"Isthmus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there was no appearance of an enemy; and Napoleon seized the opportunity to explore the Isthmus of Suez, where a narrow neck of land divides the Red Sea from the Mediterranean, partly with the view of restoring the communication which in remote times existed between them, and partly of providing for the defence of Egypt, should the Ottomans ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... inferred that there must be a way of arriving at the Indies by a voyage directly west, in distinction from the very complicated way hitherto practiced, by sailing up the Mediterranean, crossing the isthmus of Suez, and so falling down the Red Sea into the Indian Ocean. He weighed all the circumstances attendant on such an undertaking in his mind. He enquired into his own powers and resources, imaged to himself the various ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... end of isthmus forming land bridge connecting North and South America; controls Panama Canal that links North Atlantic Ocean via Caribbean ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... which forms an isthmus rather than a bridge between the Middle Ages and the times termed Modern. Exit the Last of the Barons—enter the printing-press. Exit Boabdil el Chico—enter Columbus and Da Gama. The plot thickened as the cinquecenti hove in view. The last years were the most ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... black ship was just spreading sail from Crete, and entering upon it the hero soon ended his journey and laid his capture before Eurystheus. A day or two later Hercules loosed the bull, which, after wandering through the woodlands of Arcadia, crossed the isthmus and came to the plains of Marathon, whence, after doing much damage, it swam off to sea and was never heard ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... city of Achaia, on the south part of the isthmus which joins Peloponnesus to the continent. From its situation between ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... to be tranquil under certain circumstances; and there are times when most of us perceive the connection between quiet and holiness. But then circumstances change, and what becomes of the peace? Drake and his men cross the isthmus of Panama, and from a peak they see below them the smiling ocean on the farther side; so fair and still it looked that it received the name of the Pacific Ocean; but then there were two things to be noticed: first, it was a fine day; next, they probably thought the sea the ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... of Port Macquarie and on Tasman's Peninsula might be 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 ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... however, serious objections 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 ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... insufficient ditches for De Lesseps. Some of her best went farther back than that. They were thick with the ghosts of old Spaniards and the crimson hands of Morgan's buccaneers. Really that tiny strip across the isthmus is crowded with souls snatched too quickly from torn and tortured bodies. If you are sensitive you feel they ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... expensive and celebrated of all the edifices that they reared was the light-house which has been already alluded to. This light-house was a lofty tower, built of white marble. It was situated upon the island of Pharos, opposite to the city, and at some distance from it. There was a sort of isthmus of shoals and sand-bars connecting the island with the shore. Over these shallows a pier or causeway was built, which finally became a broad and inhabited neck. The principal part of the ancient city, however, was ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... want of attention, or of information in the new colonists, the plants never succeeded under their management; so that, disgusted with the troublesome and unprofitable cultivation, they soon substituted indigo." Yet forests of cacao trees grow wild in Guiana, the Isthmus of Darien, Yucatan, Honduras, Guatemala, Chiapa, and Nicaragua; while in Cuba, St. Domingo, and Jamaica, it was once an ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... affection,—that of serving and being served. He kept the crossing, if the crossing kept him. He smiled at times to himself when he saw it lie fair and brilliant amidst the mire around; it bestowed on him a sense of property! What a man may feel for a fine estate in a ring fence, Beck felt for that isthmus of the kennel which was subject to his broom. The coronation had made one rebellious spirit when it swept the sweeper ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 and construction exclusively ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... across the Isthmus of Panama to shorten the distance, and save taking the passage round the Horn. Travellers left their ship at one side of the Isthmus, and took the train over to the other, where they went on board another ship, which would take them the rest of ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 15, February 18, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... to make Greece a substantive State, which may hereafter receive the debris of the Ottoman Empire. [Footnote: This may explain the apparently illiberal views of many of the Cabinet as to the Greek boundaries. They saw the difficulty of any halting place outside the Isthmus of Corinth, short of a wider boundary even than that ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... end of Hesiod may be told in outline. After the contest at Chalcis, Hesiod went to Delphi and there was warned that the 'issue of death should overtake him in the fair grove of Nemean Zeus.' Avoiding therefore Nemea on the Isthmus of Corinth, to which he supposed the oracle to refer, Hesiod retired to Oenoe in Locris where he was entertained by Amphiphanes and Ganyetor, sons of a certain Phegeus. This place, however, was also ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... haunt of the rubber vine, that mysterious plant which requires a glass-house atmosphere and a soil especially rich. The great rubber forest of M'Bonga, thousands of square miles in extent, is really composed of two forests joined by an isthmus of woods. Dimly, it is shaped like an hourglass; south of the constriction where the two forests join lies the elephant country for which Berselius was making, and Felix had led them so craftily ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Curacao and its political tenure do not fall within the purview of the Monroe doctrine, the Monroe doctrine has no existence; for the island, though small, has a wellnigh impregnable harbor, and lies close beside the routes to the Central American Isthmus, which is to us what Egypt and Suez are to England. But what objection can we urge, or what can we do, with a navy "for defence only," in the military ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... we did so effectually, that, out of some scores of ducks, we only detained one to ourselves, sending all the rest down to those stationed below. After this I landed at the head of the cove, and walked across the narrow isthmus that disjoins it from the sea, or rather from another cove which runs in from the sea about one mile, and lies open to the north winds. It, however, had all the appearance of a good harbour and safe anchorage. At the head is a ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... 