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Isthmus   /ˈɪsməs/   Listen
Isthmus

noun
(pl. isthmuses)
1.
A relatively narrow strip of land (with water on both sides) connecting two larger land areas.
2.
A cord-like tissue connecting two larger parts of an anatomical structure.  Synonym: band.



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"Isthmus" Quotes from Famous Books



... General Cass had said, "I have an awful swallow ('swaller' was his pronunciation) for territory;" and all Americans have that "awful swallow." The dream of possessing a country extending from the Pole to the Isthmus of Panama, if not to Cape Horn, has been the ambition of the Great Republic—and it is a dangerous ambition for the rest of the world. We have seen its effects in all our treaties. We have always been asked for ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... deed of l'Olonoise; from that time his star steadily declined—for even nature seemed fighting against such a monster—until at last he died a miserable, nameless death at the hands of an unknown tribe of Indians upon the Isthmus ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle

... the Tehuantepec Isthmus, a primal woman, round-armed, deep-breasted, shapely as the dream on which Canova modeled Venus. Her skin was of the rich gold hue that marks the blood unmuddied by Spanish strain; to see her, poised on a rich hip by the river's brink, wringing her tresses after the morning bath, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... Pacific Railroad Company has been able to prevent effective water competition by way of the Isthmus of Panama. The Government has a line of steamers running from New York to the Isthmus, and a railroad line across the Isthmus. With an additional line of steamers running from San Francisco to Panama, the Government would have a through line from San Francisco to New York. ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn

... stand in the stadium, and commanded them to kill the old men, together with the others that were useless, which were in number a thousand and two hundred. Out of the young men he chose six thousand of the strongest, and sent them to Nero, to dig through the Isthmus, and sold the remainder for slaves, being thirty thousand and four hundred, besides such as he made a present of to Agrippa; for as to those that belonged to his kingdom, he gave him leave to do what he pleased with them; however, ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... Algeciras, we saw the huge rock of Gibraltar, almost an island, connected with the main land by a narrow, flat, sandy isthmus. Across the "neutral ground," as the strip between the English and Spanish possessions is called, a line of sentry boxes extended, and red-coated British sentinels paced back and forth. Parallel to the British line there was another line of sentry ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob

... civilizations is always a grand sensation to me; it is like cutting through the isthmus and letting the two oceans swim into each other's laps. The trouble is, it is so difficult to let out the whole American nature without its self-assertion seeming to take a personal character. But I never enjoy the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... these hills to the north for some miles and then, still keeping to the hill-tops, turned toward the west. In the late afternoon, under Hawk-Eye's skillful leadership, they came again to the place where they had crossed the isthmus that connected them with ...
— The Cave Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... Chronicle, November 6, 1822, prints the following proclamation of Jose Maria Carreno, Commandant-General of Panama: "Inhabitants of the Isthmus! The Genius of History, which has everywhere crowned our arms, announces peace to Colombia.... From the banks of Orinoco to the towering summits of Chimborazo not a single enemy exists, and those who proudly marched towards ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... lines. The first, under Omer Brionis, was ordered to make its way through Southern Epirus to the western entrance of the Corinthian Gulf, and there to cross into the Morea; the second, under Dramali, to reduce Central Greece, and enter the Morea by the isthmus of Corinth; the conquest of Tripolitza and the relief of the Turkish coast-fortresses which were still uncaptured being the ultimate end to be accomplished by the two armies in combination with one another and with the Ottoman fleet. Not less than fifty ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... In the Isthmus of Darien, they are sent along with warriors and travellers, as we do baggage horses. Even their Queen appeared before some English gentlemen, carrying her sucking child, wrapt ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... bungling manner in which he made this first attempt at piracy, we cannot say, but he soon gave his conscience a holiday, and undertook some very successful robbing enterprises. He received information from some natives, that a train of mules was coming across the Isthmus of Panama loaded with gold and silver bullion, and guarded only by their drivers; for the merchants who owned all this treasure had no idea that there was any one in that part of the world who would commit a robbery upon them. But Drake and his men soon proved that ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton

... neighbourhood of Truxillo to the lower part of the River San Juan; a territory whereof, inconveniently for Great Britain, the United States, and the commerce of the world at large, the limits and definition are far from being universally recognized. Nicaragua has claims, and the Isthmus canal suffers accordingly. ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham

... the whole of the ensuing night; and on the morning of the 8th landed on a narrow ridge of sand which, running out twenty miles to the westward, separates Limestone Bay from the body of the Lake. When the wind blows hard from the southward it is customary to carry boats across this isthmus and to pull up under its lee. From Norwegian Point to Limestone Bay the shore consists of high clay cliffs against which the waves beat with violence during strong southerly winds. When the wind blows from ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... private capacity, but only in some public one, as a herald, or on an embassy, or on a sacred mission. Going abroad on an expedition or in war is not to be included among travels of the class authorised by the state. To Apollo at Delphi and to Zeus at Olympia and to Nemea and to the Isthmus, citizens should be sent to take part in the sacrifices and games there dedicated to the Gods; and they should send as many as possible, and the best and fairest that can be found, and they will make the city renowned at holy meetings in time of peace, procuring ...
— Laws • Plato

... a nickname given to the Corinthians on account of the position of their city on an isthmus between two seas. In the 'Acharnians' Theorus is mentioned as an ambassador, who had returned from the ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... peninsula and trudged along the sandy isthmus with the plodding resolution of men who seemed almost to have made up their minds to be wanderers on the face of the earth. Despite Turnbull's air of scientific eagerness, he was really the less impatient of the two; and the Highlander went on well ahead of him with ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... attempted to avoid the battle of Salamis; they suffered the Athenians, to whom they owed their lives and liberties, to be a second time driven from their country by the Persians, that they might finish their own fortifications on the Isthmus; they attempted to take advantage of the distress to which exertions in their cause had reduced their preservers, in order to make them their slaves; they strove to prevent those who had abandoned their walls to defend ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... and to treat them after his own fashion. But he confounded what was merely accidental in Pindar's manner with what was essential; and because Pindar, when he had to celebrate a foolish lad from Aegina who had tripped up another's heels at the Isthmus, made all possible haste to get away from so paltry a topic to the ancient heroes of the race of Aeacus, Horace took it into his head that he ought always to begin as far from the subject as possible, and then arrive at it by some strange and sudden bound. This is my ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... which looks to the South by the sea off Syme and Rhodes), therefore the men of Cnidos began to dig through this small part, which is about five furlongs across, while Harpagos was subduing Ionia, desiring to make their land an island: and within the isthmus all was theirs, 174 for where the territory of Cnidos ends in the direction of the mainland, here is the isthmus which they were digging across. And while the Cnidians were working at it with a great number of men, it was perceived that the men who worked suffered ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus

... kills them," answered the doctor. "See here, I'll give you the route of this mahogany-tree: it was carried to the Pacific Ocean by some river of the Isthmus of Panama or of Guatemala; thence the current carried it along the coast of America as far as Behring Strait, and so it was forced into the polar waters; it is neither so old nor so completely water-logged that we cannot set ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... time was an inland sea, when in the place of the Straits of Gibraltar, an isthmus connected Africa with Spain. England even during the more recent history of the earth, when man already existed, has repeatedly been connected with the European continent and been repeatedly separated from it. Nay, even Europe and North America have been directly connected. The South Sea ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot

... the isthmus until the death of that valiant commander, when he united his fortunes with those of the governor, Pedrarias, and headed various expeditions along the Pacific coast and to the islands beyond, in quest of pearls and gold. He was occupied in this way, or ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... beautiful it would be if the Isthmus of Panam should come to be to us what the Isthmus of Corinth was to the Greeks! May God g that some day we may have the happiness of installing there an august congress of the representatives of the republics, kingdoms and empires, to discuss and study the high interests ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell

... Achaia, on the south part of the isthmus which joins Peloponnesus to the continent. From its situation between two seas, ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus

... Exposition. On both sides of inscriptions Roman fasces denoting public authority. From left to right: "1501 Rodrigo de Bastides pursuing his course beyond the West Indies discovers Panama"; "1513 Vasco Nunes de Balboa crosses the Isthmus of Panama and discovers the Pacific Ocean"; "1904 the United States, succeeding France, begins operations on the Panama Canal"; "1915 the Panama Canal is opened to the ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry

... he lived to be a man of seventy. In 1850, drawn with the tide of adventurers surging to California, he took ship to Panama, crossed the isthmus, and at last came to the Golden Gate. He lived in California for seven years, added to his wealth, and went back for the second time to New Orleans. Again he made the long trip to the West, but this time he ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory

... general invitation) All country gentlemen, esquired or knighted, May drop in without cards, and take their station At the full board, and sit alike delighted With fashionable wines and conversation; And, as the isthmus of the grand connection, Talk o'er themselves the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... ornament manifested in the carriages of the dinner party, and of the insect visitors of the pond. Further, I thought I could detect a considerable degree of resemblance in form between a chariot and an insect. There was a great abdominal body separated by a narrow isthmus from a thoracic coach-box, where the directing power was stationed; while the wheels, poles, springs, and general framework on which the vehicle rested, corresponded to the wings, limbs, and antennae of the insect. There ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... of the fisher huts, the rocks rose high and dark, and quite hid the pine woods and the isthmus of yellow sand, and everything that could make Culm at all cheery or pleasant. This eminence was Wind Cliff, and served as a landmark for all the sailors whose path lay along the coast. Around this the gulls were alway flitting and screaming, and their nests ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord

... want that new Dorado, the new Ophir of America, to be thrown open and placed within the reach of the whole people. We want the great cost, the delays, as well as the privations and risks of a passage to California, by the malarious Isthmus of Panama, or any other of the routes now in use, to be mitigated, or done away with. There will be some greater equality in the enjoyment and advantages of these new acquisitions upon the Pacific coast when this road shall be constructed. The inexhaustible ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... boldness or cruelty, among whom we may particularly name L'Olonnois, a Frenchman, of such savage ferocity that all mariners of Spanish birth shuddered with fear at his very name. This wretch suffered the fate he deserved. In an expedition to the Isthmus of Darien he was taken prisoner by a band of savage Indians, who tore him to pieces alive, flung his quivering limbs into the fire, and then scattered the ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... tertiary formations, that species and groups of species gradually disappear, one after another, first from one spot, then from another, and finally from the world. In some few cases, however, as by the breaking of an isthmus and the consequent irruption of a multitude of new inhabitants into an adjoining sea, or by the final subsidence of an island, the process of extinction may have been rapid. Both single species and whole groups of species last for very unequal periods; some ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... lying under the chin with a sort of little isthmus joining the two parts on either side of the windpipe," he explained. "Well, when there is any deterioration of those glands through any cause, all sorts of complications may arise. The thyroid is one of the so-called ductless glands, like the adrenals above the kidneys, the pineal gland ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... are said to have coexisted in a single female mentioned by an ancient physician of unimpeachable authority. In this light we may perhaps see the meaning of a sentence, from a work which will be repeatedly referred to in this narrative, viz.: "This body in which we journey across the isthmus between the two oceans is not a private ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... having to strike a blow for it. At last he heard of a very rich ship, called the Cacofogo, which had recently sailed for Panama, to which place they were taking the treasure, in order that it might be transported across the isthmus, and so taken home to Spain; for, before Drake's voyage, scarcely a single vessel had ever passed round Cape Horn. The ships which he had plundered had been all built upon the coast, by Spaniards who had come across the country at the Isthmus ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... Calydon, not yet By stern Diana hated; Corinth, fam'd For beauteous brass; Orchomenus the fierce; Messene fertile; Patrae; Pylos, rul'd By Neleus; Troezen, yet unus'd to own The sway of Pittheus; Cleona the low; And all those towns the two-sea'd isthmus holds; And all those towns the isthmus views without. Athens, incredible! was absent sole. War all her energy demanded. Borne O'er ocean, fierce barbarian troops, the walls Mopsopian threaten'd. Thracian Tereus, these With arms auxiliar routed; ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... shoals that run out into the sea, which are very dangerous. Past that point is the river of Capalonga, [121] where the province of Camarines ends and that of Tayabas begins again. At this point the sea runs inland and forms an isthmus only five leguas [wide] with the sea of Visayas. That small gulf is found in the sea of Gumaca; it is very rough, and along its coast are found the villages of Gumaca, Atimonan, and Mambau [sc. Mauban]. Going north, one meets ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... Castro, who was at Panama when Bachicao arrived, fled immediately across the isthmus to Nombre de Dios on the Atlantic, where he embarked accompanied by Diego Alvarez de Cueto and Jerom Zurbano. Doctor Texada and Francisco Maldonado escaped likewise to the same port, where they all embarked together for Spain. Texada died on the voyage while passing the Bahamas. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... he says, "is an island at very high water, and, with rare exceptions, a peninsula at very low water. The distance from Marazion Cliff, the nearest point of the mainland, to spring-tide high-water mark on its own strand, is about 1680 feet. The total isthmus consists of the outcrop of highly inclined Devonian slate and associated rocks, and in most cases is covered with a thin layer of gravel or sand. At spring-tides, in still weather, it is at high-water ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... sand-bar, but grass had grown upon it, until a green turf was formed. There was not over a square perch of it altogether, but it was not square in shape. On the contrary, it was of oval form, and much narrower nearest the land, where it formed a neck, or isthmus, not more than three feet in width. It was, in short, a miniature peninsula, which by a very little work with the spade could have been converted into a miniature island—had ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... pass the fortifications, which lay across the isthmus which parts the Mediterranean from the Red Sea, and which were intended to protect Egypt from the incursions of the nomad tribes of the Chasu, he was subjected to a strict interrogatory, and among other questions was asked whether he had nowhere met with the traitor Paaker, who was minutely ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... place. We could cross the isthmus to Chagres; but before going to England, I should like to call at La Guayra, and find out whether my ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall

... Straits of Magellan, reaches its highest elevation-indeed, the highest on the American continent—about the seventeenth degree south, 2 and, after crossing the line, gradually subsides into hills of inconsiderable magnitude, as it enters the isthmus of Panama. This is the famous Cordillera of the Andes, or "copper mountains," 3 as termed by the natives, though they might with more reason have been called "mountains of gold." Arranged sometimes in a single ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... enjoy the plant all right. There isn't anything like this equipment anywhere else. Lots of the fellows are here to fit themselves for work on the Isthmus. A good many of them are going to fail out on the finals. For all it's a rich man's son's school it's only fair to say the standard is kept up and I am told that over fifty failed to get through last half. I have been fortunate ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon

... Salamis. We, too, have a Salamis to remember, and a second Salamis to found. Can ye forget that, had the advice of the Spartan leader Eurybiades been adopted, the victory of Salamis would never have been achieved? He was for retreat to the Isthmus; he was for defending the Peloponnese, because in the Peloponnesus was the unsocial selfish Sparta, and leaving the rest of Hellas to the armament of Xerxes. Themistocles spoke against the ignoble counsel; the Spartan raised his staff to strike him. Ye know the Spartan ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton

... city of Constantinople. Thence she repaired to Broussa, Beirut, Jaffa, Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, Nazareth, Damascus, Baalbek, the Lebanon, Alexandria, and Cairo; and travelled across the sandy Desert to the Isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea. From Egypt the adventurous lady returned home by way of Sicily and Italy, visiting Naples, Rome, and Florence, and arriving in Vienna in December 1842. In the following year she published the record of her experiences under the ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous

... Manila. They took the shorter route, which was safer for their small boats, and came somewhat late within half a league of Manila without being seen; for the slight breeze stirring from the east prevented them from making the assault at daybreak. Manila is on a point or isthmus running southeast and northwest; and the river encompasses it from the east to the northwest. They did not enter by the river, in order not to be seen by the fishermen who are constantly going and coming; and also for the reason that ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson

... of re-opening the canal of the Pharaohs between the Mediterranean and Red seas, and thus connecting by a short cut across the Isthmus of Suez the commerce of Europe and Asia, though long entertained by the first Napoleon, may fairly be claimed for M. de Lesseps. His attention was doubtless first drawn to it by reading the memorable report of M. la Pre, who was employed by Bonaparte ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... Grift. R. L. S. had been thrilled enough by a few nights spent in the dark with the docile ass of the Cevennes; but here was one, sprung from sober Philadelphia blood, born in Indianapolis and baptized by Henry Ward Beecher, who had pioneered across the fabled Isthmus, lived in the roaring mining camps of Nevada, worked for a dressmaker in Frisco, and venturously taken her young children to Belgium and France to study art. She had been married at seventeen, had already once thought herself ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... column raised to Lord Hill, and the Abbey Church and buildings. On the other is the town, with its spires and towers and red-stone castle rising from an eminence above the river. The station occupies a narrow isthmus of the latter within the precincts of the castle, and is a handsome structure, of the Gothic style of architecture. The castle was built by the first Earl of Shrewsbury, who obtained so many favours of a like kind from the Conqueror. Among portions which the old Norman masons raised, is the inner ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall

... there was a cave, a very small one, and so high up in the face of the rock that it could only be reached by a ladder. In this lived five black men, members of the company of slaves who had gone from Guiana to the isthmus, and who had been brought down there about a year before by two wicked men, who had promised them well-paid work in a lovely country. They had, however, been made actual slaves in this barren and doleful place, and had since worked for the cruel men who had beguiled them into a captivity ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton

... where they stood, looking seawards, the ground sunk to the narrow isthmus supposed by Malcolm to fill a cleft formerly crossed by a drawbridge, and, beyond it, rose again to the grassy mounds in which lay so many of the old bones of the ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... first Chaldean Empire was being established, Egypt, separated from her confines only by a narrow isthmus, loomed on the horizon, and appeared to beckon to her rival. But she had strangely declined from her former greatness, and had been attacked and subdued by invaders appearing like a cloud of locusts on the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... established them in the old capital, Ithome. On their homeward march through Kenchreae they gained a victory over the Athenians, who attempted to harass them and hinder their march through the narrow isthmus of Corinth. ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... convinced that they were different, he still flattered himself that those rich countries were at no great distance; and in a subsequent voyage, accordingly, went in quest of them along the coast of Terra Firma, and towards the Isthmus of Darien. ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... conversations with visiting strangers. No statesman or man of business could have had a wider outlook than Goethe, when on February 21, 1827, he thus spoke: "I should wish to see England in possession of a canal through the Isthmus of Suez.... And it may be foreseen that the United States, with its decided predilection to the West will, in thirty or forty years, have occupied and peopled the large tract of land beyond the Rocky ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... the best type of American character. He was brave, undeterred by obstacles, enduring with patient fortitude the perils and privations of the long journey of half a year by land, or a tempestuous voyage by sea; undaunted alike by the terrors of Cape Horn or the insidious diseases of the Isthmus of Panama. He met the, to him, hitherto unknown problem of the extraction of gold and solved it with the wisdom and vigor which distinguish the American. Observe that the provision against throwing dirt on another man's claim anticipated by many years the famous hydraulic decision of Judge Sawyer. ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley

... freezing, or the scorching blast, 'A ship-boy on the high and giddy mast,' [1] From regions where Peruvian billows roar, To the bleak coasts of savage Labrador; From where Damascus, pride of Asian plains, Stoops her proud neck beneath tyrannic chains, To where the Isthmus, [2] laved by adverse tides, Atlantic and Pacific seas divides: But while he measured o'er the painful race In fortune's wild illimitable chase, 60 Adversity, companion of his way, Still o'er the victim hung with iron sway, Bade new distresses ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... pitched their tents on a green eminence near the lake, at a small distance from our camp, under a little grove of oaks and palms. This company consisted of seven young Seminoles, under the conduct of a young prince or chief of Talahasochte, a town southward in the isthmus. They were all dressed and painted with singular elegance, and richly ornamented with silver plates, chains, etc., after the Seminole mode, with waving plumes of feathers on their crests. On our coming up to them, they ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... the big bend of the Bear River, I heard from William in a way that was characteristic of the man. He had been back to "the States," as we then called the eastern part of our country, and returning to California by way of the Isthmus of Panama, he had brought fifty swarms of bees. Three of these swarms he sent up to me in Washington. As far as I know these were the first honey bees in that state. William Buck was a man who was always doing a good ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... government regulation of commerce was scarcely less close. All goods which were sent from Spain to America must be shipped from the one port of Seville, and they must be landed at either one or other of two American ports—Vera Cruz, in Mexico, or Portobello, on the Isthmus of Panama. Two fleets were sent from Seville each year, one for each of these destinations. All arrangements for these fleets, all licenses for those who shipped goods in them, and all jurisdiction over offences committed upon them were in the hands of the government establishment of the Casa ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney

... California volunteer regiment he charged the enemy at Ball's Bluff and fell, his body pierced by half a dozen bullets. Curiously different was the record of Broderick's old foeman, William Gwin. In October, 1861, he started East via the Isthmus of Panama, accompanied by Calhoun Benham, one of Terry's seconds in the fateful duel. On the same steamer was General Sumner, relieved of his command in San Francisco, en route to active service. Convinced that Gwin and Benham plotted treason, he ordered their arrest, ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... year 1513, seven years after the death of Columbus, the truth at last began to dawn upon the geographers of Europe. Vasco Nunez de Balboa had crossed the Isthmus of Panama, had climbed the famous peak in Darien, and had looked down upon a vast expanse of water which seemed to suggest the ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... promontory beyond, leaving a peninsula of five hundred acres joined to the main land, by a narrow neck of some forty rods in width. Our first sport among the deer was to be the "driving" of this peninsula. We stationed ourselves on the narrow isthmus within a few rods of each other, while a boatman went round to the opposite side to lay on the dogs. We had been at our posts perhaps half an hour, when we heard the measured bounds of a deer, as he came crashing through ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond

... well-wooded hill, crowned with the majestic fragments of Gooderich Castle, and opposed by the waving eminences of the forest of Dean. The mighty pile, or peninsula, of Symonds' Rock succeeds, round which the river flows in a circuit of seven miles, though the opposite points of the isthmus are only one mile asunder. Shortly afterwards, the Wye quits the county, and enters Monmouthshire at ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various

... to the use of wax in this country, which were discovered during the early voyages to California. The intense heat of the Isthmus of Panama melted the wax, and letters were irretrievably glued together, to the loss of the address and the confusion of the postmaster. So the glued envelope—common, cheap, and necessary—became the almost prevailing fashion for all notes as well ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... sea, reaching up so far into the land, and which tried to convert Nova Scotia into an island (as man proposes to make it, by channeling the isthmus), was known to early explorers as La Baie Franoise, its present cognomen being a corruption of the ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase

... cushions. Didn't the rowers who were marched across the Isthmus to man the ships which were to surprise the Piraeus, carry their oars, thongs ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... Ceylon), and yet they have almost always a sort of general family resemblance to the animals and plants of the nearest mainland. On the other hand, there is hardly a species of fish, shell, or crab common to the opposite sides of the narrow isthmus of Panama. [Footnote: See page 60 Note.] Wherever we look, then, living nature offers us riddles of difficult solution, if we suppose that what we see is all that can be ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... alias of "Captain Johns," was ready to catch the next steamer to the Isthmus, and in two days they sailed. The voyage was uneventful, and if Randolph had expected any enthusiasm on the part of the captain in the mission on which he was now fairly launched, he would have been disappointed. Although his frankness was unchanged, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... his wings and paced wearily along his drowsy path. They who had most cheered the torpid hours were gone. Clancy had sailed on a Spanish barque for Colon, contemplating a cut across the isthmus and then a further voyage to end at Calao, where the fighting was said to be on. Geddie, whose quiet and genial nature had once served to mitigate the frequent dull reaction of lotus eating, was now a home-man, happy with his bright orchid, Paula, and never even dreaming ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... that quarter being out of the question—and thus it is that even sober-minded men are beginning to believe that the time is not far off when the glowing prophecies of the most sanguine will be realized, that the boundaries of the republic would yet be the Isthmus, the North Pole, and the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various

... Jerusalem. The record then pretended to give the history of the American Christians for a few hundred years until the wickedness of the people called down the judgment of God upon them, which resulted in their extermination. Several nations from the Isthmus of Darien to the northern extremity of the continent were engaged in continual warfare. The culmination of all this was the battle of Cumorah, fought many centuries ago near the present site of Palmyra, between the Lamanites and the Nephites—the former being the heathen ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... beauty, of the cities of Epirus and Peloponnesus. Athens acknowledged him for her benefactor; Argos, for her deliverer. The pride of Corinth, again rising from her ruins with the honors of a Roman colony, exacted a tribute from the adjacent republics, for the purpose of defraying the games of the Isthmus, which were celebrated in the amphitheatre with the hunting of bears and panthers. From this tribute the cities of Elis, of Delphi, and of Argos, which had inherited from their remote ancestors the sacred office of perpetuating the Olympic, the Pythian, and the Nemean games, claimed a just ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... huge barges passed us towed by a steamer and crammed with hundreds of the poor souls torn from their homes to work at the Isthmus of Suez, or some palace of the Pasha's, for a nominal piastre a day, and find their own bread and water and cloak. One of my crew, Andrasool, a black savage whose function is always to jump overboard whenever the rope gets entangled or anything is wanted, recognised ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... myself, I must tell your Majesty how my faithful friend John Oxenham sailed away forthwith, accompanied by carpenters and other artificers, determined to do that which never man had before enterprised. Crossing the Isthmus of Darien, he built a pinnace, in which he embarked on the South Sea. Having taken two prizes, he was returning with his booty across the isthmus to his ship, when he was assailed by overwhelming numbers of the Spaniards and made prisoner. Of his sad fate I have gained ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith

... Camerons in the neighbourhood. All at once the steep, rough hillside seemed alive with armed Highlanders; from rock and bush they sprung up, startling the echoes by their wild shouts. In vain the disordered troops hurried along the road and rushed across the isthmus to the further side of the lakes; there a new party of Macdonalds, led by Keppoch, met them in front, and the whole body surrendered with hardly a blow struck. They were carried prisoners to Locheil's house, Achnacarry. ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... affright, Whence rose that awful voice. And swift our sight Turned seaward, down the salt and roaring sand. And there, above the horizon, seemed to stand A wave unearthly, crested in the sky; Till Skiron's Cape first vanished from mine eye, Then sank the Isthmus hidden, then the rock Of Epidaurus. Then it broke, one shock And roar of gasping sea and spray flung far, And shoreward swept, where stood the Prince's car. Three lines of wave together raced, and, ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides

... the days when England and Spain struggled for the supremacy of the sea, and England carried off the palm. The heroes sail as lads with Drake in the expedition in which the Pacific Ocean was first seen by an Englishman from a tree-top on the Isthmus of Panama, and in his great voyage of circumnavigation. The historical portion of the story is absolutely to be relied upon, but this, although very useful to lads, will perhaps be less attractive than the great variety of exciting adventure through which the young adventurers ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... in the morning on December 16 land was seen from the mast-head, which proved to be North Cape. It lies in latitude 34 degrees 22 minutes South, and longitude 186 degrees 55 minutes West. The isthmus which joins this head to the mainland is low, which gives it the appearance of an island. On the cape a hippah, or village, was seen, with several inhabitants. Soon after this, when off Cape Maria Van Diemen, the Endeavour met with a gale which, though ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston

... the rail fence maintained their position against the small force sent against them till the main body at the redoubt had made their escape. The British were unable to continue the pursuit beyond the isthmus. ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty

... growth of each individual, and to the further fact that all the stages are represented in the mature antlers of existing species. But a curious result follows from a study of the past distribution of deer in America. At a time when the branched stage had been already reached in North America, the isthmus of Panama was under water; deer were then absent from South America and the earliest forms found fossil there had antlers of the type of M. virginiana. The small species with simple antlers only made their appearance in later periods, and it follows that they are descended from those of complex ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various

... decided to remain loyal to Captain Sharp, and to go home around the southern part of the continent. Before the mutineers were put ashore, the ship had come north almost to the equator, so that the journey of the deserters was materially lessened. Two of the mutineers reached the Isthmus, crossed it and subsequently published some ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... to which he laid siege was Farwak, or Pelusium, situated on the shores of the Mediterranean, on the isthmus which separates that sea from the Arabian Gulf, and connects Egypt with Syria and Arabia. It was therefore considered the key to Egypt. A month's siege put Amru in possession of the place; he then examined the surrounding country with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... The Tcherkesses considered robbery honorable provided the robber was not caught in flagrante. Compare Koch, Reise in den kaukasischen Isthmus, I, 370 ff. Bell, Journal of a Residence in Circassia, I, 181, II, 201. The organized robber bands of ancient Egypt, when it was so highly civilized (Diodor., I, 80) may, on the other hand, be accounted for by similar conditions actually existing ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... that it offers in my opinion but few obstructions to a series of triangles being carried over it; the longest sides of which, being traced along the bounding high lands to the north-west, and carried as far northerly as the isthmus, which separates the gulf of Carpentaria from the sea to the eastward, would effectually set at rest all questions as to the existence of an interior sea. Farther north than this point, there can be no reasonable expectation of finding ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley

... found in all the rivers of South America, from Paraguay to the Isthmus of Darien; but its range terminates very abruptly on the north—a fact which puzzles the naturalist, since for many degrees further northward, climate and other circumstances are found similar to those which appear ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid

... is an extensive lobster and oyster fishery, near which is Landewy Castle. There is a wonderful precipice here. Further west we come to the village of Rossilly, near the Worms-Head, the termination of a range of rocks, which form the western point of the peninsula, being connected with it by a low isthmus. It extends more than a mile into the ocean, and at half-flood becomes an island. The name arose by mariners comparing it to a worm with its head erect, between the Nass Point and St. Gower's Head, in Pembrokeshire. The scenery here is deeply ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various

... described. Port Arthur, one of these, is on the last-named Peninsula, a sterile spot of about 100,000 acres, surrounded by sea, except where a narrow neck of land connects it with the main island; and this isthmus is guarded, night and day, by soldiers, and by a line of fierce dogs. Nothing particularly deserving of further notice presents itself, and therefore we may conclude our brief sketch of Van Diemen's Land, wishing it and all the other British colonies in Australia a progress ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... the foot of Fort Hill, north of which a cove and creek then ran to the foot of Milk Street. The narrow isthmus to Roxbury existed ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts

... says, "by way of the Isthmus of Panama—the route had just been opened—reached San Francisco in August, and spent five months in the midst of the rough, half-savage life of a new country. I lived almost entirely in the open ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody

... globe, The ancestor-continents away group'd together, The present and future continents north and south, with the isthmus between. ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... rather its western basin, for we know that the Barbary island was once nearly a peninsula, joined at its two ends to Spain and Sicily, and that its Atlas ranges formed the connection between the Sierra Nevada and Mt. Aetna. By degrees the Isthmus between Cape Bona and Sicily sank out of sight, and the ocean flowed between Spain and Africa, while the great sea to the south dried up into the immense stony waste which is known preeminently as the Sahra, the Desert, "a tract of land, bare as the back of a beast, ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... Twin Lakes—or the isthmus between two small lakes, in the depths of the forest—is a solitary log house and stable. Its proprietor and our landlord for the night's shelter was, I believe, named John Smith. With his family he had lived there, keeping this hotel for some years, owning several lots in the ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... of the expedition against Beausejour, in the Acadian isthmus, to which the French still laid claim, had been given to Colonel Monckton, who, in the spring of 1755, sailed from Boston with forty-one vessels and two thousand men. Ill-manned by a few hundred refugees and a small body of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... ocean in the far-off southern end of America, and runs up along its western shore, ever proud and grand, with snow-topped heights rising tens of thousands of feet above the ocean, till it sinks once more towards the northern extremity of the southern half of the continent, running along the Isthmus of Panama, through Mexico at a less elevation, again to rise in the almost unbroken range of the Rocky Mountains, not to sink till it reaches the snow-covered plains ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... longer be an island, but a peninsula, and although the isthmus which connects it with the Continent will be submarine, its effect on the railway system will be exactly the same as if it were ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... omitted! Dreadful! I persuade the children to get certain of the psalms, proverbs, and parables by heart out of school. Bless you! they like that; but as for teaching them such abstract knowledge as what an adverb or an isthmus is, or the height of Mont Blanc, I defy you! And it is all fudge. Will they sweep a room or make an apple-dumpling the better for it? Not they. But fix it in their minds that whatever their hands find to do they must do it with their might, and there is a ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... tell for the rest of the voyage that cannot be condensed into a few words. There was a detention for despatches and for Coast Survey business at Panama,—a delay which was turned to good account in collecting, both in the Bay and on the Isthmus. At San Diego, also, admirable collections were made, and pleasant days were spent. This was the last station on the voyage of the Hassler. She reached her destination and entered the Golden Gate on the 24th of August, ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... giving such hard knocks. He should have put on an ass's skin before he went into parliament. Lord Liverpool is the single stay of this ministry; but he is not a man of a directing mind. He cannot ride on the whirlwind. He serves as the isthmus to connect one half of the cabinet with the other. He always gives you the common sense of the matter, and in that it is that ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... and dark within; but the Lord made luminous certain stones, which gave light to the imprisoned voyagers. After a passage of three hundred and forty-four days, the colony landed on the western shore of North America, probably at a place south of the Gulf of California, and north of the Isthmus of Panama. ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... an intricate diplomatic history which can be here only briefly recapitulated. The interest of the United States in the Central American States dated from the discovery of gold in California. The value of the control of the means of transportation across the isthmus at Nicaragua became increasingly clear, as the gold seekers sought that route to the Pacific coast. In the latter days of his administration, President Polk had sent one Elijah Hise to cultivate friendly relations with the Central American States and to ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... daily thoroughfare such as the Isthmus, must have been far more suitable for the collecting of historical evidence than Skillus, where the crowd came by only once in four years. And then his grown-up sons could find something more serious to do than hunting deer, boars, and hares in the glades of Elis. He may have ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... far as Europe is concerned at least, would apparently ensue were the Isthmus of Panama to settle into the sea, allowing the Caribbean current to pass into the Pacific. But the geologist tells us that this isthmus rose at a comparatively recent geological period, though it ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... was directed by a single will, there were divided counsels among the Greeks. Eurybiades had most of the leaders on his side when he argued that Athens was hopelessly lost, and the best hope for Greece was to defend the Peloponnesus by holding the isthmus of Corinth with what land forces could be assembled and removing the fleet to the waters of the neighbouring waters to co-operate in the defence. Themistocles, on the other hand, shrank from the idea of abandoning the refugees in the island of Salamis, and he regarded the adjacent ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... April, the insurrection had spread to the narrow territory of Megaris, situated to the north of the isthmus. The Albanian population of this country, amounting to about ten thousand, and employed by the Porte to guard the defiles of the entrance into Peloponnesus, raised the standard of revolt, and marched to invest the Acrocorinthus. In the Messenian territory, the Bishop ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... naval battle they conducted themselves thus and incurred the greatest part of the danger, and by their own valor gained freedom for themselves and the rest. Afterwards when the Peloponnesians were putting a wall across the Isthmus and were content with their own safety, supposing they were rid of the danger by sea, and intending to watch the rest of the Greeks falling into the power of the barbarians, (45) the Athenians ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias

... was summoned. Four guns were dragged to Sandy Bay to command the narrow neck of land that connected the peninsula with the left bank of the river.[587] It was proposed to construct palisades across the isthmus. Early on the morning of the 23d, Berkeley went out himself to direct the mounting of the guns.[588] But it was too late. On all sides the people were crying, "To arms! To arms! Bacon is within two miles ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... France in the case of M. de Lesseps's Panama Canal—'a strange thing happened.' The celebrated philosopher, Mr. John Locke, and the other members of a committee of the English Board of Trade, advised the English Government to plagiarise the Scottish project, and seize the section of the Isthmus of Panama on which the Scots meant to settle. This was not done; but the Dutch Usurper, far from backing the Scots company, bade his colonies hold no sort of intercourse with them. The Scots were starved out of their ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... o'clock, thus saving my contract by one hour. But they did not commence taking them on board, so the captain of the barge put a demurrage of $20 per day for detention. In the meantime, I had bought my ticket to sail by the steamer Georgia to the Isthmus to go on the 1st of July which was but a few days off. They, seeing that I had them on my contract, came to me and said that my houses should go on their ship according to contract, if they had to throw other freight out, and that they would sign a regular ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower

... Pacific Railway in 1887, which placed it within two weeks' journey from London. Before that time it was cut off by the immense prairies of the north-west of Canada, and could only be reached by a long journey round Cape Horn or over the Isthmus of Panama. Since the date given, however, a new era has dawned for the country, and all the southern part of it has been opened up by railways. Thus its waters have been rendered easy of access to any fisherman willing to try them. The position ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert

... of mule-train bells, we gallops into Oratama, and the town belonged to us as much as Long Island Sound doesn't belong to Japan when T. R. is at Oyster Bay. I say us; but I mean me. Everybody for four nations, two oceans, one bay and isthmus, and five archipelagoes around had heard of Judson Tate. Gentleman adventurer, they called me. I had been written up in five columns of the yellow journals, 40,000 words (with marginal decorations) in a monthly magazine, ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... its middle, and has its shores indented by many bays. From about the center of its north-eastern shore there boldly projects the Peninsula of Caramuan, connected with the mainland of Camarines by the isthmus of Isarog. The north-eastern portion of the two provinces contains a long range of volcanic hills; the south-western principally consisted, as far as my investigations permitted me to discover, of chalk, and coral reefs; in the midst of the ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... things about what the great one God, whose name is Love, was doing for them. The all-day meeting was only interrupted for an hour or two in the afternoon, when we walked with the chiefs across the narrow isthmus between Pyramid Harbor and the eastern arm of Lynn Canal, and I selected the harbor, farm and townsite now occupied by Haines mission and town and Fort William H. Seward. This was the beginning of the large missions of ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young

... arrangement into effect, I was induced to go aside from the direct route, and to visit Velhi Pasha, at Tripolizza, to whom I had letters. Returning by Argos and Corinth, I crossed the isthmus, and taking the road by Megara, reached Athens on the 20th of February. In the course of this journey, I heard of two English travellers being in the city; and on reaching the convent of the Propaganda, where ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... an interoceanic canal is by no means a modern one, as travelers and navigators observed that there was a great depression among the hills of the Isthmus of Panama. As Professor T.E. Nurse, of the U.S.N., says ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various

... led along a kind of isthmus, at the peninsular extremity of which the tower was situated, with that exclusive attention to strength and security, in preference to every circumstances of convenience, which dictated to the Scottish barons the choice of their situations, as well ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... that, properly fortified by strong walls across the isthmus, could have been held against a host, but the Romans had not as yet taken it in hand; later, however, they recognized the importance of the position, and made it one of the chief seats of their power. Even in the three days that he ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... as the Spanish Possessions in the New World proclaimed themselves free. It is strictly a commercial place, and has now only a population of sixty thousand. The city is upon a rocky point of land, joined to the peninsula by a narrow isthmus. The sea surrounds it on three sides, beating against the walls, and often throwing the spray over the ramparts. On the fourth side it is protected by a strong wall and bridges over the wide ditch. At night, they are drawn up, thus isolating the ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... Portuguese East Indian Pilot, places this town in lat. 3 50'S. He says the entrance is much incommoded with shoals, and so narrow in some places as not to exceed the length of a ship. This city is said to have once stood on a peninsula, converted into an island by cutting a canal across the isthmus.—Clarke, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... In a note upon the Advertisement prefixed to his Siege of Corinth, he says,—"I visited all three (Tripolitza, Napoli, and Argos,) in 1810-11, and in the course of journeying through the country, from my first arrival in 1809, crossed the Isthmus eight times in my way from Attica to the Morea, over the mountains, or in the other direction, when passing from the Gulf of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... by their comrades. They were given new coats, new trousers, and new saucepans to strap on their haversacks. They have done some duty in the trenches, but they were always kept away from serious fighting, and only gave a "moral support" to those engaged in the conflict, until the fiasco in the Isthmus of Gennevilliers a fortnight ago. Then, near the walls of Buzanval, the few companies which were in action fought fairly if not successfully, whilst in another part of the field of battle, those who formed the ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere

... Prince Edward is a peninsula connected with the main land by a narrow isthmus of low swampy land about four miles wide. Through this neck of land it has long been in contemplation to cut a canal to enable the lake steam-boats to take Belleville in their route between Kingston and Toronto, thus affording a safe navigation in stormy ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... refuge in the frequent cut-offs behind the many islands of the river; for besides those islands which have been numbered, new ones are forming every year. At times, when the water is very high, the current will cut a new route across the low isthmus, or neck, of a peninsula, around which sweeps a long reach of the main channel, leaving the tortuous bend which it has deserted to be gradually filled up with snags, deposits of alluvium, and finally to be carpeted with a vegetable growth. In some cases, as the stream works away to the eastward ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop

... of the Andes from Chili to the Isthmus of Panama. As Cornish men we should adopt the specialty of our province, and become miners. The Andes mountains will give us that opportunity, where, instead of gray tin, we may delve for yellow gold. What say ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various

... your allegiance, I command you stay; Who passes here, through me must make his way; My life's the Isthmus; through this narrow line You first must cut, before those seas can join. What fury, Zegrys, has possessed your minds? What rage the brave Abencerrages blinds? If of your courage you new proofs would show, Without much travel you may find ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... was hoped that the morasses, indenting both shores and leaving a narrow isthmus, would enable the small Confederate force to defend that position; but the bravery and enterprise of the enemy enabled him to turn both flanks, and nothing was left Colonel Shaw and his command but to ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore

... Circle," with its center at Havana, Cuba, its radii extending to Pennsylvania on the North, the isthmus on the south, and sweeping from shore to shore, was the bold dream of the men who plotted the destruction of the American republic. Their object was pursued with a cold-blooded disregard of all right, human and divine, worthy of the pagan brutality of the Roman Triumvirate. Prating about the ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride

... portion of Africa, the warmer parts of Asia, and the islands of the Indian Archipelago; while the leopard, Felis leopardus, is thought to be confined to Africa. The jaguar, Felis onca is the scourge of South America, from Paraguay almost to the isthmus of Darien, and is altogether a larger and more powerful animal than either of the others. Though presenting much resemblance, there are points of distinction by which the individual may be at once recognized. The jaguar is larger, sturdier, and altogether more thickset than ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... war, it is nearly three hundred years ago that Ameinocles went to Samos. Again, the earliest sea-fight in history was between the Corinthians and Corcyraeans; this was about two hundred and sixty years ago, dating from the same time. Planted on an isthmus, Corinth had from time out of mind been a commercial emporium; as formerly almost all communication between the Hellenes within and without Peloponnese was carried on overland, and the Corinthian territory was the highway through which it travelled. She had consequently great money ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides

... united crews of the vessels amounting to seventy-three men and boys. With this insignificant force, Drake made great havoc amongst the Spanish shipping at Nombre de Dios. He partially crossed the Isthmus of Darien, and obtained his first sight of the great Pacific Ocean. He returned to England in August 1573, with his ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... be of most use to us in plain clothes," he continued, after a dozen questions as to my former activities; "We could put you in uniform for the first month or six weeks until you know the Isthmus, and then— ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... Edward B. Marvin's sail-loft occupied the upper. The staff then consisted of Mr. Wootton and J. M. Sparrow, as before stated, with occasional extra assistants, say on the arrival of an English mail, which came then via the Isthmus of Panama and San Francisco. The "whole staff" had to work hard then, and long hours, even into the morning. I have seen a line of letter hunters reaching from the post-office up Wharf Street nearly to Yates, waiting for the ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett

... Domingo, thence sailed across to Cape Honduras, doubled that cape, and skirted the coast of Nicaragua, where he heard of the Pacific Ocean, though the name had not its present meaning for him. It was during his attempt to find the Isthmus of Darien, which he thought was a strait of water, that he was shipwrecked on the coast of Jamaica. He remained there a year and then went back to Spain, reaching home November 7, 1504. It was the last voyage of the ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... the Suez Canal was begun. This canal extends across the Isthmus of Suez, and connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, opening a waterway between Europe ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 38, July 29, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... being landed at three points—at Enos, at Suol, a promontory on the west of the Gallipoli Peninsula, and at the Bulair Isthmus. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... 1804 a South wind We Set out early the river wider than usial, and Shallow, at 12 we halted in a bend to the left to take the Meridian altitude, & Dine, & Sent one man across where we took Dinner yesterday to Step off the Distance across Isthmus, he made it 974 yards, and the bend around is 183/4 miles above this bend about 4 miles, a yellow & Brown Bluff Comnuces and Continus 3 or 4 miles on the L. S. this Bluff has Some Sand Stone, Some rich Black mole mixed with yellow Clay, ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... California already secured by the friends of free soil, there came in 1848 the sudden discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in the Sacramento Valley. When this exciting news reached the East, a mighty rush began to California, over the trails, across the Isthmus of Panama, and around Cape Horn. Before two years had passed, it is estimated that a hundred thousand people, in search of fortunes, had arrived in California—mechanics, teachers, doctors, lawyers, farmers, miners, and laborers from the four ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... picture of a man, which comparison of his, Nic. Gerbelius in his exposition of Sophianus' map, approves; the breast lies open from those Acroceraunian hills in Epirus, to the Sunian promontory in Attica; Pagae and Magaera are the two shoulders; that Isthmus of Corinth the neck; and Peloponnesus the head. If this allusion hold, 'tis sure a mad head; Morea may be Moria; and to speak what I think, the inhabitants of modern Greece swerve as much from reason and true religion at this day, as that Morea ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... after; and last year gave us his Memoirs of Horace Walpole, and the story of Darien, or, The Merchant Prince. Mr. Warburton had been deputed by the Atlantic and Pacific Junction Company, to come to a friendly understanding with the tribes of Indians who inhabit the Isthmus of Darien. It was also the intention of Mr. Warburton to make himself perfectly acquainted with every part of these districts, and with whatever referred to their topography, climate, and resources, and he undoubtedly ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... continue to grow in the marvelous ratio already shown, the demand for labor must increase. The presence of the Southern community of white European labor from the southern part of Europe will have, I am hopeful, the same effect that it has had upon Negro labor on the Isthmus of Panama. It has introduced a spirit of emulation or competition, so that to-day the tropical Negroes of the West Indies do much better work for us in the canal construction since we brought over Spanish, ...
— The South and the National Government • William Howard Taft

... Britain had had a written understanding upon the construction of the Panama Canal. The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, which was adopted that year, provided that the two countries should share equally in the construction and control of the proposed waterway across the Isthmus. This idea of joint control had always rankled in the United States, and in 1901 the American Government persuaded Great Britain to abrogate the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty and agree to another—the Hay-Pauncefote—which transferred the rights of ownership ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick



Words linked to "Isthmus" :   ground, terra firma, tissue, solid ground, isthmian, earth, Central America, dry land, Isthmus of Panama, land



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