"Isthmus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... GLOBE.—During this raid on the Spanish coast Drake marched across the Isthmus of Panama and looked down upon Balboa's great South Sea. As he looked, he resolved to sail on it, and in 1577 left England with five ships on what proved to be the greatest voyage since that of Magellan. He crossed the Atlantic, sailed down the coast of South America, and entered ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... commissioned, quilted his quiet residence at Valladolid, embarked at Seville, in the autumn of 1540, and, after a tedious voyage across the Atlantic, he traversed the Isthmus, and, encountering a succession of tempests on the Pacific, that had nearly sent his frail bark to the bottom, put in with her, a mere wreck, at the northerly port of Buenaventura.22 The affairs of the country were in a ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... 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 ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... building, and told us to drop our luggage there, and amuse ourselves until we heard further from him. This town of San Juan del Sur is entirely the creation of the Nicaragua Transit Company, and is the Pacific terminus of the Isthmus portage-road. It consisted of half a dozen board hotels, and a litter of native grass-thatched huts, and lay at the foot of a high, woody spur, which curves out into the sea and forms the southern ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... suddenly as they came. The joy of the missions was short-lived, for seven years later gold was discovered, California was ceded to the United States, and the most remarkable invasion known in history followed. Over the mountains, across the plains, by the Isthmus, and by the Horn they came, that wonderful procession which Bret Harte has made so familiar to us—Truthful James, Tennessee's Partner, Jack Hamlin, John Oakhurst, Flynn of Virginia, Abner Dean of Angels, Brown of Calaveras, Yuba ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... gradually declined in importance and Thebes in Upper Egypt became the capital. The vigorous civilization growing up in Egypt was destined, however, to suffer a sudden eclipse. About 1800 B.C. barbarous tribes from western Asia burst into the country, through the isthmus of Suez, and settled in the Delta. The Hyksos, as they are usually called, extended their sway over all Egypt. At first they ruled harshly, plundering the cities and enslaving the inhabitants, but in course ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... Castro, who was at Panama when Bachicao arrived, fled immediately across the isthmus to Nombre de Dios on the Atlantic, where he embarked accompanied by Diego Alvarez de Cueto and Jerom Zurbano. Doctor Texada and Francisco Maldonado escaped likewise to the same port, where they all embarked together for Spain. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... or other causes, also have to be operated on, as their enlargement obviously hinders free voice-emission. Even at its best the mouth-passage here is narrowest—and called the "isthmus"—and nothing must be allowed to make it narrower than it is by nature. The lips never should lie flat against the teeth, since this would muffle resonance. On the other hand, the teeth should not be bared, as this results in a foolish grin. The cheeks ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... had a pet 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 of Costa Rica ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... de Balboa and others in the South Atlantic, had awakened an ardent desire amongst those of enterprizing spirit to seek beyond those regions which had hitherto been traversed. It is true the Pacific Ocean had been seen by Balboa, who crossed the Isthmus of Panama, but how to arrive there with his ships ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... the north-western shore, near what we now term Morocco. If this were the fact, the voyage by the ocean along this sweep of shore would be even shorter than the voyage through the Mediterranean and Red Seas, while of course there would be no need for disembarking at the Isthmus of Suez. The writers who thus curtailed Africa of its true proportions assumed another continent south of it, which, however, was in the torrid zone, and ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... led along a kind of isthmus, at the peninsular extremity of which the tower was situated, with that exclusive attention to strength and security, in preference to every circumstances of convenience, which dictated to the Scottish barons the choice of their situations, as well ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... STATES.—The territory of Greece included (1) Northern Greece, comprising all north of the Malian (Zeitoum) and Ambracian (Arta) gulfs; (2) Central Greece, extending thence to the Gulf of Corinth; (3) the peninsula of Peloponnesus (Morea) to the south of the isthmus. The country was occupied, in the flourishing days of Greece, by not less ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... information on this point, to the account of Turnbull's voyage, published in 1805. A few particulars as to the appearance of Otaheite, on the authority of subsequent accounts, may be given with satisfaction to the reader. The island, which consists of two peninsulas connected by a low neck or isthmus covered with trees and shrubs but quite uninhabited, presents a mountainous aspect, rising high in the centre, with narrow valleys of romantic but luxuriantly pleasing scenery, and well watered, studding its verdant surface. The lofty and clustering hills of which the greater part of the island ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... walls falling into disrepair. Some of the newer farms, land devoted to agriculture with the declining demand for charcoal, had neither moats nor walls. That was the Company, too; the huge shell-armored beasts had become virtually extinct in the Konk Isthmus now, since the introduction of bazookas and recoilless rifles. There seemed to be quite a bit of power-equipment working in the fields, and big contragravity lorries were drifting back and forth, ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... would have the courage to try to reach their lands by way of the Strait of Magellan, had made no attempt to defend themselves from attack from the south. They feared that their enemies might come down upon them by way of the isthmus, and strong forces had been placed there to prevent any one from crossing; but all the southern ports ...