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 in the ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... as is well known, upon a long narrow neck of land stretching out into the ocean, from whose bosom the town appears to rise, the salt waters laving its walls on all sides save the east, where a sandy isthmus connects it with the coast of Spain. The town, as it exists at the present day, is of modern construction, and very unlike any other town which is to be found in the Peninsula, being built with great regularity and symmetry. The streets are numerous, and ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... them, while, still, the very feast would sharpen their hunger. I reminded the Duke that 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 land. We gave up Michigan after the war of 1812. We ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... 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 ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... the way of the Euphrates. This conquest brought Solomon much nearer to the country of gold and pearls. This alternative of a route either by the Red Sea or by the river Euphrates was to the ancients, what in later times has been the alternative in a voyage to the Indies, either by crossing the isthmus of Suez or doubling the cape of Good Hope. It appears that till the time of Moses, this trade was carried on across the desert of Syria and Thebais; that afterwards it fell into the hands of the Phoenicians, who fixed its site upon the Red Sea; and ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... doubtless continue to excite a very general interest throughout the country. In its political, its commercial, and its military bearings it has varied, great, and increasing claims to consideration. The heavy expense, the great delay, and, at times, fatality attending travel by either of the Isthmus routes have demonstrated the advantage which would result from interterritorial communication by such safe and rapid means as a ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... limestone rock, in form like a reclining lion, guards the entrance to the narrow water passage which separates Europe from Africa. This wonderful feature, the Rock of Gibraltar, extends directly southward from the mainland of Spain with which it is connected by a low, sandy isthmus. It is about three miles in length and in breadth varies from one-fourth to three-fourths of a mile. Two depressions divide it into three summits, the highest of which is about ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... settlement, of the colonists of Liberia was made, forms a tongue of land of twelve leagues extent, in no part more than a league in width, and in some parts contracted to half that distance. This peninsula is so connected with the main land, as to represent a scale beam, the narrow isthmus answering to the pivot; which isthmus is formed by an acute angle of the Junk river on the eastern side, that falls into the sea at the S.E. extremity of the peninsula and an acute angle of the Montserado river on the western side, which falls into the sea at the N.W. extremity. Thus the N.E. ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... Jews in the fifth century with ships of their own. Jewish sailors abounded on the Mediterranean, which tended to become a Jewish lake. The trade routes of the Jews were chiefly two. "By one route," says Beazley, "they sailed from the ports of France and Italy to the Isthmus of Suez, and thence down the Red Sea to India and Farther Asia. By another course, they transported the goods of the West to the Syrian coast; up the Orontes to Antioch; down the Euphrates to Bassora; and so along the Persian Gulf to Oman and the Southern ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... more to rally the English. With difficulty, they were led a third time to the works. The redoubt was attacked on three sides, while some pieces of artillery raked the breast work from end to end. At the same time, a cross fire from the ships, and floating batteries lying on both sides of the isthmus by which the peninsula is connected with the continent, not only annoyed the works on Breed's hill, but deterred any considerable reinforcements from entering the peninsula. The ammunition of the Americans being nearly exhausted, they were no ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... from the work of Sir Emerson Tennent, on 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. Wherever we look, then, living nature offers us riddles of difficult solution, if we suppose that what we see is all that can be ...
— The Darwinian Hypothesis • Thomas H. Huxley
... 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 ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... that the tides of the Atlantic and Pacific should sweep across the Isthmus of Panama? That men should run under the Alps? That thoughts and words should be winged across the ocean without any visible or tangible medium? Yes; it is His will, if men will it, and work to these ends in harmony with ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... scheme during the war for establishing a colony of contrabands at the Chiriqui Lagoon, with a new transit route across the Isthmus to the harbor of Golfito, on the Pacific. The first company of emigrants, composed of freeborn negroes and liberated slaves, was organized, under President Lincoln's personal supervision, by Senator Pomeroy, of Kansas, and would have started, but the diplomatic representative ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... voyage was crossing the Nicaragua Isthmus—the trip across the lake and down the San Juan River—a brand-new experience, between shores of splendid tropic tangle, gleaming with vivid life. The luxuriance got into ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... has become so important within these few years, and the rapid transit by the isthmus of Suez has become so favourite a passage, that the public naturally feel an extreme curiosity relative to every circumstance of the route. The whole is a splendid novelty, sufficiently strange to retain some portion of the old wonder which belongs to all things Arabian; sufficiently wild ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... town.[586] The neighboring militia 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 of the town." The rebels were threatening, it was reported, that if a gun was fired ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... losses they might incur; threatening if they did not do as he advised, to abandon them, deprive them of their priests, have their wives and children carried off, and their property laid waste by the Indians."[99] Some passed over the isthmus to the shores of the gulf, and others made their way to the Strait of Canseau. Vessels were provided to convey them, in the one case to Isle St. Jean, now Prince Edward Island, and in the other to Isle Royale, called by the English, Cape Breton. Some were eager ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... 