"Impassable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... provisions which they had obtained at the plantation, and resumed their journey. George led the way into the swamp, and, as he seemed to choose the most difficult path, their progress was necessarily slow and laborious. About the middle of the afternoon the swamp became almost impassable, and the major was about to suggest the propriety of picking out an easier path, when George suddenly halted on the banks of a narrow, but deep and sluggish, stream, and, wiping his forehead with his coat-sleeve, said, with something ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... more of the army than they wanted to, and didn't have such a very good time after all, for ever since three o'clock the roads have been impassable on account of the crowds of ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... sort of waste and—insobriety of arrangement. When I started, a little while back, to go to Braintree to verify these particulars, I was held up by a flood across the road between Little Easton and Dunmow. Every year that road is flooded and impassable for some days, because a bit of the affected stretch is under the County Council and a bit under the Little Easton Parish Council, and they cannot agree about the contribution of the latter. These things bump ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... tumbled it into the trench. All were stimulated, not only by their native courage, but by the resentment which, since their disgrace, had been festering in their breasts. They made their way into the camp; where, every one repeating, that here was not Caudium, nor the forks, nor the impassable glens, where cunning haughtily triumphed over error; but Roman valour, which no rampart nor trench could ward off;—they slew, without distinction, those who resisted and those who fled, the armed and unarmed, freemen and ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... stretched from my feet to the mountains—a plain so vast that every object of hill and wood and lake lay dwarfed into one continuous level. And at the back of this level, beyond the pines and lakes and the river courses, rose the giant range, solid, impassable, silent—a mighty barrier rising amidst an immense land, standing sentinel over the plains and prairies of America, over the measureless solitudes ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... rare in Syra, but when they do fall, the "River" is often impassable; at such times the professor could reach his house only by zigzags through the side streets, and there were days when all communication was cut off, and he had to stay ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... that every purely scientific aspect, incapable of immediate application, is to be rigorously banished from these lessons? Is it to be understood that, confined to an impassable circle, the value of every truth must be reckoned at so much per hundred, and that I must silently pass over all that aims only at satisfying a laudable desire of knowledge? No, gentlemen, for then these lectures would lack a very essential thing: ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... animals that night, and what they wanted for their own requirements had to be painfully carried up a cliff about six hundred feet in height. On the succeeding day they suddenly came on what at first appeared to be an impassable barrier. The ridge which they had so pertinaciously followed, had, for the last mile narrowed and dwindled down into a sharp razor-backed spur, flanked with rugged and abrupt gullies on either slope. Across this narrow ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... nuisance to the Publique Damage of Our People by reason of their rude and disorderly standing and passing to and fro, in and about our said Cities and Suburbs, the Streets and Highways being thereby pestred and made impassable, the Pavements broken up, and the Common Passages obstructed and become dangerous, Our Peace violated, and sundry other mischiefs and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... impassable to-morrow," said Catharine, drawing aside the curtain, only to see a window already blocked with drifted snow. "But—who can be ringing on such ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and night, wonderful dangerous and infective. From this province Berreo hasted away as soon as the spring and beginning of summer appeared, and sought his entrance on the borders of Orenoque on the south side; but there ran a ledge of so high and impassable mountains, as he was not able by any means to march over them, continuing from the east sea into which Orenoque falleth, even to Quito in Peru. Neither had he means to carry victual or munition over those craggy, high, and fast hills, being all woody, and those so thick and spiny, ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh
... is impassable for sleighs, let alone walking, and their winter wraps are all in the house. For Heaven's sake, men, suggest something! Don't madden me with these ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... herd dashed through the crackling jungle. I rushed forward, as I was uncertain whether they were in advance or retreat. Leaving a small sample of my nose upon a kittar thorn, and tearing my way, with naked arms, through what, in cold blood, would have appeared impassable, I caught sight of two elephants leading across my path, with the herd following in a dense mass behind them. Firing a shot at the leading elephant, simply in the endeavor to check the herd, I repeated with the ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... on the game he shot, and the small quantity of maize he was able to carry with him.[19] In the late fall, however, when recrossing the mountain on his way home through the trackless forests, both game and corn failed him. He lost his way, was forced to abandon his horse among impassable precipices, and finally found his rifle useless owing to the powder having become soaked. For fourteen days he lived almost wholly on nuts and wild berries, and was on the point of death from starvation, when he met two hunters on horseback, who fed him and ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... a battle in this impassable country unknown to my men only makes my task harder. We cannot clear the roads and fight as well. It is wiser for me to resort to stratagem and come upon my enemies unawares. In that way I may be able to kill them ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... began falling outside, and I knew the roads were impassable; but, chafing with impatience, I resolved upon another advance. Cautiously proceeding via the sofa, my attention fell upon a scrap of newspaper; and, to my unspeakable disappointment, ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... this exasperated and semi-poetic fury, shaking her fist under the nose of the impassable hunter, "you are not even a woman. Your friends the Delawares are only women, and you are their sheep. Your own people will not own you, and no tribe of redmen would have you in their wigwams; you skulk among petticoated warriors. You slay ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... Comtesse thought of leaving, for if she were going to stay any longer, they must provide themselves with winter clothing. They had reached the end of September; it rained nearly every day, the streets of the village were impassable, sitting on the shore out of the question, the equinoctial gales howled across the country from the tempestuous sea; all the world had gone home, and Wilhelm and Pilar were the last guests in the desolate hotel, spending most of ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... pleased himself, and doing it very slowly; in the second place, any sort of stuff that would sell. And he remarked that his poor was just as bad as it could possibly be. He realized, he said, that his limitations were absolutely impassable. "What I can't do, I can't do at all, and I can't acquire it. I only ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... landmarks that would show them the