— Discoverers and Explorers • Edward R. Shaw
... firm: but though we well may trust The issue to the justice of the cause, Caution must not be flung aside; remember, Yours is no common life. Self-stationed here, Upon these savage confines, we have seen you Stand like an isthmus 'twixt two stormy seas That oft have checked their fury at your bidding. 'Mid the deep holds of Solway's mossy waste, Your single virtue has transformed a Band Of fierce barbarians into Ministers Of peace and order. Aged men with tears Have blessed their steps, the fatherless retire For shelter ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... down the coast was unusually pleasant. Arrived at Panama, we hired mules and rode across to Gorgona, on the Cruces River, where we hired a boat and paddled down to the mouth of the river, off which lay the steamer Crescent City. It usually took four days to cross the isthmus, every passenger taking care of himself, and it was really funny to watch the efforts of women and men unaccustomed to mules. It was an old song to us, and the trip across was easy and interesting. In due time we were rowed off to the Crescent City, rolling back and forth in the swell, ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... league to the north-west of Sedan, near Iges, the bend of the Meuse almost forms an island. A canal crosses the isthmus, so that the peninsula becomes an island. It was there that there were penned, under the stick of the Prussian corporals, 83,000 French soldiers. A few ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... between the desert and its fauna as "une harmonie post-etablie"; the Sahara, formerly a marine basin, was peopled by immigrants from the neighbouring countries, and these new animals adapted themselves to the new environment. He also discusses, among other similar questions, the Isthmus of Panama with regard to its having once been a strait. From the same author may be quoted the following passage as a strong proof of the new influence: "By the radiation of the contemporaneous faunas, each ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... the United States be alone in the race. Several governments are preparing to cut a canal through the Isthmus of Panama, or Darien, or Tehuantepec, as has already been done with that of Suez; and soon ships starting from Western Europe will, with the aid of steam, traverse the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans successively as ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... instance, the NOVA SCOTIA of the English since Utrecht time, the French maintained to mean only "the Peninsula", or Nook included between the Ocean Waters and the Bay of Fundy. And, more emphatic still, on the "Isthmus" (or narrow space, at northwest, between said Bay and the Ocean or the Gulf of St. Lawrence) they had built "Forts:" "Stockades," or I know not what, "on the Missaquish" (HODIE Missiquash), a winding difficult river, northmost of the Bay of Fundy's rivers, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... mine landed at Gibraltar for a few hours, and he was anxious to be able to say that he had been to Spain. So he walked along the Isthmus to Ceuta, where the British and Spanish sentries faced one another, and directly the Spanish soldier turned his head he hopped quickly over into Spain. Then the sentry turned round, and he hopped back again even ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various
... atlanta, isle of man, straits of dover, state of Vermont, isthmus of darien, sea of galilee, queen of england, bay of ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... we ride by the Shubenacadie lakes, a chain—a bracelet—binding the province from the Basin of Minas to the seaboard. The eye never tires of this lovely feature of Acadia. Lake above lake—the division, the isthmus between, not wider than the breadth of your India shawl, my lady! I must declare that, all in all, the scenery of the province is surpassingly beautiful. As you ride by these sparkling waters, through the flowery, bowery, woods, you feel as if you like to pitch ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... general rules for such operations, but with no regard to those peculiarities of its site which only master minds could mark and use to the best advantage. The large double bay is protected from the southwest by a broad peninsula joined to the mainland by a very narrow isthmus, and thus opens southeastward to the Mediterranean. The great fortified city, then regarded as one of the strongest places in the world, lies far within on the eastern shore of the inner harbor. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... positive knowledge, not only as to the extent of the goldmines, but also as to theory and practice of the actual mining. Contemporary writers tell us of the hundreds and hundreds of different strange machines invented for washing out the gold and actually carried around the Horn or over the Isthmus of Panama to San Francisco. They were of all types, from little pocket-sized affairs up to huge arrangements with windmill arms and wings. Their destination was inevitably the beach below the San Francisco settlement, where, half ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... 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 ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... had cushions. Didn't the rowers who were marched across the Isthmus to man the ships which were to surprise the Piraeus, carry their ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... question—and thus it is that even sober-minded men are beginning to believe that the time is not far off when the glowing prophecies of the most sanguine will be realized, that the boundaries of the republic would yet be the Isthmus, the North Pole, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... Self-Contempt,' and other countries belonging to a vast continent, of which the centre is the 'Kingdom of the Love of God,' connected to a smaller continent—that of the world—by a narrow neck of land called the 'Isthmus of Charity.' In the continent of the world are shown the 'Mountain of Ingratitude,' the 'Hills of Frivolity,' the territory of 'Ennui,' of 'Vanity,' of 'Melancholy,' and of all the evil moods and vices ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... and he lost his life down at Panama; tried to cross the isthmus in a dirigible, and ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... San Francisco Forrest had been a name to conjure with. The Forrest Mansion had been one of the pioneer palaces on Nob Hill where dwelt the Floods, the Mackays, the Crockers, and the O'Briens. "Lucky" Richard Forrest, the father, had arrived, via the Isthmus, straight from old New England, keenly commercial, interested before his departure in clipper ships and the building of clipper ships, and interested immediately after his arrival in water-front real estate, river steamboats, mines, of course, and, later, ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... 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 ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... thus saving my contract by one hour. But they did not commence taking them on board, so the captain of the barge put a demurrage of $20 per day for detention. In the meantime, I had bought my ticket to sail by the steamer Georgia to the Isthmus to go on the 1st of July which was but a few days off. They, seeing that I had them on my contract, came to me and said that my houses should go on their ship according to contract, if they had to throw other freight out, and that they would ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower