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 brief accounts of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... long since lain down to rest. A few years after we had parted on 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 ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... 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 ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... and considers that by the Pacific Ocean the better. The viceroy discusses the matter of sending reenforcements to the Philippines, and suggests that it might be advantageous to send troops to Acapulco via the Isthmus of Panama. He points out various dangers from the proposed suppression of he ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... 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 interesting. This wild and desolate coast has proved ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... and a mouth which laughed even when his face was at rest. Add a capital tenor voice, a lithe, active frame, and something irresistibly odd and droll in his motions, and you have his principal points. We walked across the birch-wooded isthmus behind Vik to the Eyfjordsvand, a lake about three miles long, which completely cuts off the further valley, the mountains on either side falling to it in sheer precipices ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... Diaeus, who succeeded him as Strategus, displayed rather more energy and courage, and made preparations to defend Corinth. Metellus had hoped to have had the honor of bringing the war to a conclusion, and had almost reached Corinth, when the Consul L. Mummius landed on the Isthmus and assumed the command. The struggle was soon brought to a close. Diaeus was defeated in battle; and Corinth was immediately evacuated, not only by the troops of the League, but also by the greater part of the inhabitants. On entering ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... N. and 27 deg. 35' E. Pop. (1906) 12,846. Burgas is built on a low foreland, between the lagoons of Ludzha, on the north, and Kara-Yunus, on the west; it faces towards the open sea on the east, and towards its own harbour on the south. The principal approach is a broad isthmus on the north-west, along which runs the railway to Philippopolis and Adrianople. Despite its small population and the rivalry of Varna and the Turkish port of Dedeagatch, Burgas has a considerable transit trade. Its fine harbour, formally opened in 1904, has an average depth of five fathoms; ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... be reached, and their supplies transported by the Colorado. Instead of calling upon Captain Johnson and chartering his steamboat, the Colorado, Ives ordered his steamer constructed in Philadelphia, and shipped in sections via the Isthmus of Panama to San Francisco, and thence around Cape Lucas into the Gulf of California, to the mouth of the Colorado River. Yet he was able to report, doubtless with a clear conscience, that Johnson's company "was unable to spare a boat, except for ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... of south. It was a part of the great system of granite mountains which forms one of the most important and striking features of North America, stretching parallel to the coast of the Pacific from the Isthmus of Panama almost to the Arctic Ocean; and presenting a corresponding chain to that of the Andes in the southern hemisphere. This vast range has acquired, from its rugged and broken character and its summits of naked granite, ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... America was joined to South America by a narrow strip of land called the Isthmus of Panama. Look at the map and think why millions of dollars have been spent through many years to cut through this isthmus. Now vessels can ...
— Where We Live - A Home Geography • Emilie Van Beil Jacobs
... 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 ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... themselves were another branch of the same great section of humanity, represented in the genealogy of Chap. X. by the name of MIZRAIM, second son of Ham. These must have come from the east along the Persian Gulf, then across Northern Arabia and the Isthmus of Suez. In the color and features of the Egyptians the mixture with black races is also noticeable, but not enough to destroy the beauty and expressiveness of the original type, at all events far less than in their southern neighbors, the Ethiopians, with whom, moreover, ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... canal had been foreseen ever since the first white man stood on the Isthmus and gazed at the Pacific. Its construction had been stimulated by the gold discoveries and the California emigration of 1848-49, and had been arranged for in a treaty signed with Great Britain in 1850. No means to build the canal were found, however, and the project drifted ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... a Southern continent swallowed up by earthquake, or a mass of rock ejected from the bottom of the sea by subterranean fire, which gradually becoming covered with a fertile soil, is now adorned by the most beautiful vegetation. It consists of two peninsulas united by a narrow isthmus, which together are about one hundred and twenty miles in circumference; towards the centre of each rise wild rocky mountains, intersected by deep ravines, from the side of which, thickly wooded ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... sloop of 140 tons burden, and sailed for Darien. When he arrived at this isthmus, he laid up his ship and marched inland, guided by Indians. After traveling twelve leagues among the mountains, he came to a small river running down into the Pacific. Here he and his comrades built a boat, launched it in the ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... and I left London in a night-coach for Southampton. The place of rendezvous was the White Horse Cellar, in Piccadilly—a spot almost as celebrated for those who are in transitu, as was the Isthmus of Suez of old. I took an inside seat this time, for the convenience of a nap. At first, I had but a single fellow-traveller. Venturing to ask him the names of one or two objects that we passed, and ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the Messenian exiles 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
... 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 title of a "Journey of a Viennese Lady ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... km; system consists of three coastal canals; including the Corinth Canal (6 km) which crosses the Isthmus of Corinth connecting the Gulf of Corinth with the Saronic Gulf and shortens the sea voyage from the Adriatic to Peiraiefs (Piraeus) by 325 km; ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... 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