brook. Then, all at once, to their amazement, the stream they were following divided into two forks; the one at the right coming down from higher land, broken in its course, as far as they could see, by stones and boulders that made it impassable even for the light canoe; the other branch emerging from a thick tangle of ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... rock, growing broader as it went, till at last it ended in the hidden krantz. This krantz was a very beautiful spot about three morgen, or six English acres, in extent, and walled all round with impassable cliffs. Down the face of one of these cliffs fell a waterfall forming a deep pool, out of which a stream ran, and on the banks of this stream the new hut was being built in such a position that the heat of the sun could ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... into the interior in the direction of Santiago are generally narrow and bad; they traverse almost impenetrable jungles; and they are liable, at this season of the year, to be rendered impassable for wheeled vehicles by heavy ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... civilisation; this bids us expect still further progress, and glorifies our descendants more than it abases our ancestors. But to whichever view we may incline on sentimental grounds the fact remains that, while Charles Darwin declared language to form no impassable barrier between man and the lower animals, Professor Max Muller calls it the Rubicon which no brute dare cross, and deduces hence the conclusion that man cannot have descended from an ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... but quite a number were trampled to death by the others, and now the regular crossing was not approachable for the stench of dead cattle. Flood knew the stream, and so did a number of our outfit, but none of them had any idea that it could get into such an impassable condition as Forrest reported. ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... capable of being formed under domestication are known? Can any distinct line be drawn between a race and a species? To these three questions we may certainly answer in the negative. As long as species were thought to be divided and defined by an impassable barrier of sterility, whilst we were ignorant of geology, and imagined that the world was of short duration, and the number of its past inhabitants few, we were justified in assuming individual creations, or in saying with Whewell that the beginnings of all things are hidden from man. Why then ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... intention of returning to Sego, proposing to travel along the southern side of the river; but he informed me, that, from the number of creeks and swamps on that side, it was impossible to travel by any other route than along the northern bank; and even that route, he said, would soon be impassable, on account of the overflowing of the river. However, as he commended my determination to return westward, he agreed to speak to some one of the fishermen to carry me over to Moorzan. I accordingly stepped into ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... regions near the poles were considered uninhabitable and unnavigable on account of the extreme cold. The burning zone, or rather the central part of it, immediately about the equator, was considered uninhabitable, unproductive, and impassable in consequence of the excessive heat. The temperate zones, lying between them, were supposed to be fertile and salubrious, and suited ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... of Abibe are said to be twenty leagues broad, and can only be passed over in the months of January, February, March, and April, as from incessant heavy rains at all other times of the year, the rivers are so swelled as to be quite impassable. In these mountains there are many herds of swine, many dantes, lions, tigers, bears, ounces, large wild-cats, monkeys, vast snakes, and other vermin. There are also abundance of partridges, quails, turtle-doves, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... everything was misty and deceptive, ever mocking him with a semblance of reality, but still dissolving when he flung himself upon it for support and rest. His instinct and early training demanded something steadfast; but, looking forward, he beheld vapors piled on vapors, and behind him an impassable gulf between the man of yesterday and to-day, on the borders of which he paced to and fro, sometimes wringing his hands in agony, and often making his own woe a theme of scornful merriment. This ...
— The Christmas Banquet (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... little later, dense Austrian columns were seen advancing upon the villages of Aspern and Essling, where the French, cut off from their supports, had to meet an overpowering enemy in front, with an impassable river in their rear. The attack began at four in the afternoon; when night fell the French had been driven out of Aspern, though they still held the Austrians at bay in their other position at Essling. During the night the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... difficulty was arrived at, in the shape of a precipice about three hundred feet high. It seemed that there would be no difficulty in crossing the glacier if the cliff could be descended, but higher up and lower down the ice appeared, to my inexperienced eyes, to be impassable for ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... before him, and he found himself standing in a marshy valley, where a few wretched cottages were scattered here and there with no means of communication. There was a river, but it had overflowed its banks and made the central land impassable, the fences had been broken down by it, and the fields of corn laid low; a few wretched peasants were wandering about there; they looked half clad and half starved. "A miserable valley indeed!" exclaimed the prince; but as he said it a man came down from the hills ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... city are in poor condition, and are very uneven. During the rainy season, they are almost impassable, and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... 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 ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... Corona hate it. It had shut her up into a lonely life for long years. Juliet Gordon and Juliet's father, Meredith Gordon, were the only relations Miss Corona had in the world, and the old family feud divided them by a gulf which now seemed impassable. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... leadership. There were the common people of ordinary abilities and meagre possessions, who looked up to this first class. Between the two there was an invisible barrier. The customs of the day emphasized it. Yet the institutions of the land and its democracy demanded that this barrier, not impassable to men of parts and character who could push up from the masses, should never become insurmountable, as it often did under a monarchy; that it should be steadily leveled by intrusting the governing power more and more to ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... seaward valleys and combes of the South Downs. To the west, the great tidal flats and swamps about Hayling Island cut off Sussex from Hampshire; and before drainage and reclamation had done their work, these marshy districts must have formed a most impassable frontier. From this point, the great woodland region of the Weald, thickly covered with primaeval forest, and tenanted by wolves, bears, wild boars, and red deer, swept round in a long curve from the swamps at Bosham and Havant ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... demonstrations. They merely watched us, apparently from motives of curiosity. All this time we were drawing steadily nearer to the line of lofty mountains, which with their icy crests rose before us like an inaccessible and impassable barrier, apparently closing up all farther progress; nor was there any indication of any pass or any opening, however narrow, through which the great stream might