... by land over the Isthmus of Darien. Accordingly, on April 5, 1680, we went ashore on the isthmus, near Golden Island, one of the Sambaloes, to the number of between 300 and 400 men, carrying with us such provisions as were necessary, and toys wherewith to gratify the wild ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... here, nearly in the same manner he had been in Jerusalem. The record then pretended to give the history of the American Christians for a few hundred years until the wickedness of the people called down the judgment of God upon them, which resulted in their extermination. Several nations from the Isthmus of Darien to the northern extremity of the continent were engaged in continual warfare. The culmination of all this was the battle of Cumorah, fought many centuries ago near the present site of Palmyra, between the Lamanites and the Nephites—the former being the heathen ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... I was on board the "Ada Gray," a small schooner off the coast of Florida, bound for the Isthmus. There were seven of us in all, including the captain and mate, the latter an old pal of mine who had arranged to get me in as one of the crew. In some way he had learned that the captain was to take with him some two ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... the best examples we can quote.[210] The camp, first made out in 1865, formed a long square, covering some thirteen hectares, or about thirty-two acres. It is situated on an isolated mound connected with the main plateau by an isthmus 227 feet long, and is protected on the south and west by a deep ravine: To these natural defences men had added important works to those parts that were accessible. The cutting of trenches a few years ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... way. The club took his fancy, and he 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 girl, named Perigoune. When her father ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... western continent; for, if certain recent tendencies are an index of the future it is not safe to fix the boundaries of the future United States anywhere short of the Arctic Ocean on the north and the Isthmus of Panama on the south. But, even with the continuance of the present political divisions, conditions of trade and ease of travel are likely to gradually assimilate to one type all the countries of the hemisphere. Assuming that the country is so well settled that no great disturbance of ratios is ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... 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 ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Castle, and opposed by the waving eminences of the forest of Dean. The mighty pile, or peninsula, of Symonds' Rock succeeds, round which the river flows in a circuit of seven miles, though the opposite points of the isthmus are only one mile asunder. Shortly afterwards, the Wye quits the county, and enters Monmouthshire ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... Charleston, Savannah, and Havana, and from Havana to Chagres;" for three steamers to be employed in like manner from Panama to Oregon, "so as to connect with the mail from Havana to Chagres across the Isthmus;" and for five steamers to be employed in like manner from New York to Liverpool. These steamers will be the property of the contractors, but are to be built "under the superintendence and direction of a naval constructor ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... testify that a Hindu king was reigning in Champa (Annam) about 150 A.D. These dates are not so precise as one could wish, but if there was a Hindu kingdom in that distant region in the second century it was probably preceded by settlements in nearer halting places, such as the Isthmus of Kra[5] or Java, at a considerably anterior date, although the inscriptions discovered there are not earlier than the ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... Mr Boffin's dust heaps, a kind of gigantic and glorified Harmony Jail. There is no more disillusioning place in the world to land in by daytime. The port is under the shelter of the Isleta, a barren cindery satellite of Grand Canary joined to the main island by an isthmus of yellow sand-dunes. The roads are dust; dust flies in a ceaseless wind; unhappy palms by the roads are grey with dust; it would at first seem impossible to eat anything but an egg without getting one's teeth ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... claimed, included the whole mainland of the present maritime provinces and the Gaspe peninsula; whereas France contended that they embraced only the peninsula of Nova Scotia. Both powers, therefore, claimed the country north of the isthmus of Chignecto, and the definition of the boundary became a more and ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty
... continued Mr Meldrum, "that our position here, the correctness of which I have carefully ascertained from observations that I have taken and worked out, is, very fortunately for us, on the western side of this isthmus, and not at the extremity of the broader portion of the island. Consequently, we shall only have to traverse the short width of this neck of land in our endeavours to get across to the eastern side, whither we must go if we hope for any vessel to pick us up and take us to a civilised port—none ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... 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 ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... 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 his strength in ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... 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 ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... in size and nearest in situation to Owhyhee, is Mowee, which lies at the distance of eight leagues N.N.W. from the, former, and is one hundred and forty geographical miles in circumference. A low isthmus divides it into two circular peninsulas, of which that to the east is called Whamadooa, and is double the size of the western peninsula called Owhyrookoo. The mountains in both rise to an exceeding great height, having been ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... the rock had been scarped away on three sides, so that the walls of the castle rose sheer from the steep descent, except where the platform was connected with the mountain side by, as it were, an isthmus joining the peninsula to the main rock; and even this isthmus, a narrow ridge of rock just wide enough for the passage of a single horse, had been cut through, no doubt with great labour, and rendered impassable, except by the lowering of a drawbridge. Glenuskie Castle was thus ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... year another Spaniard, named Balboa, set out to explore the Isthmus of Panama.