... from the isthmus or city of that name, or the Red Sea; more properly from the former, as it makes its passage through it," Mr. Woolridge began. "Our old friend, Ramses II., of whom we have heard so much in the last four weeks, ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... into the mainland on its opposite sides as to narrow it into a flat neck little more than a mile and a half in breadth, stretch away in long vista, the one to the south, and the other to the north; and so immediately is the Cathedral perched on the isthmus between, as to be nearly equally conspicuous from both. It forms in each, to the inward-bound vessel, the terminal object in the landscape. There was not much to admire in the town immediately beneath, with its roofs of gray slate,—almost ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... 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, ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... he might have discovered Mexico with all its wealth, and "a succession of splendid discoveries would have shed fresh glory on his declining age, instead of his sinking amidst gloom, neglect, and disappointment." At the isthmus of Darien, Columbus gave up the search. He was weary of the bad weather. Incessant downpours of rain, storms of thunder and lightning with terrific seas—these discouraged him. Disaster followed disaster. The food was nearly finished; the biscuit "was so full ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... one of the isthmuses, and up the Pacific coast. Here however, the United States would have to use territory belonging to other nations, and to obtain the right of transit and security agreement was necessary. All these isthmus routes, moreover, needed improvement. Capital must be induced to do the work, and one necessary inducement was a guarantee of ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... transfer. Of all her American possessions France retained only her West Indies and the insignificant islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon in the Gulf of St Lawrence. Thenceforward there were but two North American powers. Spain had all the continent from the Isthmus of Panama to the Mississippi, and northward to the upper watershed of the Missouri, and she controlled both sides of the Mississippi at its mouth. England had the eastern half of the continent from ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... makes it possible for us to go all the way by water from the heart of the continent to New York City. The Erie Canal has helped make New York City the greatest city in our country. The canal across the Isthmus of Panama saves ships a journey of many thousand miles around ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... obtained with Sir Henry Bulwer and the respect in which he was held by that experienced diplomatist. Besides this discussion with England, there was a sharp dispute with Mexico about the right of way over the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and the troubles on the Texan boundary before Congress had acted upon the subject. Then came the Lopez invasion of Cuba, supported by bodies of volunteers enlisted in the United States, which, by its failure and its results, involved our government in a ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... home by way of the Isthmus, when other and new interests claimed my time and attention, and I would only hear now and again that one and then another and yet others had left the trail and passed over the dividing ridge into the land where camps ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... Allies are 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
... Cartagena ordinarily about two months after its departure from Cadiz. On its arrival, the general forwarded the news to Porto Bello, together with the packets destined for the viceroy at Lima. From Porto Bello a courier hastened across the isthmus to the President of Panama, who spread the advice amongst the merchants in his jurisdiction, and, at the same time, sent a dispatch boat to Payta, in Peru. The general of the galleons, meanwhile, was also sending a courier overland to Lima, and another to Santa Fe, the ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... the lands around it are no longer ours. As the lawyers have the deed of transfer, and the purchase money has been paid, we're only here on sufferance, and must soon yield possession. Then, we're to take ship for Panama, go across the Isthmus and over the Atlantic Ocean; once more to renew the Old-world life, with all its stupid ceremonies. How I shall miss the free wild ways of California—its rural sports—with their quaint originality and picturesqueness! I'm sure I shall ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... half miles we had passed a willow island on the south, on the north side of the river were dark bluffs, and on the south low rich prairies. We took a meridian altitude on our arrival at the upper end of the isthmus of the bend, which we called the Lookout bend, and found the latitude to be 44 degrees 19' 36". This bend is nearly twenty miles round, and not more than ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... Hellespont by a firm and compact structure, which it was thought would secure the communication of the army from interruption by the elements; and at the same time it was resolved to cut through the isthmus which joined Mount Athos to the continent, in order to preserve the fleet from disaster at that most perilous part of the proposed voyage. These remarkable works, which made a deep impression on the minds of the Greeks, have been ascribed to a mere spirit of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... live to see it accomplished. We 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 gold mines, or placers ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... cataclysm of ice and snow then impending? Manifestly, they would have flocked, first to the Gulf states, then to Mexico, and afterwards to the Central American states; but none of them could ever have been crowded through the Isthmus of Panama, since at the height of the last glaciation, that portion of the continent must have been the tropical barrier to our northern forms, as it is now the ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... Lackey's Mills. During these manoeuvres, a party were sent to examine the tier, extending from Swan River to Spring Bay; carefully, however, concealing the movement from the natives, lest they should be deterred from passing the subjacent isthmus. Other parties were employed, under Captain Wentworth, to force the aborigines from the neighbourhood of the lakes in the west, towards the same centre, advancing due east to the Jordan. The lines being compressed and thickened, and joined by the settlers on ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... twenty gunmen only four remained. They were the four immediately behind Schwandorf. By blind chance the German had set foot on the narrow isthmus separating the twin trenches, saving himself and the henchmen at his heels from being engulfed. Now, as the Red Bones fought back from the trap yawning before them, he and the surviving Peruvians stood staring in momentary stupefaction at the welter of death on their flanks. The malevolent yells ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... adopted it as a weapon, and always used it, just as Herakles used his lion's skin; for the skin was a proof of how huge a beast the wearer had overcome, while the club, invincible in the hands of Theseus, had yet been worsted when used against him. At the Isthmus he destroyed Sinis the Pine-bender by the very device by which he had slain so many people, and that too without having ever practised the art, proving that true valour is better than practice and training. Sinis had a daughter, a tall and beautiful ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... rose out of the water, the mist began to melt, and rolling back, uncovered a line of surf and a belt of rough hillside. Then volcanic cliffs, a sandy isthmus, and a cluster of masts and funnels got distinct, and Lister fixed the glasses on a white stripe across a cinder hill. His hand shook, but he steadied the glasses and saw the stripe was a row of ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... 