run. Nothing was there but one unbroken wall of iron ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... mentality, to which we shall find no parallels in the past. Its chief characteristic is profound secularity or materialism. The typical town artisan has no religion and no superstitions; he has no ideals beyond the visible and tangible world of the senses. This of course opens an impassable gulf between him and Greek religion, and a still wider gulf between him and Christianity. The attempts which are occasionally made, especially in this country, to dress up the Labour movement as a return to the Palestinian Gospel, are little short of grotesque. The contrast is well summed ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... over the lonely island. There would be no court until December to try John, and his imprisonment in Kirkwall jail grew every day more dreary. But no storms kept Christine long away from him. Over almost impassable roads and mosses she made her way on the little ponies of the country, which had to perform a constant steeple-chase ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... remaining ox and start to remove goods up Canyon. Find trail in awful condition, yet thousands are struggling to get through. Horses often fall in pools of water ten to fifteen feet deep, trying to haul loads over the boulders that render trail almost impassable. Drive with sleigh over places that at other times one would be afraid to walk over without any load. Two feet of snow fell during the night, but it is now raining. Rains and snows alternately. At night bitterly cold. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... evening, in the rue Pagevin, in the days when that street had no wall which did not echo some infamous word, and was, in the direction of the rue Soly, the narrowest and most impassable street in Paris (not excepting the least frequented corner of the most deserted street),—at the beginning of the month of February about thirteen years ago, a young man, by one of those chances which come but once in life, turned the corner of the rue Pagevin to enter the rue des Vieux-Augustins, ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... darkened as his eyes rested on it. It was Marley's business to see that the egress for the water was kept free and unblocked with ice, and only yesterday he had given him orders to attend to it. It was the second or third time he had returned to find the entrance to his own house almost impassable. Crossing over with difficulty the frozen stream, he looked into his cabin. There was about a foot of muddy water and ice covering the floor and floating his slippers and some pairs of socks he had ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... road with due care, and then escape upon adjoining land and do damage their owner is not liable therefor, if he makes reasonable efforts to remove them as speedily as possible.[79] Likewise, if a traveller bent upon some errand of mercy or business finds the highway impassable by reason of some wash-out, snowdrift, or other defect, he may go round upon adjoining land, without liability, so far as necessary to bring him to the road again, beyond the defect.[80] If a watercourse ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... into an hour, then into an hour and a half, before the weary mail made its appearance. The road through the forest must be all but impassable, our old friend told us. But oh, how tired Reggie and I were of waiting! though all the time never a thought of uneasiness with regard to Nora crossed my mind. And when the mail did come, delayed, as the postmaster ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... hermit's life! Four weeks' torture, tossing, and sickness! Oh, these bleak winds and bitter northern skies, and impassable roads, and dilatory country surgeons! And oh, this dearth of the human physiognomy! and, worse than all, the terrible intimation of Kenneth that I need not expect to be out of ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... consciousness of his own power, evidently intoxicated Marlowe with a vast ambition to achieve results which in his youthful inexperience he could scarcely even picture to himself. His spirit, cramped and outraged by the impassable limitations of human life and by the conventions of society, beat recklessly against them with an impatience fruitless but partly grand. This is the underlying spirit of almost all his plays, struggling in them for expression. The Prolog to 'Tamburlaine' makes pretentious announcement that ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... grandmothers. The lane between Deane and Steventon has long been as smooth as the best turnpike road; but when the family removed from the one residence to the other in 1771, it was a mere cart track, so cut up by deep ruts as to be impassable for a light carriage. Mrs. Austen, who was not then in strong health, performed the short journey on a feather-bed, placed upon some soft articles of furniture in the waggon which held their household goods. In those ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... These relics are especially abundant in the vale of Aylesbury, probably at this time one of the richest and best protected of the Saxon settlements. The Chiltern district, on the other hand, is said to have been an impassable forest infested by hordes of robbers and wild beasts. In the reign of Edward the Confessor, Leofstan, 12th abbot of St Albans, cut down large tracts of wood in this district and granted the manor of Hamstead (Herts) to a valiant knight and two fellow-soldiers ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... 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 ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... even remotely resembling any of those presented in connection with the two previous Bills can be put forward now. Each of those schemes would involve the Irish Parliament in a huge deficit from the very outset. Even if the schemes were adapted to the changed modern conditions the same impassable gap between available revenue and certain expenditure remains. Those schemes presumably embodied principles which the Governments of 1886 and 1893, and the Nationalist parties of those dates regarded ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... position: one at the east, bearing down to the river, and along its western bank; another, a circuitous one, to the west, coming in on Paint Creek, at the mouth of Jenny's Creek, on the right of the village; and a third between the others, a more direct route, but climbing a succession of almost impassable ridges. These three roads are held by strong Rebel pickets, and a regiment is outlying at the village ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... in the trenches immediately opposite Gommecourt cost us 16 casualties. Our line here still bore witness to the terrible bombardment which had frustrated the efforts of the 56th Division on July 1st, for long sections of trench then levelled and rendered impassable had not since been opened out. Every man not on duty was employed with one or other of the multifarious details for the expected attack, while on the morning of the 13th heavy shells were poured upon us, amongst them ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... action was very severe, and continued nearly four hours. The Indians, under the command of Alligator and Sam Jones, numbered about 700 warriors, and were posted in a dense hammock, with their front covered by a small stream, almost impassable on account of quicksands, and with their flanks secured by swamps that prevented all access. Colonel Taylor's force amounted to about 500 men, a portion of whom were inexperienced volunteers. By an extraordinary effort, the stream in front ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... seasons of the year, the country much more favorable for offensive operations than that in front of Washington, much more level, the woods less dense, the soil more sandy" (p. 47). After arriving, we find "the roads impassable," "very dense and extensive forests, the clearings being small and few;" and "the comparative flatness of the country and the alertness of the enemy, everywhere in force, rendered thorough reconnoissances slow, dangerous, and difficult" (p. 79). ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... he did not confess it to himself, the generations of men were separated by a wide impassable gulf—the rich and ruling class, the godless, on one side; the poor, the suffering and lowly—the to-be-saved,—on the other, and none ever passed across the deep abyss. He would have challenged any man who counted ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... and lusciousness may be soon attained. Vilmorin's experiments with wild carrots and those of Carriere with radishes lead to the same conclusion as regards roots. Improvements of flowers in [807] size and color are usually easy and rapid in the beginning, but an impassable limit is soon reached. Numerous ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... dismounted; that craggy hill was impassable to horsemen. Though less in number than their foes, and with a steep mountain to climb, they did not hesitate. The gallant nine hundred were formed into four columns, Campbell's regiment on the right centre and Shelby's on the left, taking the post of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... advanced rapidly into the country, the militia under Moultrie, who had considered the swamps impassable, offering but a feeble resistance, and retiring hastily, destroying the bridges in their rear. On the 11th of May, the British force crossed the Ashley River a few miles above Charlestown, and, advancing along the ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... piled on to a long, narrow cart drawn by two mules, while I and my boy each bestrode a very small donkey, and so I passed out from the mighty city by the stone road which leads to Tungchow, as owing to heavy rains and subsequent frost the more comfortable country tracks were impassable. ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... of landscapes, the effect approaches near to enchantment. This path used to be my favourite evening and morning resort, when engaged with a favourite author, or new subject of study. It is, I am informed, now become totally impassable; a circumstance which, if true, reflects little credit on the taste of the Good Town or ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the projector of the plan, perfectly losing the notion of time, calculated for ten days. From that port the flying expedition was to march directly on Richmond through a country having only common field and dirt roads, and this in a season when all roads generally are in an impassable condition, through a country intersected by marshy streams, principal among them the Matapony and the Pamunkey—to march towards Richmond and the Chickahominy marshes. It seems that Chickahominy exercised an attractive, Armida-like ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... there were bad Indians, half-breeds, and outlaws that made the trading-post a venture Withers had long considered precarious, and he wanted to move and intended to some day. His nearest neighbors in New Mexico and Colorado were a hundred miles distant and at some seasons the roads were impassable. To the north, however, twenty miles or so, was situated a Mormon village named Stonebridge. It lay across the Utah line. Withers did some business with this village, but scarcely enough to warrant the risks he had to run. During ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... found great difficulty in getting upstream. Trees had been felled so as to fall across the river, and Indian spies had been placed here and there along the river-bank to warn the townsmen of the approach of the boats. A mile below the town the river had been made impassable, so here the pirates went ashore to wait till daybreak. When it grew light they marched forward, to attack the strong wooden breastworks which the Spaniards had built. Captain Sawkins was in advance, with about a dozen pirates. Captain ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... caution. Noiselessly he moved through the lush grasses of the open spaces, and where the forest was dense, swung from one swaying branch to another, or leaped lightly over tangled masses of fallen trees where there was no way through the lower terraces, and the ground was choked and impassable. ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... special corps of "helpers." No matter how cold the morning or how stormy, I never opened my door but there was "Old Peter" waiting to attend me. When the blinding storms of winter made the roads almost impassable by night, Peter would await my departure from the hospital with his lantern, and generally on very stormy nights with an old horse which he borrowed for the occasion, savagely cutting short my remonstrances with a cross "Faith, is it now ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... well named. It was a natural basin between some jagged and impassable foothills, running between a gorge at each end. Both ends of the basin constricted sharply at the gorges, resembling a ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... only saw field ice in the distance, for had we come into nearer proximity with it, we should not have been able to pass round the north at all. No ice actually forms round the coast line, but the sea ice drifts from Greenland, 100 miles distant, causing the north of the Island to be impassable, except during two or ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... close support, have felt strong enough to occupy and hold a position between Dalton and Resaca. As it was, Thomas should have followed close upon his rear through Snake Creek Gap, with two corps. The distance between the two wings of the army would have been so short and the ground between them so impassable to the enemy as to give us practically a continuous line of battle, and Thomas's two corps in the valley of the Connasauga near Tilton would have been in far better position to strike the retreating enemy ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... Kansas City in 1864 there was little to note except that when I got up on the Raton mountain about thirty miles from Trinidad, Colorado, Uncle Dick Wooten had a large force of Mexicans building a toll road. Originally the road was almost impassable. Saddle horses and pack mules could get over the narrow rock-ribbed pass and around what was known as the "devil's gate," but it was next to impossible for the stages and other caravans to get to Trinidad. This was the natural highway ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... Red Sea, when, at the stretching forth of the hand of the prophet of the Lord, its mighty waters rolled back and stood heaped up as a wall to the host of Israel. The channel of the stream, which but a minute before I could have leaped across, was the next instant filled, and utterly impassable. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... required such a lurid vocabulary to give vent to his feelings. He was even more distressed when he sighted the clump of gum trees near by which he and Bill had purloined the pirogue. Beyond this the creek was impassable. ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... 