[5] One day he climbed to the top of a very high hill, and discovered that vast ocean—the greatest of all the oceans of the globe—which ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... Hongi left naught in their villages but bones, with such flesh on them "as even his dogs had not required." He invaded the Waikato and penetrated to a famous pa—a triple stockade at Mataki-taki (Look-out). To get there he dragged his war-canoes overland across the Auckland isthmus, straightened winding creeks for their passage, and, when the Waikatos felled large trees across one channel, patiently spent two months in cutting through the trunks. At length the Look-out fortress was stormed with horrible slaughter. Defended on one side by a creek, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... influence in assuring the tenure of actual possessors: for the pass of Thermopylae between Thessaly and Phokis, that of Kithaeron between Boeotia and Attica, or the mountainous range of Oneion and Geraneia along the Isthmus of Corinth, were positions which an inferior number of brave men could hold against a much greater force of assailants. But, in the next place, while it tended to protect each section of Greeks from ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... 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 ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... the entering visitor briefly of the milestones along the way of time up to the digging of the Canal. Its enrichment of sculpture, painting and inscription summarizes the story of Panama and of the Pacific shore northward from the Isthmus. The architect has expressed in its upper decorations something of the feeling of Aztec art. The four inscriptions on the south faces of the arches tell how Rodrigo de Bastides discovered Panama in 1501; how Balboa first saw the Pacific Ocean in 1513; how the United States ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... 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 whom he ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... relating to myself, I must tell your Majesty how my faithful friend John Oxenham sailed away forthwith, accompanied by carpenters and other artificers, determined to do that which never man had before enterprised. Crossing the Isthmus of Darien, he built a pinnace, in which he embarked on the South Sea. Having taken two prizes, he was returning with his booty across the isthmus to his ship, when he was assailed by overwhelming numbers of the Spaniards ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... reenactment of the independent-treasury system; the passage of the act establishing the Smithsonian Institution; the treaty with New Granada, the thirty-fifth article of which secured for citizens of the United States the right of way across the Isthmus of Panama; and the creation of the Department of the Interior. He declined to become a candidate for reelection, and at the conclusion of his term retired to his home in Nashville. He died June 15, 1849, and was buried at Polk Place, in Nashville. September ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... properly fortified by strong walls across the isthmus, could have been held against a host, but the Romans had not as yet taken it in hand; later, however, they recognized the importance of the position, and made it one of the chief seats of their power. Even in the three days that he had been absent Beric found that the host had ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... river Severn, is most beautifully situated on a lofty peninsula. It was a British stronghold before the Conquest, when it was given by William the Conqueror to Roger de Montgomery, who built the castle which stands on the narrow isthmus leading to the town. Henry IV. stayed in the castle in 1403, before the battle with Harry Hotspur, which was fought at Battlefield, about 3 miles from the town. Only the keep of the old Norman castle remains, and that is now used as a ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... enjoy the plant all right. There isn't anything like this equipment anywhere else. Lots of the fellows are here to fit themselves for work on the Isthmus. A good many of them are going to fail out on the finals. For all it's a rich man's son's school it's only fair to say the standard is kept up and I am told that over fifty failed to get through last half. I have been fortunate enough to get a position under the ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... other Englishmen 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, as we have already seen, ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... wind We Set out early the river wider than usial, and Shallow, at 12 we halted in a bend to the left to take the Meridian altitude, & Dine, & Sent one man across where we took Dinner yesterday to Step off the Distance across Isthmus, he made it 974 yards, and the bend around is 183/4 miles above this bend about 4 miles, a yellow & Brown Bluff Comnuces and Continus 3 or 4 miles on the L. S. this Bluff has Some Sand Stone, Some rich Black mole mixed ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... of the isthmus, it must be as much as six thousand miles, and it's twice as fur, I reckon, round the Horn. I don't ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... note: strategic location on eastern end of isthmus forming land bridge connecting North and South America; controls Panama Canal that links North Atlantic Ocean via Caribbean Sea ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... 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 that it was mutual jealousy ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... 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 as ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... sail-loft occupied the upper. The staff then consisted of Mr. Wootton and J. M. Sparrow, as before stated, with occasional extra assistants, say on the arrival of an English mail, which came then via the Isthmus of Panama and San Francisco. The "whole staff" had to work hard then, and long hours, even into the morning. I have seen a line of letter hunters reaching from the post-office up Wharf Street nearly to Yates, waiting for the mail to be sorted and the wicket ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... had pitched their tents on a green eminence near the lake, at a small distance from our camp, under a little grove of oaks and palms. This company consisted of seven young Seminoles, under the conduct of a young prince or chief of Talahasochte, a town southward in the isthmus. They were all dressed and painted with singular elegance, and richly ornamented with silver plates, chains, etc., after the Seminole mode, with waving plumes of feathers on their crests. On our coming up to them, they arose and shook hands; we alighted and sat a while with ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... scarcely perceptible, and then again amounting to a decided drizzle. The road, which is built along on a little elevation above the lake shore, led us past the Castle of Chillon; and we took a side-path, which passes still nearer the castle gate. The castle stands on an isthmus of gravel, permanently connecting it with the mainland. A wooden bridge, covered with a roof, passes from the shore to the arched entrance; and beneath this shelter, which has wooden walls as well as roof and floor, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... northern vegetal and animal forms to escape the 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
... with India 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... had been to land at Nombre de Dios and proceed direct from thence over the Isthmus of Panama in order to seize the treasure generally brought thither from the mines of Mexico and Peru; but in a few days before their departure from Plymouth they received letters sent by order of the queen informing them that advices had been received from Spain announcing the arrival ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... John.' The whole period till his coming was one of preparation, and it all converged on the epoch of the forerunner. The eagerness to flock into the Kingdom which characterised his time would have been impossible in the earlier days. He closes that order of things, standing, as it were, on the isthmus between prophecy and fulfilment, belonging properly to neither, but having affinities with both, and being the transition from the one to the other. Then our Lord closes His words concerning John with the distinct statement, which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... ship were completed, it should sail back through the archipelago and the Vast [Pacific] Ocean to the coast of the continent which we have already mentioned [South America], until they came to the Isthmus of Darien, where only a narrow neck of land divides the South Sea from the Western Sea, in which are the islands belonging to Spain. The smaller ship accordingly set sail again from Thedori, and though they went as far as twelve degrees ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... ever-busy wind and sea, the face of the world was of a prehistoric emptiness; life appeared to stand stock- still, and the sense of isolation was profound and refreshing. On a sudden, the trade-wind, coming in a gust over the isthmus, struck and scattered the fans of the palms above the den; and, behold! in two of the tops there sat a native, motionless as an idol and watching us, you would have said, without a wink. The next moment the tree closed, and the glimpse was gone. This discovery of human presences ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Disappointment Bay. When we were in the offing standing in for this bay, we observed a large hummock, which had the appearance of an island, but which I believe to be a peninsula, joined by a Low isthmus to the main; this hummock formed the northernmost part of the entrance, and another high bluff point opposite to it formed the southernmost part; between these two points are the shoals that have been mentioned; and several small ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... without Captain Nemo putting in an appearance, and none of the crew were ever to be seen. But the Nautilus kept on its journey, which, I learned, took us to the Torres Strait, the Papuan coast, through the Red Sea, through a subterranean strait, under the Isthmus of Suez, to the island of Santorin, the Cretan Archipelago, to the South Pole, on whose sterile wastes Captain Nemo reared his black flag with a white "N" upon it, and through the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... organization was perfected in France for making surveys and collecting data on which to base the construction of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, and in 1878 a concession for prosecuting the work was secured from the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... 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, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is a tradition extant among the Indians of the Southwest, extending from Arizona to the Isthmus of Panama, to the effect that, Montezuma will one day return on the back of an eagle, wearing a golden crown, and rule the land once more; typifying the return of the Messiah and the rebirth ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... is a lofty island inside the Propontis, a short distance from the Phrygian mainland with its rich cornfields, sloping to the sea, where an isthmus in front of the mainland is flooded by the waves, so low does it lie. And the isthmus has double shores, and they lie beyond the river Aesepus, and the inhabitants round about call the island the Mount of Bears. And insolent and fierce men dwell there, Earthborn, a great marvel to the ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... 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 fearing he might think my curiosity impertinent, I apologized ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... hero, in honour less of him than of the name of Salamis. We, too, have a Salamis to remember, and a second Salamis to found. Can ye forget that, had the advice of the Spartan leader Eurybiades been adopted, the victory of Salamis would never have been achieved? He was for retreat to the Isthmus; he was for defending the Peloponnese, because in the Peloponnesus was the unsocial selfish Sparta, and leaving the rest of Hellas to the armament of Xerxes. Themistocles spoke against the ignoble counsel; the Spartan raised his staff to strike him. Ye know the Spartan manners. 'Strike if you ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... longer be an island, but a peninsula, and although the isthmus which connects it with the Continent will be submarine, its effect on the railway system will be exactly the same as if it were a ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... which, some forty or fifty miles off, rose the lofty peaks of the Cordilleras, covered with eternal snows; or I should say, perhaps, the southern end of that mighty chain which rises abruptly from the Isthmus of Panama, and extends the ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... of Tahiti shows it shaped like a Samoan fan, or, roughly, like a lady's hand mirror. It is really two islands, joined by the mile-wide isthmus of Taravao. The larger island is Poroiunu or Tahiti-nui (big Tahiti), and the smaller Taiarapu, or Tahiti-iti (little Tahiti). Tahiti-nui is almost round; and Tahitiiti, oval. Both are volcanic, distinct in formation. They are united by ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... possibility that I should thus run away, and yet I knew I owed an apology for Harold's finding me and the old servants in possession, so I began to say that my old friend had sent the carriage for me.—I had been taken by surprise, their journey (one of the first across the Isthmus) had been so much quicker than I had expected, or I should have left the house free ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... opposite me there, that weariless sexton whose callous hands bury our rosy hours in the irrevocable past, is even now reaching forward to a moment as rich in life, in character, and thought, as full of opportunity, as any since Adam. This little isthmus that we are now standing on is the point to which martyrs in their triumphant pain, prophets in their fervor, and poets in their ecstasy, looked forward as the golden future, as the land too good for them to behold with mortal eyes; it is the point toward ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... halting on the lower slope of the mountain where it fell away in sand-dunes to the estuary of the Urumea, had the whole flank of the fortress in view. Just now, at half-tide, it rose straight out of the water on the farther bank— a low, narrow-necked isthmus that at its seaward end climbed to a cone-shaped rock four hundred feet high, crowned by a small castle. This was the citadel. The town, through which alone it could be taken by force, lay under it, across the neck of the isthmus; ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... young, brave, and courteous, had all the external requisites for a popular idol; and what he wanted in mental qualities was amply supplied by the Machiavel subtlety of Shaftesbury. The life of Charles was the only isthmus between these contending tides, "which, mounting, viewed each other from afar, and strove in vain to meet." It was already obvious, that the king's death was to be the signal of civil war. His situation was doubly embarrassing, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... personally examined all the important ports that surround and encircle the Caribbean Sea, from the pearl-bearing Margarita on the south, Deseada on the east, to Cuba on the west, together with the city of Mexico, and the Isthmus of Panama on the mainland. As the fruit of these journeyings, he brought back a report minute in description, rich in details, and luminous with illustrations. This little brochure, from the circumstances attendant upon its origin, is unsurpassed in historical importance by any similar or competing ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... 