chain, defile, chain of mountains, mountain range, location, Khyber Pass, range of mountains, range, notch, saddle, Brenner Pass, saddleback, chain, gorge, Cumberland Gap, gap, pass, col



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