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, ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... have to make it possible that it shall be fulfilled by keeping inside the wall, and trusting to it. As faith dwindles, the fiery wall burns dim, and evil can get across its embers, and can get at us. Keep within the battlements, and they will flame up bright and impassable, with a fire that on the outer side consumes, but to those within is a fire that cherishes ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... at by taxi-drivers, who naturally took us for two simple Oriental visitors, and just before that impassable barrier the arm of a London policeman was lowered and the stream moved on a faint breath of perfume became ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... had become passionately Christian, Herder never was able to attain to a scientific establishing of his Christianity, or to any sense of the specific aim of its development. He felt himself to be separated from Kant by an impassable gulf. All the sharp antinomies among which Kant moved, contrasts of that which is sensuous with that which is reasonable, of experience with pure conception, of substance and form in thought, of nature and freedom, of inclination and duty, seemed to Herder grossly exaggerated, if ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... all perished in a few days. Capt. Sutter, as soon as he ascertained their situation, sent five mules loaded with provisions to them. A second party was dispatched with provisions for them, but they found the mountains impassable in consequence of the snow. We hope that our citizens will do something for the relief of ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... was helpless. The guide, bearing the lantern, convoyed them out of the highroad, to strike what he assured them was a less circuitous route; and soon had his travellers, now plunged in quagmires that in daylight would have seemed impassable, now clambering over stocks and stones, now leaping broad ditches. At last, after thoroughly exhausting the patience of his companions, the wretched fellow confessed that he had missed the by-path, and indeed did not ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... guide departs. Enter a hilly country. Ascend Barrabungalo. Rainy weather. Excursion southward. The widow returns to the party. Natives of Tarray. Their description of the country. Discover the Loddon. The woods. Cross a range. Kangaroos numerous. The earth becomes soft and impassable, even on the sides of hills. Discover a noble range of mountains. Cross another stream. Another. General character of the country. Proposed excursion to the mountains. Richardson's creek. Cross a fine ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... bitter blasts of winter which sweep over the downs with resistless fury, and which no doors nor windows can exclude. If there should be snow, it is sure to fall in greater quantities on the hills, and, driving before the wind, fills up the hollows, till the roads are impassable for weeks. ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... no country in the world more secure from external invasion than India; but on the west, more especially, nature has interposed between her and the more civilised powers of Europe and Asia a succession of rivers, mountains, and deserts, absolutely impassable by an army of any formidable magnitude. Notwithstanding this, there had been long an uneasy feeling connected with the idea of the territorial aggrandisement of Russia, and of late years, by the desire manifested ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... believed she would. Mrs. Chater plunged across the hall; stood, an impassable and panting guardian, upon the lowermost step. Her outstretched arm stayed Mary; a ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... will remaining what it is. Further, not having done this and having needlessly allowed an abyss to be made by sin between Himself and the first man, it was still open to Him to have abstained from widening it until it became an impassable gulf between Himself and the entire human race. But He did not abstain; instead of localising, He deliberately and wantonly spread the evil, and the ruin that overwhelmed all mankind cannot therefore be said to have sprung from the will of the race, but from His own. ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... resembled it—serfdom. From this order of things arose that fruitful source of all modern revolutions, the division of Europe into two great classes antagonistic to each other and separated by an almost impassable gulf—the lords and ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... there one night by three tall peaks of rock which the natives called "The Three Doctors," where I had instructed the messengers to tell the Mazitu to meet us. For four days we remained here, since rains in the interior had made the river quite impassable. Every morning I climbed the tallest of the "Doctors" and with my glasses looked over its broad yellow flood, searching the wide, bush-clad land beyond in the hope of discovering the Mazitu advancing to meet us. Not a man was to be seen, however, and on the fourth evening, as ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... crowd, and almost instantly disappeared, leaving the young couple, especially Gillian, in much consternation. So earnest was the maiden for instant departure, that Dick was obliged to comply; and as the whole of the thoroughfares about Whitehall were impassable, they proceeded to the river side, and took boat for London Bridge, at a hostel near which old Greenford ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... suspicion of the existence or meaning of the message, or a dog could see all that eye can see in a book yet without any hint of its meaning, or a savage could gaze at the printed score of an opera without ever suspecting its musical import, so this supposed visitor would be absolutely cut off by an impassable gulf from the real seat and significance of human history. The great drama of life, with its likes and dislikes, its loves and hates, its ambitions and strivings, and manifold ideas, inspirations, aspirations, ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... they meant to camp that night. He started over mountains and through woods and up rocks, a far, round-about journey. And the man and his wife went down the river in a spring freshet, headlong with the rapids. [Footnote: One should be familiar with the almost impassable forests of Maine and Canada, even as they are at the present day, to properly appreciate the Chenook's journey. As for the speed of the canoe, I have myself gone down the Kenawha River (Va.), in a dug-out, at the rate of one hundred miles in a day.] But when they had paddled ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... sociologists put the emphasis on the physical more than the psychic factors, and especially on biological analogies in society. It seemed to them as if it was nature that brought men together. Mountains and ice-bound regions were inhospitable, impassable rivers and trackless forests limited the range of animals and men, violent storms and temperature changes made men afraid. Avoiding these dangers and seeking a food-supply where it was most plentiful, human beings met in the favored localities and learned by experience the principles of ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... with infinite difficulty, and found the place practically snowed up, all communication broken. Against strong advice he resolved to push on to Falmouth, distant at least fourteen miles by road, the roads almost impassable with snowdrifts. He began his journey by pony, but soon had to leave the animal behind. Once he was near succumbing, but a rest in a wayside cottage restored him; the last two and a half miles ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... rather blind to the elevated. He will not only start from the actual, but does not conceive the possibility of an infusion of loftier principles. The existing standard of sound sense prescribes an impassable limit to his imagination. Parson Adams is an admirable incarnation of certain excellent and honest impulses. He sets forth the wisdom of the heart and the beauty of the simple instincts of an affectionate nature. But we are forced to admit that he is not the highest type conceivable, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... heard father say. "The servants have been careless in putting out the lights, and something has smouldered and finally caught the curtains—that's the most probable explanation. If that is the case, I fear the back stairs will be impassable; they ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... after her own frolicsome humor. Roger thought, as he looked at them a few moments through the kitchen window, that he had never seen a happier family, and with a sigh wished that it was his privilege to join them without being thought an intruder. Mildred's reserve, however, formed an impassable barrier, and he was hastening by with downcast eyes, when, to his surprise and the young girl's evident astonishment, Mr. Jocelyn arose and said, "Ah, Mr. Atwood, we're glad to see you. Won't you join ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... successfully drawn. Pill, the pilot station for the port of Bristol, threw out such a line to the further bank of Avon and thereby caught many an able seaman who had evaded the tenders below King Road. On Southampton Water it was generally so impassable that few men who could in the slightest degree be considered liable to the press escaped its toils. [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. 581—Admiral Berkeley, Report on Rendezvous, 5 Aug. 1805.] Dublin Bay knew it well. A press "on float" there, carried ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... he with the 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 ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... districts which are traversed by the canals, the present means of communication between different parts of the country are scarcely superior to those of Central Africa. The so-called national roads are nearly impassable. No other country in the world would be so surely and rapidly benefited by a thorough system of railroads as would China. Gold and silver are found in nearly every province of the Empire, the former being still procured by the most primitive processes, such as washing the river sands ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... discovered that the snow had fallen during the night in heavy drifts, and the roads were impassable. Elizabeth, according to her usual custom, sent out men, oxen, and sledges to open pathways for several poor families, and for households whose inmates were visited by illness. In this duty John Estaugh and his friend joined heartily, and none of the laborers worked ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... on. Their art is a summons to individual life. Borodin in particular came upon the Russian people at a moment when, like a tribe that has quit its fields in search of better pasturage, and has wandered far and found itself in barren and difficult and almost impassable ground, it was bewildered and despondent, and felt itself lost and like to perish in the wilderness. And while his folk lay prone, he had arisen and mounted the encircling ridge. And with a joyous cry, and the flaunting of a banner, he called them to the way they had to traverse, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... 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, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... work 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
... ocean as well as on the 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... policy. Their old relations could not be maintained on her part. Even the touch of his hand had the mysterious power to send a thrill to her very heart. Therefore she must surround herself at once with the viewless yet impassable barriers which a woman can interpose even by ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... sweet-smelling soil; the buds upon a clump of fine beeches had begun to open. In this solitude, alone with teeming nature, John tried to interpret his friend's mood; but the spirit of melancholy eluded him, as if it were a will-o'-the-wisp dancing over an impassable marsh. Suddenly, there came to him, as there had come to the quicker imagination of his friend, the overpowering mystery of Spring, the sense of inevitable change, the impossibility of arresting it. At the moment all things ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... mezcal-plant of Mexico. Here and there, mingling with the cacti, are trees of acacia and mezquite, the denizens of the desert-land. No bright object relieves the eye; no bird pours its melody into the ear. The lonely owl flaps away into the impassable thicket, the rattlesnake glides under its scanty shade, and the coyote skulks ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... parent—surely very gratuitously increases the difficulties of the subject. Especially it complicates the problem of the distribution of the same plants and animals over countries immemorially separated by gulfs apparently impassable by ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... Drs Keith and Black came to our tents and acquainted us with the news they had just received from Haifa. The road to Beyrout by the sea shore was infested with thieves, and the road they had intended to take, through Nablous, was quite impassable; they had therefore determined to proceed by sea, and intended leaving at six o'clock the next morning. Sir Moses, however, relying on the Almighty's protection, decided to go by land with Mr Finzi, the English Consular Agent at Acre, who had ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... struck into the brush, threading the paths with the ease of woodsmen. It was necessary to keep to the high inland ridges for the simple reason that the pole trail had by now become impassable. Wallace Carpenter, attempting to follow them, ran, stumbled, and fell through brush that continually whipped his face and garments, continually tripped his feet. All he could obtain was a vanishing glimpse of his companions' backs. Thorpe and ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... moss, or short grass, diversified by tufts of trees, little woods, and here and there vineyards, but no other cultivation, except gardens like those on Richmond-hill. The whole lake, which is twenty-five miles long, and three broad, is all surrounded with these impassable mountains, the sides of which, towards the bottom, are so thick set with villages (and in most of them gentlemen's seats), that I do not believe there is anywhere above a mile distance one from another, which adds very much to the beauty of ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... bitterly cold day, and the snow, which had been falling heavily for some days, was blown in immense drifts across the roads, rendering them almost impassable. The groom, being accustomed to obey, brought the horses round with alacrity when ordered to do so, but he shook his head ominously as he handed the reins to Captain O'Grady, ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... been lonely at the Hamlin cabin, and it grew more lonely after Kane Lawler left the Circle L. For the barrier between Ruth and the happiness she had a right to expect seemed to grow higher and more impassable daily. ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... and a half, miss, by street measurement just now, as, on account of changes, this is impassable," was the prompt reply. "Scarcely half a square by the alley that runs from my back-door, after a short turn, straight through to Maple Street; and, if it is only question of a message, I can send Caleb, so that you may await the coming of the doctor in comfort, in this emporium. He always ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... distance between them with every long, powerful stride of his horse, but already the three rocks, gaunt and high, loomed before him as if forming an impassable barrier across the road. Suddenly, just as Jose and Gallito had almost reached them and the sheriff was gaining upon the fugitives in great leaps, he saw them swerve their horses aside and dash into a clump of trees to ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... boundless, for they are scarcely passable, and hence unknown; they bear the stamp of having lasted, as they are now, for ages, and there appears no limit to their duration through future time. If, as the ancients supposed, the flat earth was surrounded by an impassable breadth of water, or by deserts heated to an intolerable excess, who would not look at these last boundaries to man's knowledge with ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... receive material from surface washing are very deficient in phosphorus and much poorer than ours in potassium and magnesium; and your undulating and steeply sloping lands are more or less broken, with many rock outcrops on the points and some impassable gullies, which as a rule compel the cultivation of the land in small irregular fields. A three-cornered field of from two to fifteen acres can never have quite the same value per acre as the land where forty or eighty acres of corn can be grown in a ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... and for the next two hours the flying ship sped northward through Smith's Sound, for the most part over an unbroken field of pack-ice which, to any ordinary vessel, would have opposed an utterly impassable barrier. At two o'clock in the afternoon, however, the Greenland shore suddenly trended to the north-eastward; and after following it for a short time the ice once more began to be intersected with water channels, short and narrow at ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... lakes is about four miles long and half as wide. A narrow river, strait, or rapids nearly a mile long connects the two. Originally this rapids was impassable by boats larger than canoes, and even such little craft were likely to be overturned unless handled by strong and skillful canoemen; but some years earlier the state had cleared this passage by removing numerous great boulders and ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis
... front line before we took Beaumont Hamel; and I noticed many things, as, clips of cartridges, unexploded bombs, Lewis-gun magazines, parts of a broken machine gun, and various odds and ends of accoutrements. In some places this trench had fallen in because of rain and other things and was almost impassable, wherefore, after much floundering and splashing, F. suggested we should climb out again, which we did forthwith, very ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... that this might not happen at once—nor did he wish it to; messages would pass, and Guidobaldo would seek by cajolery to win back his niece. This she would resist, and, in the end her uncle would see the impassable nature of the situation, and agree to her terms that it might be ended. That it should come to arms, and that Guidobaldo should move to besiege Roccaleone, he did not for a moment believe—for what manner of ridicule would he not draw upon himself from the neighbouring States? ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... splendid procession; and it is understood that on their arrival at Spy Park they were met by the colonel and some sporting friends, who expressed their astonishment, that after having travelled through such almost impassable roads, amid torrents of rain, and particularly the lap-dog beagles, not more than thirteen inches and a half in height, and consequently often swimming, they should have ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... firing was heard, which proceeded from a strong detachment of American regulars under Captain Wool, who had succeeded in gaining the brow of the heights in rear of the battery, by a fisherman's path up the rocks, which, being reported as impassable, was not guarded. Sir Isaac Brock and his aide-de-camps had not even time to remount, but were obliged to retire precipitately with the twelve men stationed in the battery, which was quickly occupied by the enemy. Captain Wool having ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... had been to follow the banks of the Crocodile River, which is what I should have attempted had I not chanced on the woman, Jeel. Lucky was it that I did not do so, since I found afterwards that this river wound about a great deal and was joined by impassable tributaries. Also it was bordered by forests. Jeel's track, on the contrary, followed an old slave road that, bad as it was, avoided the swampy places of the surrounding country, and those native tribes which the experience of generations of the traders in this iniquitous traffic ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... friends "petered out," or else, with the primitive tools of the sixteenth century, ceased to yield adequate returns, the Spaniards lost interest in that remote region. The rude trails which connected Pucyura with Cuzco and civilization were at best dangerous and difficult. They were veritably impassable during a large part of the year even to people accustomed to ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... and the gray clouds hurried by, and the old, strong-bearded man who shook the reins and gave the horses their heads could have laughed aloud in his joy that he was driving his daughter home. But Sheila—she sat there as one dead; and Mairi, timidly regarding her, wondered what the impassable face and the bewildered, sad eyes meant. Did she not smell the sweet strong smell of the heather? Had she no interest in the great birds that were circling in the air over by the Barbhas mountains? Where was the pleasure she used to exhibit in remembering the curious ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... friend Tayoga has been compelled to seek a lair," said Wilton emphatically. "His snow shoes would be the sorriest of drags upon his feet in mud and water, and without them he will sink to his knees. The wilderness has become impassable." ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... fail to get an unbiassed judgment; the judgment of one who did not crave for nature "to advantage dressed", but trusted to the instinctive freshness of a mind, one of the most alert and open that ever gave themselves to literature. It is this that puts an impassable barrier between Dryden and the men of his own day, or for a century to come. It is this that gives him a place among the great critics of modern literature, and makes the passage from him to the schoolmen of the next century ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... last three weeks of this long trek, nine days were consumed in forced marches through sterile country, bordering a wide and—according to Mafuta—utterly impassable desert, during which both water and grass were so exceedingly scarce that the entire party suffered terrible privation, no game of any kind being seen, where more than half the oxen died, while the remainder were reduced to such ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... where it will lead and what it will prove," and finding that it must imply an organized designer, and an endless series of such beings, "he gives it up," and denies the existence of design altogether. There is a hiatus, it would seem,—an impassable gulf,—between the admission that law and order prevail in Nature, and the conclusion that law and order are manifestations of design: "What I supposed to be design in the opening of my argument is no longer ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... is the worst night of all! for now these youths are out in their thousands; certain streets are given up to them, and become impassable for others. Respectable folk are shocked, and church-going folk are scandalised! Surely the streets are the property of respectable people! and yet they cannot pass through them ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... morning. He went through three or four small villages. After passing through the Gap, he had taken the railroad, as less likely to lead him through the more thickly settled parts of the country. Before him the mountains of the Blue Ridge rose like an impassable wall, and when the day dawned he was approaching Manassas Gap. He had walked twenty-five miles during the night, and prudence, as well as fatigue, required him to seek ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... Candles were beginning to twinkle in latticed windows. A yellow light from the public-house made an impassable streak across the road. Cheerful voices were coming along the meadow path behind us. ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... the matter a good deal, and then reflected that in a case where every opening is barred save one, it is our duty not to plunge at an impassable barrier, but to take that one opening, however unpromising it may be. Accordingly I accepted. My income was to be a hundred a year, and it was proposed that I should lodge with my friend the retired dealer, who had the only two rooms in the village ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... successful; but the fortune of the second was made by "Tom and Jerry." Night after night immediately after the opening of the doors, the theatre was crowded to the very ceiling; the rush was tremendous. By three o'clock in the afternoon of every day the pavement of the Strand had become impassable, and the dense mass which occupied it had extended by six o'clock far across the roadway. Peers and provincials, dukes and dustmen, all grades and classes of people swelled the tide which night after night rolled its wave up the passage of the Adelphi. It was a compact wedge; on it moved, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... to have been able to take the park of the next place, La Sarthe Chase, too—that impassable haw-haw and the boarded-up gate irritate me. The boards have been put since I came to look over everything last autumn. I did instruct the agent, Martin, in Applewood to offer a large price for it, but he assured me it would be quite useless; it belongs, it appears, to the most ridiculous old ladies, ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... scattered homesteads come out with joyful hearts to greet the sunshine. There is, however, no slow transition. Rushing winds from the North-west sweep the sky, the snow vanishes, and after a week or two, during which the prairie trails are impassable, the bleached grass dries and green blades and flowers spring from ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... said at length; "you shall know this impassable barrier. You are too honorable to reveal it. Alas! it is not that fear which restrained me; my own weakness which shrinks from being to thee as to other men, were the truth once known, an object of ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... Austrian army, who pursued them to the Vaudois frontiers, reached Bobbio in a state of appalling destitution, M. Rostaing, the pastor, and his people, fed them out of their scanty stores, dressed their wounds, and carried them on their shoulders over frightful precipices, and along snow-covered defiles impassable to ordinary traffic. This act of humanity (gratefully acknowledged by the French commander, Suchet) would have drawn upon them a fresh outpouring of oppression, had not the Russian general taken a truer estimate of their position. He allowed them to retain their arms on the condition ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... there is my father's house. I never killed any of the traders; they all come to me. I am the great Moene Katema, of whom you have heard." On hearing Livingstone's object, he gave him three guides, who would take him by a northern route, along which no traders had passed, to avoid the plains, impassable from the floods. He accepted Livingstone's present of a shawl, a razor, some beads and buttons, and a powder-horn graciously, laughing at his apologies for its smallness, and asking him to bring a coat from Loanda, as the one he ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... hearing by concentrating its powers upon the sight; and lastly, with admiration for that humanity which, as it were imprisoned, fettered, maimed, yet can, by the God-given force of the immortal spirit, so burst its prison-bars, and rise, through hindrances which seem to us impassable, to the tenderest, the noblest, the purest, and ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... surrounded by columns, pinnacles, and castles of fantastic shapes, which limited our view, and by impassable canons, which restricted our movements. South of us, about a mile distant, rose one of the castle-like buttes, which I have mentioned, and to which, though with difficulty, we made our way. This butte was composed of alternate layers of chocolate-colored sandstone and shale about one ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... Fauconnaire is, I believe, unclimbable except at one place, at least for those who are not experienced cragsmen or Alpine experts. At low water a causeway of rocks joins it to the mainland, but at half-tide even it is impassable, except in a boat on a calm day. On a windy day such a strong tide rushes through the strait that a boat would be swept away in the attempt to cross, although the distance is only four or five hundred feet. The narrowness of the channel makes the ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... the sisters to stop, pointed to what he called the way, and Bertha drew Maria in that direction, trusting that they should escape by submission, but after going a little distance, she found herself at the edge of a bare, deep, dry ravine, steep on each side, almost so as to be impassable. The path only ran on the other side. There was another shout of exultation and laughter at the English girls' consternation. At this evident trick of the surly peasants, Maria shook all over, and burst into tears, and Bertha, gathering courage, turned to expostulate and offer a reward, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Taal to Balayan was impassable for a while on account of the quantity of lava. Taal, once so important as a trading centre, was now gone, and Batangas, on the coast, became the future capital ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... which made the roads almost impassable, helped Robin. She threw herself into her studies with a determination almost as upsetting to Percival Tubbs as her former indifference. And when the studies were over she buried herself in the great divan before the library fire with books piled about her while Harkness hovered near ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... could not make it at all in the dark. The lights are all gone, and the streets are nearly impassable in lots of places. Get dad, and come on. Don't forget the book," ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... carried them in wild bounds across impassable chasms, their laboring lungs checked them in the ascent. The joyous inebriation was wearing off. Winslow met his companion's eyes sheepishly as they stopped where a sheer cliff of basalt above caught and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... make a shed or stable, in anticipation of a visit from the Duke of Edinburgh, who did not come. A year or two, however, in this climate will heal these temporary scars, and all will be as luxuriant as ever. Indeed such scars heal only too fast here. For the paths become impassable from brush and weeds every six months, and have to be cutlassed out afresh; and when it was known that we were going up to the waterfall, a gang had to be set to work to save the lady of the party being wetted through by ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... of a warning. And those who ignored that did not generally live to repeat the omission. He seemed utterly unable to understand that anything could face his fangs of concentrated death and not go out in contortions. And there were no contortions about this prickly foe, only an impassable front, or, if ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... account of battles, and of hardships endured from the cold, in the struggle through mountain snows, through almost impassable forests, and across bridgeless rivers, is given in Xenophon's Anabasis, the celebrated work, in seven books, which forms the classical narrative of the campaign and the retreat. Soon after the death of Cyrus, in September, B.C. 401, the seizure and murder ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... went to school in summer, for in winter the snow made the roads impassable, but at this time the Dominie was ill and until he should get well they had the long days to themselves. When breakfast was over the next morning and the Shepherd had gone with Tam to the hills, Jean decided to wash the clothes. Sandy Crumpet came early, and the two boys went off ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins |