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, ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... North America. Find our city and the river nearest to it. North 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 pass ...
— Where We Live - A Home Geography • Emilie Van Beil Jacobs
... is the Gurnard's Head, the finest and most romantic point on the north side of the Land's End, and one of the show places of the county. The ancient name for the headland was Treryn Dinas. Portions of a small chapel remain on the isthmus, and there was once a ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... bag to a speckled native, who confidentially gives me to understand that he is the only strictly honest person in Aspinwall. The rest, he says, are niggers—which the colored people of the Isthmus regard as about as scathing a thing as they can say of ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... not know that in the part where they were, it was only a narrow neck of land (which you know is called an Isthmus) that separated them from another vast ocean; and this, when they discovered the ocean on the other side, was called ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... from the sand-warm, but pure. Their sufferings were over. The water continued to flow, running north for twenty miles, and at one point spreading into a lake two miles wide and twenty feet deep. When emigration was diverted, two years later, to the northern route and to the isthmus, New River Spring dried up. ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... has, after years of resistance, been worn down to an exceedingly small breadth. Possibly the river has merely worn an arm in its side, leaving an extensive bulge standing out in the river, and connected with the mainland by an isthmus. The river striking in this arm, and not having sufficient scope to rebound toward the other bank, is thrown into a rotary motion, forming almost a whirlpool. The action of this motion upon the banks soon reduces the connecting neck, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... he found the continent inhabited, and either originated the distribution of property or became a conqueror of the country. The evidence of tradition would clearly prove that at the arrival of Votan the great proportion of the inhabitants, from the Isthmus of Panama to the territories of California, were in a savage condition. The builders of the Cyclopean ruins ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... supplied by a man named James, of Dijon. I may observe that on this occasion we had an opportunity of ascertaining that good Burgundy, well racked off, and in casks hermetically sealed, does not lose its quality on a sea voyage. Several cases of this Burgundy twice crossed the desert of the Isthmus of Suez on camels' backs. We brought some of it back with us to Frejus, and it was as good as when we departed. James went with ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... sounding of a trumpet, or the oriental call by a clapping of hands, gates are thrown open, which have an effect corresponding in grandeur to the effect that would arise from the opening of a ship canal across the Isthmus of Darien, viz., the introduction to each other—face to face—of two separate infinities. Such a canal would suddenly lay open to each other the two great oceans of our planet, the Atlantic and the Pacific; whilst the act of translating into Greek and from Hebrew, that is, transferring out ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... told, that the cutting through the Isthmus of Panama, which the world has so often wished, and supposed practicable, has at times been thought of by the government of Spain, and that they once proceeded so far, as to have a survey and examination made of the ground; but that the result was, either impracticability or too great difficulty. ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... 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 fourteen ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... out without war. The only measures of a military nature to which the British Government consented were the establishment in Thessaly of outposts for the control of the crops, and the occupation of the Isthmus of Corinth, should King Constantine attempt to move his army out of the Peloponnesus: unless the King committed acts of hostility, no violence should be used. Having thus satisfied their conscience, the British Ministers abstained from any ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... fence maintained their position against the small force sent against them till the main body at the redoubt had made their escape. The British were unable to continue the pursuit beyond the isthmus. ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... written understanding upon the construction of the Panama Canal. The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, which was adopted that year, provided that the two countries should share equally in the construction and control of the proposed waterway across the Isthmus. This idea of joint control had always rankled in the United States, and in 1901 the American Government persuaded Great Britain to abrogate the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty and agree to another—the Hay-Pauncefote—which transferred the rights of ownership and construction ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... and thus uniting the world's greatest seas, the French people believed they could dig across the Isthmus of Panama, but digging through Culebra Cut thousands of miles from home was much different from digging across the level plain of Suez only a few hundred miles away. A canal without locks is entirely different from one where ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... sheep and cattle stations. From Australia I went to Aden (the inland town) and up the Red Sea to Suez, returning to Australia, and thence to England. Since I commenced business in England, in 1859, I went in 1862 to St. Thomas' in the West Indies, thence to Aspinwall, across the Isthmus to Panama, thence to Acapulco in Mexico, on to San Francisco in California, and thence to Vancouver Island, returning by the same route as far as Aspinwall, whence I went to New York. In 1865 I went on business ...
— A start in life • C. F. Dowsett
... society were rather vast, including an International Congress to be called by the Emperor Napoleon III, for the purpose of opening up and controlling the great highways from the East to the West through the Isthmus of Suez and that of Panama; also the colonization of Palestine by the Jews, and other commercial and philanthropic schemes. I cannot find that anything of lasting importance was accomplished by this society, so I shall ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... in my object, and brought them back in triumph through the Red Sea, across the Isthmus of Suez, and so by way of the Mediterranean, the Bay of Biscay, the English Channel, Southampton Water, the South-Western railway, and Alice's new dark-blue barouche, safe and sound to Clere and the castle, where they ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... minutes bring us from Leyden to Haarlem by the railway. It crosses an isthmus between the sea and a lake which covered the whole country between Leyden, Haarlem, and Amsterdam till 1839, when it became troublesome, and the States-General forthwith, after the fashion of Holland, voted its destruction. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... 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 on the ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... of Prince Edward is a peninsula connected with the main land by a narrow isthmus of low swampy land about four miles wide. Through this neck of land it has long been in contemplation to cut a canal to enable the lake steam-boats to take Belleville in their route between Kingston and Toronto, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... their native tribes, materials which, added to the commonly received notions on such subjects, heightened the infatuation of the times, and inflamed still more the imaginations of the credulous. Persons conversant with the Indians of Mexico, and on both sides of the Isthmus, discern many similarities in their systems of demonology with ideas ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... a vascular organ lying under the chin with a sort of little isthmus joining the two parts on either side of the windpipe," he explained. "Well, when there is any deterioration of those glands through any cause, all sorts of complications may arise. The thyroid is one of the so-called ductless glands, like the adrenals above the kidneys, ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... willingness to undertake such a trip as this. In times gone by, and especially when they were down in South America with their aeroplane, seeking Professor Bird, who had been lost, with the balloon in which he was conducting experiments on the isthmus, they had bravely faced just as serious perils as this promised to be; yes, and wrenched victory from the jaws of ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... 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
... in regard to the inefficiency of the means provided by the Government of New Granada for transporting the United States mail across the Isthmus of Panama, pursuant to our postal convention with that Republic of the 6th of March, 1844. Our charge d'affaires at Bogota has been directed to make such representations to the Government of New Granada as will, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Zachary Taylor • Zachary Taylor
... fight no more. Then the Sisters of Mercy had to mend the ravages of that unnatural fight, and for seven months Harry had a little holiday lying on his back. No sooner recovered, the rover spirit seized his feet and round he came to California, by way of the Isthmus, where he acted as "a sort of reporter," until he had eked out enough knowledge to teach in the grade school. Thence he started on the law path, from which he emerged most triumphantly, and after practicing in California struck out Renowards in 1913, where he was associated with the late ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... demand earth and water from each state in Greece, as emblems that land and sea were his, but each state was resolved to be free, and only Thessaly, that which lay first in his path, consented to yield the token of subjugation. A council was held at the Isthmus of Corinth, and attended by deputies from all the states of Greece to consider of the best means of defense. The ships of the enemy would coast round the shores of the Aegean sea, the land army would cross ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... belonging to a very old temple, are the only considerable relics of ancient Corinth. And as we had a long afternoon's work before us, we set off before twelve. We galloped at good speed across the Isthmus, about an hour's ride; Dhemetri, who understood the management of Greek horses, driving us before him like a flock of sheep. We paused a moment at the Isthmic sanctuary of Poseidon, passed through the village ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... resource of our energy has been the robbing of graveyards on the Isthmus of Darien, an enterprise which appears to be but in its infancy; for, according to late accounts, an act has passed its second reading in the legislature of New Granada, regulating this kind of mining; and a correspondent of the "Tribune" writes:—"In ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... 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 ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... may be speedily transported from the Atlantic States to meet and to repel the invader? In the event of a war with a naval power much stronger than our own we should then have no other available access to the Pacific Coast, because such a power would instantly close the route across the isthmus of Central America. It is impossible to conceive that whilst the Constitution has expressly required Congress to defend all the States it should yet deny to them, by any fair construction, the only possible means ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... one of his last letters to his dear friend Dr. Newman. The great Oratorian, then busy with the 'Grammar of Assent,' writes to him on January 2, 1870: 'My dear Hope-Scott,—A happy new year to you and all yours—and to Bellasis and all his.... I am engaged, as Bellasis knows, in cutting across the Isthmus of Suez; and though I have got so far as to let the water into the canal, there is an awkward rock in mid-channel near the mouth which takes a great deal of picking and blasting, and no man-of-war will be able to pass through till I ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... I found some engineers going out to run on the Meig's road in Peru. I signed a contract and in two days was on the Atlantic, bound for the Isthmus of Panama. ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... consequences, so far as Europe is concerned at least, would apparently ensue were the Isthmus of Panama to settle into the sea, allowing the Caribbean current to pass into the Pacific. But the geologist tells us that this isthmus rose at a comparatively recent geological period, though it is hinted that there had been some time previously ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... fifteen thousand square miles, being twice as large as the State of Massachusetts. The isthmus of Perikop, which connects it with the mainland, is but five miles in width. The Turks had fortified this passage by a ditch seventy-two feet wide, and forty-two feet deep, and had stationed along this line an army of fifty thousand Tartars. But the Russians forced ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... be of most use to us in plain clothes," he continued, after a dozen questions as to my former activities; "We could put you in uniform for the first month or six weeks until you know the Isthmus, and then— ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... was a cave, a very small one, and so high up in the face of the rock that it could only be reached by a ladder. In this lived five black men, members of the company of slaves who had gone from Guiana to the isthmus, and who had been brought down there about a year before by two wicked men, who had promised them well-paid work in a lovely country. They had, however, been made actual slaves in this barren and doleful place, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... Djerid, is all sand; an isthmus of sand thrust in between the two Chotts of Djerid and Rharsa; the oases ara scattered about the country, says some old writer, like the spots on ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... 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 of ...
— 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
... stood, looking seawards, the ground sunk to the narrow isthmus supposed by Malcolm to fill a cleft formerly crossed by a drawbridge, and, beyond it, rose again to the grassy mounds in which lay so many of the old bones ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... thinking that it was an island, and that we should find a passage between it and the main. We now discovered this to be a mistake; and found that it was a peninsula, joined to the rest of the coast by a low isthmus. I called the bay, formed by this peninsula, Repulse Bay; and a branch of it seemed to run a good way inland towards the S.S.W. Leaving this, we steered for the northern point of the peninsula, which we named Howe's Foreland, in honour ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... its name 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, is said ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... They took the shorter route, which was safer for their small boats, and came somewhat late within half a league of Manila without being seen; for the slight breeze stirring from the east prevented them from making the assault at daybreak. Manila is on a point or isthmus running southeast and northwest; and the river encompasses it from the east to the northwest. They did not enter by the river, in order not to be seen by the fishermen who are constantly going and coming; and also for the reason that the bay is very wide ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... revolving the globe, The ancestor-continents away group'd together, The present and future continents north and south, with the isthmus between. ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... on the famous fort and harbor. On the right, as the Good Intent entered, he saw a long, narrow promontory, at the end of which was a fortress, constructed, as it appeared, of solid rock. The promontory was joined to the mainland by a narrow isthmus of sand, beyond which lay an open town of some size. The shore was fringed with palmyras, mangoes and other tropical trees, and behind the straw huts and stone buildings of the town leafy groves clothed the sides ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... strange to find them thus gathered in the vicinity of a new Darien; but those in our immediate neighbourhood seem to have found it a far less fatal region than their countrymen did its namesake of the Isthmus. Mr. C——'s house is a roomy, comfortable, handsomely laid out mansion, to which he received me with very cordial kindness, and where I spent part of a very pleasant morning, talking with him, hearing all he could tell ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... Saifaleupolu and the burning of Manono had thus passed off without the least advantage to Tamasese. But he still held the significant position of Mulinuu, and Brandeis was strenuous to make it good. The whole peninsula was surrounded with a breastwork; across the isthmus it was six feet high and strengthened with a ditch; and the beach was staked against landing. Weber's land claim—the same that now broods over the village in the form of a signboard—then appeared in a more military guise; the German flag was hoisted, and German sailors manned ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... things were thus, Mnesiphilus, an Athenian, asked Themistocles, as he was going aboard his ship, what had been resolved on in council. And being answered, that it was decreed the ships should be brought back to Isthmus, and a battle fought at sea before Peloponnesus; he said, If then they remove the navy from Salamis, you will no longer be fighting for one country for they will return every one to his own city. Wherefore, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... the Melanesian scholars lived at St. John's College, which is situated on a low hill, from which the ground falls away on every side, leaving it exposed to every wind that blows across and around the narrow isthmus. ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... de H., smiling; 'for I would undertake to cut through the Isthmus, and I cannot engage that I shall ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... black enough, and, indeed, despaired of by most. General Henningsen, with the greater part of the force, was cooped up and half starved in Granada, by three or four thousand Costa Ricans and Chamorristas; General Walker, with the remainder, lay lower down on the Isthmus, watched by a second division of the enemy, and too weak to give him any assistance. General Henningsen's men, reduced to a mere handful by starvation and the bullets of the enemy, could hold out but a day or two longer; and then the entire force of the allies would unite and beat up General Walker, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... 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 of Darien. ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle |
