"Impassable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my escape were so great, that little restraint was imposed on my motions. The narrow defile in the gap, through which the river rushed like a torrent, was closed with a gate. The mountains, by which the valley was hemmed in, were utterly impassable, thickly set as they were with jungle, consisting of tangled brier, thorn and forest trees, of which those who have never been in a tropical climate can form no adequate idea. In some places it would be difficult to penetrate more than a mile in the day; during which time the traveller ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... All I transported three years ago, was conveyed under the canon of the Duke of Richmond. I have no interest in our present representative; nor if I had, is he returning. Plate, of all earthly vanities, is the most impassable: it is not Counerband in its metallic capacity, but totally so in its personal; and the officers of the custom-house not being philosophers enough to separate the substance from the superficies, brutally hammer both to pieces, and return you only the intrinsic: ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... when the head of column was deflected to the left, making a quarter turn, and the regiment was hurled headlong against a post-and-rail fence that ran obliquely in front of the Rummel buildings. This proved for the time an impassable barrier. The squadrons coming up successively at a charge, rushed pell mell on each other and were thrown into a state of indescribable confusion, though the rear troops, without order or orders, formed left and right front into line along the fence, and pluckily began firing across it into the faces ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... 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 held ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... on the island, for what with wind and rain the lake was impassable for their canoe. The men built a hut of brush and bark which sheltered the party from the driving rain. Menard's mood lightened at the prospect of a rest, and he started a long conversation in Iroquois which soon had even Father Claude laughing in his silent way. The ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... night; during which, up to the middle in snow, we made but little way. There were no paths to be traced in the mountains, and they were in many places impassable. Day at length appeared: we thought ourselves near the frontiers, which are twenty English miles from Glatz, when we suddenly, to our great terror, heard the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... but a nominal result. One was under Colonel Mahon, and repaired the telegraph line in the neighbourhood of Modder River; it was intended to patrol as far as Klip Drift, but the rain made the veldt impassable for waggons. Certainly the line was repaired, but, as the Colonel contemptuously remarked, "What's the use of sending an expedition to repair telegraph lines? An old woman can cut 'em again ten ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... approached, low flat banks appear, which for many a long league are marshy and impassable. It is the district of the Esteros, as these flooded lands are called. Beyond them, in the wet season, immense shallow lakes are formed; but when they are dried-up in the hot weather, a grey dusty soil, full of cracks, and covered ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 right of ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... turned its spindle and the wind shifted to the south. Jon sent no message to anyone, nor did he proclaim that the old hay was available. He first wished to see what the thaw would amount to. By the following day, the whole valley was impassable because of slush and water, and the patches of earth appearing through the snowy ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... was! No, Walter; I admire you; if you could be trusted not to misunderstand, I might even say I loved you! I shall always be glad to see you, always enjoy hearing you read; but there is a line as impassable as the Persian river of death. Talk about something ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... and obtained a view of the Mahratta host from rising ground. They were in the fork formed by the junction of the Kaitna with the Juah. Their right consisted wholly of cavalry, and was protected by the high and rocky bank of the stream; which was, at one or two points, impassable for guns. Their left, consisting of the infantry and artillery, was posted in the village of Assaye, which lay near the fork ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... deep that it would be difficult for the cattle to go down, and for the waggons impossible that at a distance of three miles below he could see the river, which was also so embedded in rocks, as to be impassable ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the brig to back quickly so as not to be crushed to pieces. This mass of ice, carried along, broken up and amalgamated by the northern current, crushed up the passage, and if seized by the frost would oppose an impassable barrier to ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... next day, that there had been several skirmishes with the Welsh, and that heavy rains had made the roads all but impassable. No more messages had come. This was not surprising, as it was certain that the Welsh would close in behind the army, as it advanced; and as there would be no great occasion to send news back, the king would not care to weaken ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... life is known to us all; for the most part we are alone, and the voices of friends come only faint and broken across the impassable gulfs ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... at a distance, it was long before the news of his colleague's misfortune reached him; and besides, the road lying betwixt the two camps being impassable, it was impossible for him to advance hastily to his assistance. This disastrous accident caused a great consternation in Carthage. The reader may have observed, in the course of this war, a continual vicissitude of prosperity and ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... what influence the other side has upon us or we upon the human beings beyond this boundary. We think it is opaque, impassable. I am writing of the other wall. There was a puzzle! ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... is the tale of Alexander's shutting up a score of impure nations, at the head of which were Gog and Magog, within a barrier of impassable mountains, there to await the latter days; a legend with which the disturbed mind of Europe not unnaturally connected that cataclysm of unheard-of Pagans that seemed about to deluge Christendom in the first half of the 13th century. In these stories also the beautiful ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... which had been taken to make the Road so. And even here there was a Necessity of marching along the Side of a Mountain, where by vast Labour and Industry, a high Way had been cut for two Miles at least out of the main Rock. The Earl therefore, by somewhat of the same Labour, soon made it impassable. He employ'd to that End many Thousands of the Country People, under a few of his own Officers and Troops, who cutting up twenty several Places, made so many Precipices, perpendicular almost as a Wall, which ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... accomplished, and they were ready to start on their second venture, the elements were again against them, and for a week they were confronted by an impassable wall of foam-crested billows, breaking and roaring upon the bar in the ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... only their extreme summits are visible from that point, Whiteface bold and peaked, Tahawus round and indistinct. The great ridge, hiding all but their heads, is here jagged or flowing, steep, and dark with spruce and pine. It rises like an impassable wall; of a clear morning, a frowning barrier of granite and forest; of a hazy afternoon, the shining, glowing rampart of some ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... leading members and officials of the House and making himself generally agreeable, as was his wont. I little knew what offence I was unconsciously giving to my colleagues. In those days a gulf that was regarded as impassable divided the members of the Press from the members of the House. Occasionally the white-haired, or rather white-wigged, Mr. Ross, the head of the Times Parliamentary corps, might be seen holding a mysterious colloquy in some gloomy corner ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... races and speaking two different languages. The ancient forest has disappeared, but its edge is still marked on the map. We cross it to-day without noticing any alteration in the landscape, but the distant voices of the peasants working in the fields remind us of its ancient shadow and impassable undergrowth. The traveller wonders, one moment, at the change, then takes up the road again, adding one further unanswered question to his load of unsolved problems. The historian evokes the terrible years ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... to the camp this evening; he still found the swamps were impassable, the water and mud lying on them in many parts, from three to four feet deep; there were patches of dry land here and there covered with good but ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... The creek being still impassable, I remained here another day. Yesterday the horse that was carrying my instruments broke away from the man who was leading him, burst the girths, and threw the saddlebags on the ground. The instruments were very ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... starting from this station for the South. You are aware that hitherto the Nile from about eighteen miles south of Gondokoro to the junction of it with the Unyame Hor (Apuddo, Hiameye, Dufte, or Mahade, as different people call it) has been considered impassable and a torrential stream. Being very much bothered with the difficulties of the land route for this distance, I thought I would establish ports along the river, hoping to find it in steps with portions which might be navigable, instead of what it was supposed to be—viz. a continuous ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... unexplored, roads and railways are needed in many parts, irrigation systems are still to be installed, and wells to be driven. Whole villages and towns are still without means of communication other than almost impassable roads and trails. Even the great progress in sanitation, which has successfully suppressed smallpox, the bubonic plague, and Asiatic cholera, has found the cause of and a cure for beriberi, has segregated the lepers, has helped ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... over him by the witchery of this young girl? Had he not his wife? Was she not at Chetwynde Castle? That odious wife, forced on him in his boyhood, long since grown abhorrent, and now standing up, an impassable barrier between him and the dearest longings of his heart. So he crushed down desire; and, while assenting to Obed's plans, made no proposal to assist him in any way ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... Mr. Pixley vaguely, as though the name were new and strange to him. Or perhaps it was an endeavour on his part to express the impassable gulf which lay between his visitor and his ward, and the profound amazement he felt at any attempt on his visitor's part to abridge it. He also made a little involuntary preliminary cut at him with the pince-nez, as much as to say, "If this my weapon were of a size commensurate with ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... were capable of responding to affirmatively; yet how he leaves us looking at a "good that is fair," but without a word as to how it is to be attained, in view of, and in spite of, sin. That one short word raises an impassable barrier between us and that fair good, and the more fair the good, the more cruel the pain at being so utterly separated from it; but then, too, the more sweet and precious the love that removes the barrier entirely, and introduces us to a good that is as ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... 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
... Passes.—Though the Alps form a barrier they have never formed an impassable barrier, since, from the earliest days onwards, they have been traversed first, perhaps, for purposes of war or commerce, and later by pilgrims, students and tourists. The spots at which they were crossed are called passes (this word is ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to work the destruction of his foes. The Artillery claims that mules are entirely too stubborn, too cowardly, and too hard to manage for the purpose of their arm of the service. It was also an experiment to use two mules per gun. The Engineer Department had reported that the road to the front was impassable for wheeled vehicles, and even the general had apparently thought that four mules per gun would be necessary. The necessity of economizing mules, and the opinion of the detachment commander that two mules per gun would be sufficient, had led to the ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... pursuit was pushed forward to the very edge of the enemy's country; Kay's troopers patrolled the north bank of the river and watched every road and ford; east and west Ripley's and Haynes's brigades formed impassable curtains. ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... thought land that lay inward from the sea was valueless. The forest was an impassable barrier. Later, up to the time of George Washington, the Alleghanies were regarded as a natural barrier. Patrick Henry likened the Alleghany Mountains to the Alps that separated Italy from Germany and said, "The mountain-ranges are lines that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surrendered at all by the other. Physically speaking, we can not separate. We can not remove our respective sections from each other nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country can not do this. They can not but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... already lavished on another: believe me, respect, esteem, are but poor, weak talismans to ward off life's trials. Rise superior to all puerile fancies; bear nobly the odium of old maidism, if such be thy fate, and if, like Sir Walter Scott's lovely creation, Rebecca, you are separated by an impassable gulf from your heart's chosen, or have met and suffered by the false and treacherous, take not any chance Waverley who may cross your path. Like the high-souled Jewess, resolve to live on singly, and strive with the means God has given you, to ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... our sentiments, and aid us in tracing the hidden links which bind apparent dissimilarities, identical oppositions and equivalent antitheses, and teach us the secrets of the chasms separating with narrow but impassable space, that which is destined to approach forever, yet never mingle; to resemble ever, yet never blend. To have awakened early, as did Madame Sand, to the dim whispering with which nature initiates her chosen to her mystic rites, is a necessary appanage ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... brought about since that memorable day is almost unbelievable. The whole country has been revolutionized. Railroads and macadamized roads have been built with steel and concrete bridges and where it used to be almost impassable it is now a pleasure to travel. Schools and colleges have been established. A bureau of labor has averted many strikes. A constabulary force of nearly five thousand men has done wonders in suppressing brigandage, bringing the savage tribes into subjection and preserving ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... 