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 settlement. The few who remained fled to New York and Jamaica, ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... 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 they ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... in California he started a line on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus of Darien and secured from the government of Nicaragua the privilege of crossing the Isthmus for a transportation system through its territory, and then established a line of steamers on the Pacific ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is Man. Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise, and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the sceptic side, With too much weakness for the stoic's pride, He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest; In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast; In doubt his mind or body to prefer; Born but ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... (Thus we translate a 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 past ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... literature is what are called the Passions, Las Pasiones, which are found among the natives of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. These prose chants took their rise at an early period among the sodalities (cofradias), organized under the name of some particular saint. Each of these societies possessed a volume, called its Regulations (Ordenanzas), containing, ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... which seemed to contradict each other. In a sense this is true of everyone. Dr. Holmes says (in substance): "The vehicle in which each one of us crosses life's narrow isthmus between two oceans is not a one-seated sulky, but an omnibus." Sometimes, as depicted in that wonderful parable, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, one inmate ejects the others. But in Lincoln the various elements were wrought as years ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... Mount Adams peeping over its shoulder. Quite near, and partly closing off the view up the river, was picturesque Tongue Point—a lovely island of green—connected with the shore only by a low and narrow isthmus. From this promontory to the point below the town, the bank of the river was curtained and garlanded with blossoming shrubs—mock-orange, honeysuckle, spirea, aerifolia, crimson roses, and clusters of elder-berries, lavender, ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... mantle of verdure. A few bell-shaped blossoms hung over crevices of rock, fearless in the frail foothold of their thread-like stems, as innocent child-faces above a precipice. It was in this simple way, and by the isthmus of sand connecting it to the continent, long and level, like the dash Nature made after so grand a work, before descending to the commonplaces of ordinary creation, that he had toned down the grandeur ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... Utica for forty days, during which he had tried every expedient without effect, left the place without accomplishing his object; and as the winter was now fast approaching, fortified a camp for the winter upon a promontory, which being attached to the continent by a narrow isthmus, stretched out a considerable way into the sea. He included his naval camp also within one and the same rampart. The camp for the legions being stationed on the middle of the isthmus, the ships, which were drawn on land, and the mariners occupied ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... returned to the East by the only route then available, the Isthmus of Panama. During his absence, on the 14th of September, 1855, he had been promoted to the rank of captain, which, prior to the Civil War, was the highest grade in the United States Navy; the title commodore, then so frequently applied to the older officers of the service, being simply ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... had been under way in the Taft Administration, but had come to nothing. Under Wilson they were resumed, and on April 7, 1914, a treaty was signed by which the United States was to pay to Colombia a compensation of $25,000,000 for Colombian interests in the Isthmus. The treaty further contained a declaration that the Government of the United States expressed its "sincere regret for anything that may have happened to disturb the relations" between the two countries, and this suggestion of an apology for Roosevelt's ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... shape, connecting his residence with it. We ascended into the lantern, which is eighty-seven feet high. It is a revolving light, with several great illuminators of copper silvered, and colored lamp-glasses. Looking downward, we had the island displayed as on a chart, with its little bays, its isthmus of shingly beach connecting two parts of the island, and overflowed at high tide; its sunken rocks about it, indicated by the swell, or slightly breaking surf. The keeper of the lighthouse was formerly a writing-master. He has a sneaking kind of look, and does ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that might be in the hands of the Spaniards. The project was a sufficiently daring one, for Nombre de Dios had at that time the reputation of being the Treasure-house of the World, since to it was brought across the isthmus, from Panama, all the treasure of Peru, for shipment to Spain, therefore it would almost certainly be well guarded by soldiers. On the other hand, however, probabilities favoured the assumption—which, ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... chain of the Pyrenees which forms the embattled isthmus of the peninsula, in the centre of those blue pyramids, covered in gradation with snow, forests, and downs, there opens a narrow defile, a path cut in the dried-up bed of a perpendicular torrent; it circulates among rocks, glides under bridges of frozen snow, twines along the edges of inundated ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 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 passionate strides. By the time ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... regular steam railroad for passengers and freight, was built across the narrow part of the Isthmus, as indicated in the map, in 1850 to 1855, and at that time negotiations were definitely entered into looking toward the construction ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 10, March 10, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Gatun Lake they flew, over the Chagres River; along the course of Culebra Cut, with its high banks, across the Pedro Miguel and Miraflores locks on the other side of the isthmus; over Ancon; and finally below them lay clustered the white-robed buildings of Panama itself, with the swelling blue reaches of the big Pacific to the southward and westward, and the bold shore-line of South America to ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... 