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 ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... south of Temiscouata portage, when it was found that, from unforeseen delays in the transportation of the party of J. Renwick by sea to their work, and on the river St. Lawrence from one station to another, it became doubtful whether he could pass the Temiscouata portage before the woods became impassable, his colleague continued his parties in the field until the junction was effected. In this way, while the expenses of the division of J. Renwick have not been materially diminished, those of the division of A. Talcott have been largely increased; but a portion of the general work ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... "in and out" terms, from morning to night, as these others were among themselves; for one thing, the little daily duties of their life would not allow it. The "jolly times" on the Hill were a kind of Elf-land to them, sometimes patent and free, sometimes shrouded in the impalpable and impassable mist that shuts in the fairy region when it wills to be by itself for ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... details she is bereft. She has instead an immeasurably greater thing, intelligence, but whilst intelligence can learn everything it has everything to learn. Subhuman instinct can learn nothing, but is perfect from the first within its impassable limits. It is this lapse of instinctive aptitude that constitutes the cardinal difficulty against which we are assembled. The mother cat not merely has a far less helpless young creature to succour, but she has a far superior inherent or instinctive ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... into the galleries, which were almost impassable. In the distance Lady Holme caught sight of Miss Schley with Mrs. Wolfstein. They were surrounded by young men. She looked hard at the American's pale face, saying to herself, "Is that like me? Is that like me?" Her conversation with Robin Pierce had made her ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... the same first individual, the same first 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 ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... ground where his front was defended, first by the little burn of Bannock, which at one point winds through a cleugh with steep banks, and next by two morasses, Halbert's bog and Milton bog. What is now arable ground may have been a loch in old days, and these two marshes were then impassable by a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... canals, or the waterways that intersected each other over the whole surface of the country. In these days the journey between Bagdad and Bassorah, a distance of some three hundred miles, involves a long detour to the east along the foot of the mountains, in order to avoid impassable marshes and bands of wandering Arabs devoted to murder and pillage. The flat country is infested with mounted brigands who strip unprotected travellers, but in ancient times it swarmed with traffic, every road was encumbered with the movements of merchandise and the march of caravans, the fields ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... the storm continued. Highways were blocked up, while roads less frequented were rendered wholly impassable. The oldest inhabitants of Oakland had "never seen the like before," and they shook their gray heads ominously as over and adown the New England mountains the howling wind swept furiously, now shrieking exultingly ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... Thinkest Thou we shall be right or still lying? They will convince themselves of our rightness, for they will see what a depth of degrading slavery and strife that liberty of Thine has led them into. Liberty, Freedom of Thought and Conscience, and Science will lead them into such impassable chasms, place them face to face before such wonders and insoluble mysteries, that some of them—more rebellious and ferocious than the rest—will destroy themselves; others—rebellious but weak —will destroy each other; while the remainder, ...
— "The Grand Inquisitor" by Feodor Dostoevsky • Feodor Dostoevsky
... are shops, verandahs are almost universal along the pavement. The gutters are very wide—sometimes 5 feet or 6 feet, which is necessary to carry off the large amount of water coming down when it rains. At such times the mud is almost impassable. Melbourne proper is situated in the centre, and stands to the rest of the city somewhat as the City of London does to the various vestries. In Melbourne, however, each of the suburbs—15 in number—has a Mayor, Corporation, and Town Clerk of its own. Any municipality with a ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... cattle sore-footed and too much worn out to continue the journey. There we camped for the winter in the midst of the wilderness, 400 miles from the nearest settlement or postoffice, from which we were separated by a region of mountainous country, rendered nearly impassable in the winter by deep snows, and beset for the entire distance by hostile Indians. Disheartening as the prospect was, we felt that it would not do to give way to discouragement. A few venturesome prospectors from the west ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... At Charlemont, however, intelligence of fresh successes gained by Hamilton and De Rosen, at Cladyford and Strabane, came to restore his confidence; he instantly set forward, despite the tempestuous weather, and the almost impassable roads, and on the eighteenth reached the Irish camp at Johnstown, within four or five miles ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... night, at Mansfield, rain, hail, sleet and snow, such as Ohio had never experienced at that season of the year, (October 10), made the streets impassable. The minstrels played to a very meager audience. After all bills were paid the company had ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... we 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 are even ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Ah! if only they had been invited to a Bacchic revelling, or a feast of Pan or Aphrodit or Genetyllis,[390] why! the streets would have been impassable for the thronging tambourines! Now there's never a woman here-ah! except my neighbour Calonic, whom I see approaching yonder.... Good ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... watergates by which a little boat is always waiting, and secret passageways leading into fair places that are frequented by persons of distinction and charm. No darkness of night obscures these outlets; no neighbour's house shuts off the view; no drifted snow of winter makes them impassable. They are always free, and through them I go out and in upon ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... on my mind most of the time, Tom," replied the good man. "I am often asking myself. Can I not, in some way, lead these benighted souls to the Lamb of God? But how inaccessible they are! What an impassable barrier between them and us! and, with the exception of the youngest of them, how brutal and low! To see such splendidly-formed men spend their time squatted on the earth, playing jack-straws, or some equally silly game, from morning to night, is pitiful. And then their yelling ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... in its room an anxious and brooding wonder. God knows what thoughts passed through that somber mind in those long hours, when, concentrated upon himself, he must have faced the problem of his future and, like one before an impassable stone wall, had to fall back, baffled. He could be sure of only one thing: that never again could he be what he had been once—"the slickest cracksman in America." This in itself tortured him. Heretofore, life had been exactly ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... surface, unless there is a general thaw. You forget where we are, high up in the Dagh. Even where the snow melts, it will freeze every night, and make the roads more impassable. As to our path by the side of the precipice it will ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... after long rides and climbs in the heart of the Sierras. The gorges and canons of Colorado are surpassed; mountains that tower above Pike's Peak rise in steep incline from the still level of the sea; and the shores are clad in forests and undergrowth dense and impassable as the tangle of a ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... having collected all his forces, he purposed to hazard an attack on the chieftain himself, in the midst of the desert fastnesses to which he had driven him; but the difficulties which he experienced from the impassable state of the roads, the treachery of scouts and the inclemency of the season, compelled him to defer this undertaking till the return of spring. Meantime, such was the extremity of distress to which Tyrone had been reduced, that ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... who is looking at the machine while he is giving information is biased by the impressions as to what the machine can do; make allowances for this and get, if possible, an accurate description of the condition of any road which is pronounced impassable, for you alone know what the machine can do, and many a road others think you cannot cover ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... who were hurrying to the scene of disaster. When I arrived there, a crowd had already assembled. Castle-street was then very narrow. It was quite choked up with people. Dale-street was beginning to be crowded while High-street and Water-street were quite impassable. From the windows of all the houses the terrified inmates were to be observed en dishabille, and the large inn in Water-street, the Talbot, which was nearly opposite the Town Hall, had people looking out ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... beautiful house in a green dingle, musical with splashing water, and surrounded on almost every side by twenty miles of poisonous and rocky desert. The city was thirty miles away; there was but one road, which went no farther than my father's door; the rest were bridle-tracks impassable in winter; and we thus dwelt in a solitude inconceivable to the European. Our only neighbour was Dr. Grierson. To my young eyes, after the hair-oiled, chin-bearded elders of the city, and the ill-favoured and mentally stunted women of their harems, there was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the various types of this inference from similarity can be conveniently thrown into three groups. As will be obvious, there is no fixed and impassable ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... attempted to get through the gorge of this river in 1870, he would have found it impassable; but a few river-bed flats had been discovered above the gorge, on which there was now a shepherd's hut, and on the discovery of these flats a narrow horse track had been made from one end of ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... eight o'clock one 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 ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... shaded three-quarters across by the cliff, the moon being behind this. The other quarter, on the side of the trees, is brilliantly lit up by her beams, showing the timber thick and close along its edge, to all appearance impassable as the facade of rugged rock frowning from the opposite concave of the enclosed circle. Communicating with this are but two paths possible for man or horse, and for either only in single file. One enters the glade coming up the river bottom along the base ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... hour of renunciation, are changed to bitterness and disgust. He remembers the old oracle: "In the Bacchic procession many carry the thyrsus, but few are inspired." The possibility of ultimate failure threatens him more and more while he reflects; as the chasm which you wish to leap grows impassable, if you measure and deliberate. But the vivacity of youth preserves him from any permanent misanthropy or doubt. Nature makes us blind where we should be injured by seeing. We partake of the lead of Saturn, the activity of fire, the forgetfulness of water. His academic praises console him, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... that intervene. We came from the station through the Neustadt, passing the Japanese Palace and the equestrian statue of Augustus the Strong, The magnificent bridge over the Elbe was so much injured by the late inundation as to be impassable; we worn obliged to go some distance up the river bank and cross on a bridge of boats. Next morning my first search was for the picture gallery. We set off at random, and after passing the Church of Our Lady, with its lofty dome of ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... friendships, and all our youth is a reconnoitring and recruiting of the holy fraternity that shall combine for the salvation of men. But so the remoter stars seem a nebula of united light, yet there is no group which a telescope will not resolve, and the dearest friends are separated by impassable gulfs. The cooeperation is involuntary, and is put upon us by the Genius of Life, who reserves this as a part of his prerogative. 'Tis fine for us to talk: we sit and muse, and are serene, and complete; but the moment we meet with anybody, each ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... the orders of General Armfeldt, have had several skirmishes with the Danes, which have in general proved very favourable to the former; but nothing of importance has yet taken place, owing to the roads being almost impassable from the depth of snow and ice, which, even at this advanced season, cover them. Last Wednesday, accounts were received from Stockholm, of the surrender of Sweaborg! It was the more unexpected from the garrison having withstood two assaults, ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... in such numbness of spirit only that the life of the invalid resembles a premature old age. Those excursions that he had promised himself to finish, prove too long or too arduous for his feeble body; and the barrier-hills are as impassable as ever. Many a white town that sits far out on the promontory, many a comely fold of wood on the mountain side, beckons and allures his imagination day after day, and is yet as inaccessible to his feet as the clefts and gorges ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... finest of the forage is nearer to the village among the truck-farms—the finest of forage and the fiercest of dangers. Some of the dangers of the plains were lacking, but the greater perils of men, guns, Dogs, and impassable fences are much increased. Yet those who knew Warhorse best were not at all surprised to find that he had made a form in the middle of a market-gardener's melon-patch. A score of dangers beset him here, but there was also a score of unusual delights and a score of holes in the fence for times ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... remained till the sixteenth day of November; when, being in danger of having his communication with Torgau cut off by the enemy, he removed to a strong camp, where his left flank was covered with that city and the river Elbe; his right being secured by a wood, and great part of his front by an impassable morass. Here he was reinforced with about twenty thousand men from Silesia, and joined by the king himself, who forthwith detached general Finck, with nineteen battalions and thirty-five squadrons, to take possession of the defiles of Maxen and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... impassable barrier, she touched me more deeply than when I sued her most. The undulating ripple which was her peculiar expression of joy was more than I could bear. I left the room and was flinging myself from the house to walk in the chill wind; ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... flowers and purple flashes of cranesbill. Here I examined my scratches and the state of things generally. The result of my reflections was to admit that the cobbler was right, that these ravines of the Upper Dordogne were practically impassable, and that the only rational way of following the river would be to keep sometimes on the hills and sometimes in the gorge, as the unforeseen might determine. Hitherto, I had not troubled to inquire where I should ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... at the last moment when too late, we had been unable to drag along with us for the attack on the stockade, the path we had traversed through the bush in the first instance under the leadership of our treacherous guide having almost been impassable ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... misery," bellicose intellectuals, the soldiers unite in showing a contempt which is free from violence but knows no bounds. To them has come "the revelation of the great reality": a difference between human beings, a difference far profounder and with far more impassable barriers than those of race: the sharp, glaring, and inalterable distinction, in the population of every country, between those who profit and those who suffer, those who have been compelled to sacrifice everything, ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... go out among the poor, as she had designed; for in that wilderness of hill and valley, wood and water, the roads even in the best weather were bad enough—but in mid-winter they were nearly impassable except by the hardiest pedestrians, the roughest horses, and the strongest wagons. Very early in January there came a deep snow, followed by a sharp frost, and then by a warm rain and thaw, that converted the hills into seamed and guttered precipices; the valleys ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... no word of the revealing talk; yet, when he and Karen were alone, he was aware of a new chill, or a new discretion, in the atmosphere. It was as if a veil of ice, invisible yet impassable, hung between them, and he could only infer that she had something to hide, he could only suspect, with a bitterer resentment, that Madame von Marwitz had been ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... pale-faces," commenced 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 ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... down for ages, until what perhaps had been once a deep canyon was now a narrow flat, a mass of debris, terminating at the top of the steep, ragged cliff that pitched downward before us. The high, rocky ridges on both sides were wholly impassable, at least for the teams. A search finally disclosed, at the base of the ridge on our right, a single possible passage. It was narrow, slightly wider than a wagon, and led downward at a steep incline, into the valley below, with rocks protruding from both its side walls, its ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... and in time they held "hard hats." The stamping of the social die had begun its work. Indeed, after a time there came to be in the great dining-room of the Stone Hotel little groups bounded by unseen but impassable lines. The bankers and the loan agents sat at the head of the hall, and to them drifted naturally the ministers, ever in search of pillars. Lawyers and doctors sat adjacent thereunto, and merchants not far away. There was yet no shrug at the artisan, yet the invisible hand ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... thaw. In spots the little rivulets of water appeared. Another day I saw a fly or a spider awakened after the hard winter. The spring was coming. I realized that in spring it was impossible to go out from the forest. Every river overflowed its banks; the swamps became impassable; all the runways of the animals turned into beds for streams of running water. I understood that until summer I was condemned to a continuation of my solitude. Spring very quickly came into her rights and soon my mountain was free ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... in charge of the gate, but she bent her head obediently and said nothing. It seems to be a general rule with religious houses that no one is ever to wait in the street for admittance; the barrier, which is often impassable, is the door that leads inward ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... shopkeeper's till or stock could be safe. From Bow to Hyde Park, from Thames Street to Bloomsbury, there was no parish in which some quiet dwelling had not been sacked by burglars. [327] Meanwhile the great roads were made almost impassable by freebooters who formed themselves into troops larger than had before been known. There was a sworn fraternity of twenty footpads which met at an alehouse in Southwark. [328] But the most formidable band of plunderers consisted ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Madame Hanska and the Mniszechs, and furniture, carriages, and servants, were despatched in advance. The weather, however, was an important consideration; and on this occasion, owing to the inclemency of the season, the roads were unfortunately impassable, so that the pleasure trip had to be deferred from the middle till the end of February. This was no doubt a sad disappointment to the Countess Anna, who thereby missed much enjoyment, and the delay must have caused intense irritation ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... syringas, calycanthus, and honeysuckle; I open the rickety gate, and find myself in a genuine old-fashioned garden, the homely, inclusive spot that welcomed all growing things to its hospitable bounds, type of the days when there were no impassable barriers of gold and caste between man and his brother man. In the middle of the garden stood a "summer-house," or arbor, whose crumbling timbers were knit together by interlacing branches of honeysuckle and running roses. The summer-house had four entrances, opening ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... reality: its insecurity from violence and oppression, its barbarous discomfort; the life of nobles in unplumbed stone castles; the life of burghers in walled towns, without lighting, drainage, or police; the life of countrymen who took their goods to market over miry roads impassable half the year for any wheeled vehicle. As to the English poets whom we have passed in review, from Coleridge to Swinburne, not one of them joined the Catholic Church; and most of them found romantic literary tastes quite consistent with varying ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... was less than one mile, more than half of which ran from the river to the wood, the remainder extending into the depths of the wood, taking an oblique direction to the left and terminating in the impassable swamp. The parapet was about five feet in height and from ten to twenty feet thick at the base, extending inland from the river one thousand yards. Beyond that, to the wood and swamp, where artillery ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... things we were henceforth to allow to become our life? Suppose we selected a given area of our environment and determined once for all that our correspondences should go to that alone, fencing in this area all round with a morally impassable wall? True, to others, we should seem to live a poorer life; they would see that our environment was circumscribed, and call us narrow because it was narrow. But, well-chosen, this limited life would be really the fullest life; it would ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... situation to scatter the wits of a Napoleon! It was no wonder that for a few moments his thoughts flattened themselves against an impassable barrier. Whitney Barnes was the first ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... men of the village were at work upon the plain, a mass of rock, detached by the slow action of the elements, or else precipitated by an earthquake shock, fell into the narrow cleft by which alone an ascent or descent of the mesa was made, and rendered it impassable. The women and children, left thus on the summit of a cliff four hundred and thirty feet in height, and cut off from communication with their relatives and friends, who were unable to rejoin and rescue them, are said to have slowly perished ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... make this hillside yield its purple banners from the secret storehouses within. So he had struggled with soil and season, with suns that scorched and winds that chilled, with parching days that opened the earth in great crevices, and with torrents that made the paths between the vines impassable for days. ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... A confined enough open space almost completely surrounded by fire. Before her were the blazing farm buildings, behind her was the raging furnace that once had been her home. And on one side of her the flames commingled so as to be impassable. Her head was bowed and her eyes were closed, her hands were pressed tight over her ears in a vain attempt to shut out cognizance of the terror that reigned about and above her. She stood thus despairing. She was afraid, ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... the silent garden, the deepening shadows, the darkening sky. Above her head, now, high in the air were the faintly rustling palm leaves. Behind the palms stretched the wall, high and blankly impassable. She felt strange, unreal.... ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... Courcelles where, on the following day, they relieved the troops of the 3rd Division in the trenches opposite Serre. The weather was bad, the enemy kept up brisk attentions and the trenches were the worst which the Battalion had ever been in. Most of them were absolutely impassable, being full of water to a height of five feet, with the result that reliefs had for the most part to be made outside the trenches. Owing to this condition of matters, strict orders were issued for the prevention of "trench feet," but notwithstanding ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... an almost continuous succession of snow fields and glaciers beyond all comparison. The snow line is 17,000 feet in midsummer, and in winter comes down to 12,000 and 15,000 feet, and when that altitude is reached snow is continuous and impassable. This is the highest and the most extensive of all mountain ranges. Along the northern frontier of India for 2,000 miles it stands like a vast hedge, the most formidable natural boundary in the world, nowhere lower than ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... canals, in this endless morass—made impassable by flooding—many, many brave German soldiers have sacrificed their lives. During the autumn and winter months of 1914 the whole Yser domain was ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... 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 uses ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... over it. These valleys, now so rich and productive, wore a very different aspect when the brethren first chose them as the place of their retirement. Wide swamps, deep morasses, tangled thickets, wild impassable forests, were their prevailing features. The "bright valley,'' Clara Vallis of St Bernard, was known as the "valley of Wormwood,'' infamous as a den of robbers. "It was a savage dreary solitude, so utterly barren that at first ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 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 our little party? I want to thank you again for offering ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... thing in the world to go to astray, but always difficult to return, Martin Green was astray, but how was he to get into the right path again? A barrier that seemed impassable was now lying across the way over which he had passed, a little while before, with lightest footsteps. Alone and unaided, he could not safely get back. The evil spirits that lure a man from virtue never counsel aright when to seek to return. ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... how came you by those lofty walls? Which of my ancestors had begirt me with an impassable barrier in ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... Major Powell, undismayed by legends of underground channels, impassable cataracts, and whirlpools; of bloodthirsty tribes haunting its recesses,—had passed through the canyons in safety, measuring and surveying as he went. We also knew of the many other attempts that had been made—most of them ending in ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... hope of finding the tiger, much less of rescuing Baboo, dead or alive. The jungle loomed up like an impassable wall on all three sides of the compound, so dense, compact, and interwoven, that a bird could not fly through it. Still I knew that my men, if they had the courage, could follow where the tiger led, and could cut ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... Hollywood-inspired belief, the Sahara does not consist principally of sand dunes, although these, too, are present, and all but impassable even to camels. Traffic, through the millennia, has held to the endless stretches of gravelly plains and the rock ribbed plateaus which cover most of the desert. The great sandy wastes or ergs cover roughly a fifth of the entire Sahara, and possibly two thirds of this ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... the Blue Ridge, that beautiful line of mountains which, as yet, almost formed the western frontier of inhabited Virginia. Winter still lingered on the tops of the mountains, whence melting snows sent down torrents, which swelled the rivers and occasionally rendered them almost impassable. Spring, however, was softening the lower parts of the landscape and smiling in ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... regard to the multitude of instances by which men may be deterred from the attempt, here is my answer. First, what need to dissemble? Either store of instances must be procured, or the business must be given up. All other ways, however enticing, are impassable. Secondly, the prerogatives of instances, and the mode of experimenting upon experiments of light (which I shall hereafter explain), will diminish the multitude of them very much. Thirdly, what matter, I ask, if the description of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... likes, bawling as he likes, hustling as he likes.... He sees the rich, the aristocratic class, in occupation of the executive government; and so, if he is stopped from making Hyde Park a bear-garden or the streets impassable, he cries out that he is ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... another name for it—'the grandmother of all buckets.' I was once in Wastdale with a dean of the Church of England, respectable, sedate, and a D.D. It had poured for days without ceasing; the roads were under water, the passes were impassable, the mountains invisible; there was nothing to be seen but waterfalls, and those in the wrong place; there was no literature; the dean's guide-books were exhausted, and his Bible, it is but charitable and reasonable to suppose, he knew by heart. ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... On the other hand, the democratic formula of "equality before the law" best defines the modern conception of human relations, and this maxim indicates a tone of thought directly the converse of that which begot status; for whereas the one strove to raise impassable barriers against free competition in the struggle for existence, the ideal of the other is to offer the fullest scope for the expansion of ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... of stormy weather, 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 ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... view of heathen religion it strove to rescue the ideal religion from the actual, and to discover the one revelation of the Divine ideal amid the great variety of religious traditions and modes of worship. But its invincible dualism, separating by an impassable chasm God from the world, and mind from matter, identifying goodness with the one, evil with the other, prevented belief in a religion like Christianity, which was penetrated by the Hebrew conceptions of the universe, so alien ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... Europe that we can trace the relations established between men separated by vast distances, by oceans, and by apparently impassable deserts. The shells of the Atlantic and those of the Pacific, the copper of Lake Superior, the mica of the Alleghanies, and the obsidian of Mexico lie together beneath the tumuli of Ohio, and quite recently Mr. Putnam exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries a collection of ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... no time in utilising his victory, for the same day he passed a division of native infantry over a bridge of boats across the Sutlej, the bridge of Sobraon having been broken and burnt at the close of the action, and the ford at Hurrakee being impassable, the river having risen some seven inches in a short time. The destruction of the bridge of Sobraon does not appear to have been a politic measure; it was not necessary as a precaution, because the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... turned back to return to Ghizr, the party carrying the guns were just arriving at a stream called the Shamalkhand, which flows from a high pass of the same name, which is often used as a summer route to Mastuj, but at that time of year is impassable. From this stream to Langar, the camping ground on the eastern side of the Shandur Pass, is some four miles, the valley being open and fairly level, but covered with thick dwarf willow on the banks of the stream flowing down the centre which confines the road to the ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... felt assured that he would soon collect his scattered forces and return with fresh troops from Granada. The people were comforted by the words and encouraged by the presence of Reduan, and they had still a lingering hope that the heavy artillery of the Christians might be locked up in the impassable defiles of the mountains. This hope was soon at an end. The very next day they beheld long laborious lines of ordnance slowly moving into the Spanish camp—lombards, ribadoquines, catapults, and ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... and snows of winter swept 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 over ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... fellow, the mere musicians are as plentiful as niggers on the sea-shore. A publisher might spend his whole day receiving regiments of unappreciated geniuses. Bond Street would be impassable. You look at the publisher too much from ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... evident that this war is breaking down the barriers that have heretofore been impassable, not only between men and women, but between the various classes of society, and that it cannot possibly end without bringing these more closely together, all working to the same end in a more perfect harmony, and that the result of it must be that ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... arbitrarily. They are determined by characters, but these are not arbitrary. The problem is, to find a few definite characters which point to the multitude of indefinite ones. Kinds are Classes between which there is an impassable barrier; and what we have to seek is, marks whereby we may determine on which side of the barrier an object takes its place. The characters which will best do this should be chosen: if they are also ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... inclined to ask what could have tempted her to talk in such a familiar way to a creature like him—human indeed, but separated from her by a gulf more impassable far than that which divided her from the thrones, principalities, and powers of the upper regions? And how is the fact to be accounted for, that here she put out a dainty foot, and reaching for one of her stockings, began to draw it gently ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... beauty, when the glaciers glitter in the sunshine, and the pink flowers of the rhododendron appear as if they were never to be sullied by the tempest. But a storm suddenly comes on; the roads are rendered impassable by drifts of snow; the avalanches, which are huge loosened masses of snow or ice, are swept into the valleys, carrying trees and ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... highways like drowning sailors to a life raft. When an excursion into the woods is proposed, all sorts of exaggerated or imaginary dangers are conjured up, filling the kindly, soothing wilderness with colds, fevers, Indians, bears, snakes, bugs, impassable rivers, and jungles of brush, to which is always added ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... that the line ahead leading past Fordham Cut was impassable. The passenger was stalled ten miles away, and orders from Rockton were to the effect that the Overland Express should take the cut-off. This diverged into the foothills, where there were no such deep cuts as on the direct route, and where it was hoped ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... those whom they dealt with, either inspected every cubic inch of luggage with boorish suspicion and resultant damage or else waved the proffered handbags airily aside with false geniality. The highways, repeating a pattern I had cause to know so well, were nearly impassable with brokendown cars and other litter. The streets of Queens, cluttered with wreckage and refuse, were bounded by houses in a state of apathetic disrepair whose filthy windows refused to look upon the scene before them. The great bridges ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Pullman, for it was utterly destroyed. He had driven the machine out there, with despatches, on the afternoon of the third day. Some of the heaviest fighting had occurred there, he said, many of the streets being rendered impassable by the heaps ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... in the fact that an emigrant party, on its way to the Sonora Pass, and in an endeavor probably to avoid the rough river canyon down which Fremont came, essayed this pass instead of the meadows above. It is a canyon which, at first, promises an easy pass but finally becomes almost impassable. The party in question found it necessary to abandon several of their wagons before they could get over. They, or another party, buried one of their men there, also some blacksmith tools. My endeavors to ascertain what party this was have thus far not been ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... paling was impassable. A small gate leading through it was still locked with a heavy Chinese padlock, and there was no key. One of the officers gave a wave of his hand, and a couple of the soldiers went out and reappeared with axes. In a few blows they had cleared a broad opening; ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... wood parallel to the creek. The situation was strong, to be sure; but hazardous on this account, that had our right wing been defeated, the defeat of the left would almost have been an inevitable consequence, and the whole thrown into confusion or pushed into the Delaware, as it was impassable by boats. ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... embrace, half averting her cheek, though Cecil's arms clung round her as though they would never let her go. The saddest feeling of the many that were busy then in the guilty, troubled heart, was a consciousness that in a few hours the gulf between them would be deep and impassable as the ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... examination which I have given Mr. S. Kirkham's English Grammar, I do not hesitate to recommend it to the public as the best of the class I have ever seen, and as filling up an important and almost impassable chasm in works ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... distance, like the Promised Land to true believers. Some visions I beheld of its beautiful angels walking in shining robes; strains of its sweet melody were sometimes wafted across the distance; but I might never enter there. It was no land of promise to me. A gulf, dark and impassable, lay between. And beside all this, as I have already intimated, I considered myself out of danger. My life's lesson had been learned. I knew it by heart. What more could ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... self-consciousness, exists in us under manifold limitations. Self-determination is limited by physical, corporeal, and mental conditions, so that there is "an impassable boundary line drawn around the area of volitional freedom." But the most fundamental and original limitation is that of duty. The self-determining power of man is not only circumscribed by necessary conditions, but also by the moral law ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... where he and Burkitt had taken Hampton, saw it. Lee judged roughly that it was separated from him by four or five miles of broken country, impassable to a man on horseback, to be covered laboriously foot in a ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... by night, these two halves of war continue to lie in wait for each other afar, to dig their graves at their feet, and I am helpless. They are separated by frontiers of gulfs, which bristle with weapons and explosive snares, impassable to life. They are separated by all that can separate, by dead men and still by dead men, and ever thrown back, each into its gasping islands, by black rivers and consecrated ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... myrtle-like leaves, garlanding the bushes; woodbines and elder-trees pushing out their small swelling buds; and grasses and mosses springing forth in every variety of brown and green. Here we are at the corner where four lanes meet, or rather where a passable road of stones and gravel crosses an impassable one of beautiful but treacherous turf, and where the small white farmhouse, scarcely larger than a cottage, and the well-stocked rick-yard behind, tell of comfort and order, but leave all unguessed the great riches of the master. How he became so rich is almost ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... Revolution and Napoleon. The fate of India seemed less certain, and the genius of Dupleix roused better hopes for France; yet India, defenceless as it was against European forces, was bound to fall a prize to the masters of the sea, unless some European state could control its almost impassable overland approaches. Clive, perhaps, was almost as much the brilliant adventurer as Dupleix, but he was supported at need by an organized government more susceptible than the French ancien rgime to the pressure of commercial ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... be 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
... rationalistic method may appear to us, nothing but supercilious ingratitude could prompt us to disparage the service it has rendered. The rationalists are the men to whom the world is indebted for being the pioneers in the work of breaking down the impassable barrier of hatred and disdain which divided the followers of one faith from those of another. Rationalism began to lift the curse of intolerance and persecution which lay heavily upon the human race. No one who values the freedom to live his own life in his own way should cast aspersions upon the ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... necessity taught the people to protect against the severity of the cold and the fleeting but terrible heat of the sun with the shrewd ability which Norwegians display in the two-fold struggle. The difficulty of communication with the outer world, either by land where the roads are impassable, or by sea where none but tiny boats can thread their way through the maritime defiles that guard the entrance to the bay, hinder these people from growing rich by the sale of their timber. It would cost enormous sums to either blast a channel out to sea or construct a way to the interior. ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... Muerta and the Canyon de Chelly are especially noticeable. Many of these canyons are carved in a homogeneous red sandstone, and their walls are often vertical for hundreds of feet. Sometimes the canyons widen into narrow valleys, which are thus walled by impassable cliffs, except where lateral canyons cut ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... the centre and mud on both sides. Those joining Lindenhoek to Neuve Eglise and Wulverghem were also mostly pave. The remainder were mere field tracks for the most part, rarely metalled, and in wet weather almost impassable for mud. ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... see. To let him see it would have been to her an extreme personal degradation, an offence against the decencies of her class. This sorrow of hers, this invisible, yet implacable sorrow, stood between them, waving him away. It opened up again the impassable gulf. He felt himself not only a stranger, but an inferior, separated from her beyond all possibility of approach. She had not changed. She had simply ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... menial capacity in the country where they were born and educated to command. They can trace no difference between themselves and the more fortunate individuals of a race whose blood warms their veins, and whose name they bear. The want of wealth alone places an impassable barrier between them and the more favoured offspring of the same parent stock; and they go forth to make for themselves a new name and to find another country, to forget the past and to live in the future, to exult in the ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... street. But I was approaching the Seminary; and a resolution was suddenly formed to go and ask the pardon and intercession of the Superior. Then the character of Bishop Lartigue seemed to present an impassable obstacle; and the disagreeable aspect and harsh voice of the man as I recalled him, struck me with horror. I recollected him as I had known him when engaged in scenes concealed from the eye of the world. ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... and conventual calm never had been known to desert her; and her high, light, colorless soprano had something in it of the sexless timbre of the boy chorister. With her blond hair pressed meekly to her shapely head she was the delight and despair of poets, painters and musicians, for she turned an impassable cheek to their pleadings. Mrs. Minne would never remarry; and it was her large income that made water the mouth of the impecunious ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... the school was not quite good enough for the others: Shannon was almost impassable, and Amber, the half, generally waltzed round our forwards, and when he secured he passed the ball on to Aspinall, who doubled like a hare along the touch-line. The question then was "Could Acton stop the flying International, ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... Esterhazy and Theodolite, closed this 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 arrived without ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... skill, enterprise, nor money left in the country. What resources it contained were altogether undeveloped. There was little communication between one place and another, and such roads as existed were for the greater part of the year simply impassable. ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles |