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 of Modon, having made his guard ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... days the hind-part of the harbour adjoining this scene was so named, and at high tides the waves washed across the isthmus at a point called ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... it ought to convey the fact, that foreigners tell more lies about Greece than the natives themselves. Old Juvenal calls the Greeks a mendacious set of fabulists, for recording that Xerxes made a canal through the isthmus to the north of Mount Athos. Colonel Leake declares that the traces of the canal are visible to all men at this day, who ride across that desert plain. The moral we wish to inculcate is, that modern politicians ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... avail himself of advantages, which most other men would have considered as their right. Of this we have the following remarkable instance. Having presented a cutlass to a captain or cacique of the free Indians inhabiting the isthmus of Darien, the cacique gave him in return four large ingots of gold, which he immediately threw into the common stock, saying, "My owners gave me that cutlass, and it is just they should receive their share of its produce." His return to England from this successful ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... 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
... the operations of the floating batteries, together with a multitude of frigates and smaller vessels, while the combined fleets of France and Spain amounting to fifty sail of the line, were to cover and support the attack. On the isthmus also there were stupendous works, mounting two hundred pieces of heavy ordnance, and protected by 40,000 troops. In the whole the numbers employed by land and sea against the fortress were estimated at nearly 100,000 men. Time was required to complete the preparations, but at ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... which came pouring from the virgin mines. These clashing factions repeated, in intensified form, the history of California. They were even more utterly cut off from all the world. Letters and papers from the states had to reach the mountains by way of California, via the Horn or the Isthmus. Touch with the older civilization was utterly lost; of ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... degree improbable. Cyril, by reason, Elma, by instinct, argued out the whole situation at once, and correctly. There had been much rain lately. The sandstone was water-logged. It had caved in bodily, before them and behind them. A little isthmus of archway still held out in isolation just above their heads. At any moment that isthmus might give way too, and, falling on their carriage, might crush them beneath its weight. Their lives depended upon the continued resisting power of some fifteen yards ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... with irrational sense and all-daring love according to necessary laws and so framed man. And, fearing to pollute the divine element, they gave the mortal soul a separate habitation in the breast, parted off from the head by a narrow isthmus. And as in a house the women's apartments are divided from the men's, the cavity of the thorax was divided into two parts, a higher and a lower. The higher of the two, which is the seat of courage and anger, lies nearer to the head, between the midriff and the neck, and ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... insensibility by severe flogging with bamboo canes, and being forced to keep upon their feet. We were informed that suicide is very common among them in Cuba; it being their last resort against misery and oppression. Colonel Totten, the able civil engineer who constructed the railroad across the Isthmus of Panama, once gave a party of us a graphic account of the mortality among a number of them, who had been employed by him in that pestilential climate. Having no access to opium, and being deprived of knives, they resorted to the most ingenious modes of self destruction. ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... formidable. The child was dead (recently). The fifth fetus presented by the head and was delivered naturally. It lived for half an hour. The placenta was delivered about five minutes after the birth of the last child, and consisted of two portions united by a narrow isthmus. One, the smaller, had two cords attached centrally and close together; the other, and larger, had two cords attached in a similar way and one where it was joined to the isthmus. The organ appeared to be perfectly ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Taric took advantage of the excitement of his soldiery, and led them forward to gain possession of a stronghold, which was, in a manner, the key to all the adjacent country. This was a lofty mountain, or promontory, almost surrounded by the sea; and connected with the mainland by a narrow isthmus. It was called the rock of Calpe, and, like the opposite rock of Ceuta, commanded the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea. Here, in old times, Hercules had set up one of his pillars, and the city of Heraclea ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... 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
... days Aspinwall was reached. At that time the streets of the town were eight or ten inches under water, and foot passengers passed from place to place on raised foot-walks. July is at the height of the wet season, on the Isthmus. At intervals the rain would pour down in streams, followed in not many minutes by a blazing, tropical summer's sun. These alternate changes, from rain to sunshine, were continuous in the afternoons. I wondered how any person could ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... North.—Agricola thought that there would be no real peace unless the whole island was subdued. For seven years he carried on warfare with this object before him. He had comparatively little difficulty in reducing to obedience the country south of the narrow isthmus which separates the estuary of the Clyde from the estuary of the Forth. Before proceeding further he drew a line of forts across that isthmus to guard the conquered country from attack during his absence. He then made his way to the Tay, but he had ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... arrival in the country, found men dressed as women and assuming their part. They were trained to this from youth, and often publicly married to the chiefs. Nero was evidently a mere plagiarist. The existence of analogous customs has been proved against the Guyacurus of La Plata, the natives of the Isthmus of Darien, the tribes of Louisiana, and ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... around a like 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 the forest. We could see his white flag waving above the undergrowth, ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... paddling up the streams, scaling the mountains, roaming over the pampas, climbing the tall trees, turning over every stone and log, and exploring every nook, to discover the snails, bugs, insects, worms, reptiles, and other animals indigenous to South America, from the Isthmus to Tierra-del-fuego. ...
— The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science - A Discourse • William Denton
... was permitted to 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, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... in 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 hills extends a winding and fertile ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... southwest monsoon (mid-May to September); dry, cool northeast monsoon (November to mid-March); southern isthmus always ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... gives the Argentine boundary a sharp wedge-shaped projection westward, narrows the distance between the two to about 26 m. The Taytao peninsula, incorrectly called the Tres Montes on some maps, is a westward projection of the mainland, with which it is connected by the narrow isthmus of Ofqui, over which the natives and early missionaries were accustomed to carry their boats between the Moraleda Channel and Gulf of Penas. A short ship canal here would give an uninterrupted and protected inside passage from Chacao Channel ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... this Government and that of the United States of Colombia have engaged public attention during the past year, mainly by reason of the project of an interoceanic canal across the Isthmus of Panama, to be built by private capital under a concession from the Colombian Government for that purpose. The treaty obligations subsisting between the United States and Colombia, by which we guarantee the neutrality ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the one great 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 I. Pyle
... avoided on every account, but principally because it was of great importance to conceal from the savages the direction taken. Were the chiefs certain that their intended victims were on Lake Michigan, it would be possible for them to send parties across the isthmus, that should reach points on Lake Huron, days in advance of the arrival of the bee-hunter and his friends in the vicinity of Saginaw, or Pointe aux Barques, for instance, and where the canoes would be almost certain to pass near the shore, laying their ambushes ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... to have fallen or to have been wounded, and which may have taken place any time during the Corinthian war, between the years 390-387. The later date which has been suggested, 369, when the Athenians and Lacedaemonians disputed the Isthmus with Epaminondas, would make the age of Theaetetus at his death forty-five or forty-six. This a little impairs the beauty of Socrates' remark, that 'he would be a great man ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... 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, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... ground, soil, earth; realty, real estate; demesne, glebe, close, garth, holm, arado, assart, reliction, dereliction, alluvium, cadastre, appanage, arable, fallow, allodium, innings, abuttal; farm, plantation; continent, island, peninsula, delta, isthmus, headland, cape, plateau, barens. Associated Words: agronomy, agronomist, agronomics, agronomic, agricultre, agricultral, agriculturist, georgics, geoponics, escheat, arable, inarable, agrarian, agrarianism, agrarianize, topography, tilth, terrain, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... isthmus, it must be as much as six thousand miles, and it's twice as fur, I reckon, round the Horn. I don't exactly ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... think it," Jack insisted. "There are plenty of wildcats in the Philippines, and snakes, and lizards. In fact, the islands are not unlike the Isthmus of Panama in this regard. And monkeys! Well, we've heard enough chattering already to put us wise ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... witch also that had foretold the march of the buccaneers across Panama isthmus, and her warning was considered of such importance that the Spanish troops and merchants were notified, though they made but a feeble resistance when ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... surprisingly so for a wit who is always 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
... two fountains, one of which drew along with it, in its course, a black slimy stuff, which occasioned a sulphurous smell. The other, separated from the first, by a small isthmus of sand, from twelve to fifteen paces broad, is clearer than crystal. The taste of these waters is pretty agreeable; the bottom of their bed is filled with small stones of various colours, which presented to the ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... chastity, and any deviation was punished with death. They wore long white robes and burned incense. (Dorman, "Prim. Superst.," p. 379.) The first fruits of the earth were devoted to the support of the priesthood. (Ibid., p. 383.) The priests of the Isthmus ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... The rest—eighty from the one ship—we fed to the sharks before we could swab decks next day. Eh, but that was a v'yage, an' it cost the seas more good buccaneers than ever was hanged. Harris an' Sawkins an' half o' their best men we left on the Isthmus. But out of one galleon we took fifty thousand pieces-of-eight, besides silver bars in cord piles. ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... 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, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... a view to the survey and construction of a ship canal across the Isthmus of Darien, under the auspices of the United States. I hope to be able to submit the results of that negotiation to the Senate during ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... liberty which they had championed. To his bride Hyperion had promised a redeemed Greece—a lament is all that he can bring her. She dies, Hyperion comes to Germany where his aesthetic Greek soul is severely jarred by the sordidness, apathy and insensibility of these "barbarians." Returning to the Isthmus, he becomes a hermit and writes his letters to Bellarmin, no less "thatenarm und gedankenvoll" himself than his unfortunate countrymen ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... 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 island of Polo ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... America," and is the most comprehensive work yet undertaken relative to the avifauna of the entire North American Continent, giving a large amount of scientific data respecting all the species. After its completion it will enable the student to identify every bird known to science from the Isthmus of Panama to the far North and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. At this writing two volumes have been issued. They are published under government auspices by the United States National Museum at Washington, D. C., and may be procured perhaps without cost by writing to the secretary ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... 13th of August, 1859, the superb steamship Golden Gate, gay with crowds of passengers, and lighting the sea for miles around with the glare of her signal lights of red, green, and white, and brilliant with lighted saloons and staterooms, bound up from the Isthmus of Panama, neared the entrance to San Francisco, the great centre of a world-wide commerce. Miles out at sea, on the desolate rocks of the Farallones, gleamed the powerful rays of one of the most costly and effective light-houses in the world. As we drew in through the Golden ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... 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 City of Domes • John D. Barry
... sources of the Nile probably suggested this Southern Continent to some. Ptolemy, the great Egyptian geographer, even formed the conjecture that the Southern Continent was joined to Africa by a broad isthmus, as indicated in certain maps. Such a connection of the two continents would at once dispose of the story that the Phenician sailors had "doubled the Cape." In several maps after the time of Columbus, ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... Charlemagne", vol. i.p.240, who describes these latter verses as Written with all the fervour of a Christian poet. See also Merivale's "Roman Empire," chapter liv.) (4) See a similar passage in the final scene of Ben Jonson's "Catiline". The cutting of the Isthmus of Corinth was proposed in Nero's reign, and actually commenced in his presence; but abandoned because it was asserted that the level of the water in the Corinthian Gulf was higher than that in the Saronic Gulf, so that, ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... of the emblem carry with them reference, such as that in my text, to the prize at the athletic festivals. For Peter and James, intense Jews as they were, had probably never seen, and possibly never heard of, the struggles at the Isthmus and at Olympus and elsewhere. The Book of the Revelation draws its metaphors almost exclusively from the circle of Jewish practices and things. So that we have to look in other directions than the arena or the racecourse to explain these ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... Marathon; they 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 them, from rebuilding them to defend themselves; they commenced ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Greek as well as Latin; the chastisement of Dacia (that needed a cow-hiding for insolence as much as Affghanistan from us in 1840); the conquest of Parthia; and the cutting a ship canal through the Isthmus of Corinth. The reformation of the Calendar he had already accomplished. And of all his projects it may be said that they were equally patriotic in their purpose ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... South, should all have been ventilated and made part and parcel of the charges, that it should be shown that he, as a newly commissioned officer of the army, had made the journey from New Orleans to the Isthmus and thence to San Francisco with men whom he knew to be deserters from commands stationed in the Crescent City, that he should have gambled with them and associated with them and brought one of them all the way with him to Yuma and concealed from ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... ship canal running across the Isthmus of Suez, and connecting the Mediterranean with the Red Sea. The canal is 100 miles in length, and through it an uninterrupted communication is established whereby large sailing vessels and steamers may pass from sea to sea, and thus avoid the long and dangerous voyage around the Cape ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... juncture. Military opinion invariably favours active in preference to passive defence, so long as active defence can be regarded as reasonably feasible and the troops needed for the purpose are available. The Turks were mustering for an attack upon Egypt across the Isthmus of Sinai at that time. It was an axiom in our military policy that the Nile delta must be rendered secure against such efforts. There was something decidedly attractive about employing the troops—or a portion of them—who must in any case be charged ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... point, as well as he could, with the Ephori, he sailed from home to make war upon the Thracians that lie above the Chersonesus and Perinthus. 3. But when the Ephori, after he was gone, having for some reason changed their mind, took measures to oblige him to turn back from the Isthmus, he then no longer paid obedience to their commands, but sailed away to the Hellespont, 4. and was in consequence condemned to death, for disobedience, by the chief magistrates at Sparta. Being then an exile, he went to Cyrus; and by what methods he conciliated the favour of Cyrus, has ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... here created both curiosity and suspicion, for each gang and each individual was very shy of his neighbour. They did not believe our story of crossing the plains; they themselves, for the most part, had come round the Horn; a few across the isthmus. Then, if we didn't want to dig, what did we want? Another peculiarity about us - a great one - was, that, so far as they could see, we were unarmed. At night the majority, all except the few who had huts, slept in a zinc house or sort of ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... was a fierce and profane old blacksmith of sixty, and he had furnished his twenty recruits with gigantic home-made bowie-knives, to be swung with the two hands, like the machetes of the Isthmus. It was a grisly spectacle to see that earnest band practising their murderous cuts and slashes under the eye ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is the railway station, whence the line runs across the isthmus, connecting Auckland with Onehunga on the Manukau Harbour, where the West Coast traffic is carried on, and thus placing Auckland, like Corinth, upon two seas. The railway also extends southwards to the Waikato.[1] Onehunga is only some half-dozen miles from the ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... Stuart Wortley, in the account of her journey in America, mentions that she saw a man proceeding on foot across the Isthmus of Panama, bound for the Pacific, carrying a huge box on his back that would almost have contained a house. It was really a dreadful thing to see the poor man, full-cry for California, toiling along with his enormous burden, under a tropical sun, the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... of the snow surrounding the north pole. To the system of the Mare Acidalium undoubtedly belong the temporary lake called Lacus Hyperboreus and the Lacus Niliacus. This last is ordinarily separated from the Mare Acidalium by means of an isthmus or regular dam, of which the continuity was only seen to be broken once for a short time in 1888. Other smaller dark spots are found here and there in the continental area which we may designate as lakes, but they are certainly not ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... idea of 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 |
