"Moat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... towers, with extinguisher tops, mounted guard at the angles of the mansion, and gave it rather a feudal air. The deep grooves upon its facade betrayed the former existence of a draw-bridge, rendered unnecessary now by the filling up of the moat, while the towers were draped for more than half their height with a most luxuriant growth of ivy, whose deep, rich green contrasted happily with the ancient ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... at Rome there is a very wide margin of disputable ground, of which I shall say no more in this place. But to return to the antique conception of the "Donna orante" or so-called Virgin Mother, I will mention here only the moat remarkable examples; for to enter fully into the subject would occupy a ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... there, as a matter of fact, to do a little building-up and clearing-away when the German itch for destruction proved too strong for their more gentlemanly feelings. We lay on the grass in the sun and smoked our pipes, looking across the placid moat to Zillebeke Vyver, Verbranden Molen, and the slight curve of Hill 60. The landscape was full of interest. Here was shrapnel bursting over entirely empty fields. There was a sapper repairing a line. The Germans were shelling the town, and it was a matter of skill to decide ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... there are two other ways in which the beavers display wonderful skill: in the building of their dams and in the excavating of their canals. Their dams are built for the purpose of retarding, raising, and storing water, in order—in summer time—to circumvent their enemies by placing a well-watered moat between their foe and their castle; also to flood a wider area so that the far-reaching waters of their pond may lap close to the roots of many otherwise inaccessible trees and thus enable them to fell and float them to their lodge; and—in winter time—to raise the water high enough to secure their ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... instances been altered, as if to obliterate all recollections and associations connected with its early history. Thus a row of houses, which a few years ago bore the not very euphonious name of Castle Ditch, from its having followed a portion of the line of the moat by which the fortress which once stood near it was surrounded, was changed into St George's Crescent, and many others underwent similar transmutations. But if the physical aspect of the place holds out few or no attractions to the antiquary, the moral one of its ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... in ambush there, and waylay an unwary traveller. We were to call upon him to surrender his arms, and then bring him home and put him in the deepest dungeon below the castle moat; then we were to load him with chains and send to his ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit
... was effected into the bailies' castle of Rotzberg by one of the conspirators, who was in the habit of paying nightly visits to a servant living in the castle, by means of a rope attached to her window, and who then admitted his companions, who were lying concealed in the moat. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... build castles. Such permission was extended to many other lay barons. The accustomed manor-house of the land proprietor, in which he dwelt amid the churls and serfs of his demesne, was now replaced by a stone tower, surrounded by a moat and a wall. The wooden one-storied homestead, with its thatched roof, shaded by the "toft" of ash and elm and maple, was pulled down, and a square fortress with loopholes and battlement stood in solitary nakedness upon some bleak hill, ugly and defiant. There with a band of armed men—sometimes ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... the moat, like one who heedeth not, Came the bold Sir Launcelot, half undressed; On the outer rim he stood, and peered into the wood, With his arms across him glued ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... abolished, this was turned into a residence by the Duke of Montague, to whose family it had been granted. He enlarged and beautified it, enclosing it in a quadrangle with walls, having a low circular tower at each angle, encompassed by a dry moat crossed by a bridge. The whole building is now fitted up as a ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... was too late. Before he was answered by his followers, we heard the creaking of the hinges and the rattle of the running chains, ending in a thud that told us the drawbridge had dropped across the moat. Then came the loud continuous thunder of many hoofs upon its timbers. Paralysed by fear Ramiro stood where he had halted, turning his eyes wildly in this direction and in that, but never moving one way or ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... In the moat of Nimes, close to the Gate of the Carmelites, there was a grating through which the waters from the fountain found vent. Maduron offered to file through the bars of this grating in such a manner that some fine night it could be lifted out so as to allow a band of armed Protestants ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that the Member of Parliament who moved the adjournment of the House to consider the culpable carelessness of the Government of India in allowing the Rajah of Muttighur to fall into the moat of his own castle when he was drunk, could have told you what a Purbhoo is, not though you had spelled it Prabhu, so that he could find it in his Gazetteer. Of course he saw hundreds of them during that Christmas which he spent in the East before he wrote his book; but then he took them all ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... that, on to-morrow, at four afternoon, I shall pass northward by Enfield Chase—I will be slenderly attended, as I design to send my train through Barnet. It is my purpose to ride an easy pace through the forest, and to linger a while by Camlet Moat—he knows the place; and, if he be aught but an Alsatian bully, will think it fitter for some purposes than the Park. He is, I understand, at liberty, or shortly to be so. If he fail me at the place nominated, he must seek me in Scotland, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... Playwood and Ridsdale at Saint Jude's, Kensington by the very reverend Dr Forrest, dean of Worcester. Eh? Deaths. Bristow, at Whitehall lane, London: Carr, Stoke Newington, of gastritis and heart disease: Cockburn, at the Moat house, Chepstow... ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... centuries, overgrown with shrubbery and ivy, cling to the side of the cliff from the castle to the valley road. The great square mass of the castle rises on top of a slope far above the church terrace. A moat, filled with bushes, is on a level with the terrace, and beyond the moat is a wall. An unkept path leads through the moat to a modest door. From the towers and arch above one can see that the former entrance to the castle, by means of a portcullis, was on this side. But the outer ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... fort, we had an opportunity to look through the latter, as we had come too early for preaching. It is not large; it has four points or batteries; it has no moat outside, but is enclosed with a double row of palisades. It is built from the foundation with quarry stone. The parapet is of earth. It is well provided with cannon, for the most part of iron, though there were some ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... dug up in the moat of Holdernesse Hall. They are for the use of horses; but they are shaped below with a cloven foot of iron, so as to throw pursuers off the track. They are supposed to have belonged to some of the marauding Barons of ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... at the junction of the rivers Moraca and Zeta, lie the remains of the once famous Dioclea or Dukla, as it is locally called. The town is of Roman origin, and was surrounded by a complete moat, which the Romans formed by digging a channel between the rivers. It must have been a place of immense strength in the olden days, but successive generations of warfare, which raged so pitilessly in this district, ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... sorry when Eveleen came to sit by him, for a bantering conversation with her was the occupation of which he was moat capable. Amy, returning, came and sat in her old place beside him, with her hand in his, and her quiet ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... graciously spared him this sorrow; for his father had fallen sick from vexation, and lay a-bed all this time, and it so happened that this very morning about prayer time, the huntsman, in shooting at a wild duck in the moat, had by chance sorely wounded his father's favourite dog, called Packan, which had crept howling to his father's bedside, and had died there; whereupon the old man, who was weak, was so angered that he was presently seized with a fit and gave ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... moat fervent embrace. A voice in the distance was heard saying, 'Little fool. I ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... turn of the road, all at once rose the towers of Cairncarque. There was a castle indeed!—something to call a castle!—with its huge square tower at every corner, and its still huger two towers in the middle of its front, its moat, and the causeway where once had been its drawbridge!—Yes! there were the spikes of the portcullis, sticking down from the top of the gateway, like the long upper teeth of a giant or ogre! That was a real castle—such as he had read of in books, such ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... to the edge of the terrace and looked over the parapet, but he could see nothing except the tops of the tall trees springing from the side of the moat. Flying to the sentinel, he inquired whether any one had passed him, but the ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... hotel was situated, a splendid wide avenue, planted with rows of majestic oaks, their branches meeting overhead. This extends over one mile; on one side of it is the Governor's Palace and grounds, cut off from vulgar feet by a moat, or walled ditch, and accessible by a small drawbridge from the avenue. ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... lapwing; but she, like the lapwing, gradually increased the distance between them, till he gave up the pursuit with some disappointment, and returned to his brother and sister. More ambitious than they, he proceeded to construct—chiefly for the sake of the moat he intended to draw around it—a sand-castle of considerable pretensions; but the advancing tide drove him from his stronghold before he had begun to ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... bustle of preparation for her own journey, and the excitement of her arrival at the Moat House. All three cousins were there to greet her, and she was welcomed with so many kisses, and such a chorus of delight, that for the moment everything else was forgotten. Each of the cousins had his or her favourite ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... just my ambition. What a pity it's looking backward instead of forward. But I would love to live in a great stone castle, all my own, with a moat and drawbridge and outriders, and go around in a damask gown with a pointed bodice and big puffy sleeves and a ruff and a little cap with pearls on it, and a bunch of keys ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... lodged) is the third floor on the garden side, and the king's apartments were four storeys above the garden, which at the time of which we write was separated from the base of the castle by a deep moat. The chateau, already colossal as viewed from the courtyard, appears gigantic when seen from below, as La Fontaine saw it. He mentions particularly that he did not enter either the courtyard or the apartments, ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... damsel showed him a secret place where hung a little horn. On this he blew a sharp and ringing blast, when the bridge presently began to lower, and instantly to adjust itself across the moat; whereon, hastening, he unlocked the gate. But here he had nigh fallen into a subtle snare, by reason of an ugly dwarf that was concealed in a side niche of the wall. He was armed with a ponderous mace; and had not the maiden drawn Sir Lancelot aside by main force, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... hundreds of yards from Charlecote Hall, and almost hidden by the trees between it and the roadside, is an old brick archway and porter's lodge. In connection with this entrance there appears to have been a wall and an ancient moat, the latter of which is still visible, a shallow, grassy scoop along the base of an embankment of the lawn. About fifty yards within the gateway stands the house, forming three sides of a square, with three gables in a row on the front, and on each of the two wings; ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... among the cottages and farm-houses occupying a fertile valley in Somersetshire, arose the ancient Keep, built of gray stone, and strongly fortified; but the defences were kept up rather as appendages of the owner's rank, than as requisite for his protection; though the moat was clear of weeds, and full of water, the drawbridge was so well covered with hard-trodden earth, overgrown at the edges with grass, that, in spite of the massive chains connecting it with the gateway, it seemed permanently fixed on the ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... heath. A green bank and a straggling line of stones, some fallen in large masses and some standing two or three feet high, presently stretched across their path, and Foster stopped for a few moments. The bank and moat-like hollow he looked down upon marked the vallum; the squared stones, to which the lime still clung, apparently undetachable, the murus. He was looking at the great rampart a Roman emperor had built. He understood that it was higher and less damaged farther ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... parish; and Lettice Baldwin, who lives with her widowed mother; and the three Robsons, who are what they call good sportsmen, and go in for games; and further afield there is Honor Edgecombe of Mount Edgecombe, a charming girl, and very musical; and Grace and Schilla Trevor; and the Blounts at the Moat have a London niece, Lady Margot Blount, who pays them a long visit every year. She is staying there now, and is sure to call. She is very elegant and distinguished-looking, and we all admire her immensely. My husband thinks ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... brother some directions about his garden" (at Wooton Surrey), "which, he was desirous to put into some form, for which he was to remove a mountain overgrown with large trees and thickets and a moat within ten yards ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... none can see them now, Though they sit by the side of the moat, Feet half in the water, there in a row, Long hair in the wind afloat. Therefore, said fair Yoland of the flowers, This is ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... on Shah Jahan's tomb is as follows:- 'The sacred sepulchre of His Moat Exalted Majesty, nesting in Paradise, the Second Lord of the Conjunction, Shah Jahan, the Emperor. May his mausoleum ever flourish. Year ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... out Chinese pirates after Li Ma-hong destroyed the city. The Spaniards sheltered themselves in the old Tagalog fort till reenforcements could come from the country. No one had ever dared to quote the proverb about locking the door after the horse was stolen. The need for the moat, so recently filled in, was not seen until after the bitter experience of the easy occupation of Manila by the English, but if public opinion had been allowed free expression this experience might have ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... harsh and stern as its master. A broad moat, a high outer wall turreted at the corners, with a great black keep towering above all—so it lay before them in the moonlight. By the light of two flambeaux, protruded through the narrow slit-shaped openings at either side of the ponderous gate, they caught a glimpse of the glitter ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... qualify it well for this purpose; and a greater appearance of strength and solidity is given by the solid rock in which its foundations are embedded, and which in some places is shaped into wall and moat. We crossed a drawbridge into a court flanked by four round towers, and having a square keep in its centre. On the top of one of these towers is an esplanade, from whence the view of the course of the Rhone, and the great plain of Arles, is fine: ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... on, puff after puff, down in the moat. Further along, on the green, some soldiers were being drilled, and now and again a trumpet signal sounded out on the ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... fugitives quickly traversed, passing through a high-arched entrance to an olden bridge that spanned a moat. Long ago had the feudal gates been overthrown by Francis; yet above the keystone appeared, not the salamander, the king's heraldic emblem, but the almost illegible device of the old constable. Beyond the great ditch outstretched a rolling country on which the jester ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... defences of the conqueror.' The mound on which the keep stands, and the banks that enclose a base-court about seven hundred and ten feet long and three hundred and eighty feet wide, have been little harmed or altered and are still in a very perfect condition; but the moat that once surrounded them has ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... that I have done no hurt whatever to her interests. By now she is safe in Roccaleone. What, then, can befall her? Guidobaldo, no doubt, will repair to her, and across the moat he will entreat her to be a dutiful niece and to return. She will offer to do so on condition that he pass her his princely word not to further molest her with the matter of this marriage. ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... expected the cell to be the 'deepest dungeon below the castle moat'. I am sure no one had doubted that the burglar, chained by heavy fetters to a ring in the damp stone wall, would be tossing uneasily on a bed of straw, with a pitcher of water and a mouldering crust, untasted, beside him. Robert, ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... Danube, as well as to guard the city against a land attack from that side. It was a strong place but, as it was situated in a flat country, it presented no natural obstacle to an escape. It was surrounded by a broad moat, fed by a cut from the river. On the other side of the moat were two small redoubts, facing west. The fort contained ample barracks for the garrison of three hundred men who occupied it, with bomb proofs in which they could take refuge, in the event of a siege. Beyond the ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... swarms of all sizes, from a tiny brown speck to a full-grown lentil, that they darkened his bed; and he slept on the tiled floor after making an island of himself by pouring cold water all round him as a kind of moat; and so he slept for a week of nights, until he had managed to poison off most of these invaders with poudre ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... standing in that part of the rampart walk which is now backed by the barracks of a modern soldiery, and before which, on the other side of the moat, lay a space that had seemed solitary and deserted; but as Hastings, in speaking his adieu, hurriedly pressed his lips on Sibyll's forehead, from a tavern without the fortress, and opposite the spot on which they stood, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... height of old was Wyndham Towers, Clinging to rock there, like an eagle's nest, With moat and drawbridge once, and good for siege; Four towers it had to front the diverse winds: Built God knows when, all record being lost, Locked in the memories of forgotten men. In Caesar's day, a pagan temple; next A monastery; then a feudal hold; Later a manor, ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... harmonise and rule the whole. Arms, too, are needful to maintain by force what right and law demand, and victory in a just quarrel proclaims the power and vigour of the commonwealth. On another wall Ambrogio has depicted the prosperous city of Siena, girt by battlements and moat, with tower and barbican and drawbridge, to insure its peace. Through the gates stream country-people, bringing the produce of their farms into the town. The streets are crowded with men and women intent on business or pleasure; craftsmen at their ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... these combined reasons, the residence of the chieftain was commonly a large square battlemented[40] tower, called a keep, or peel; placed on a precipice, or on the banks of a torrent, and, if the ground would permit, surrounded by a moat. In short, the situation of a border house, surrounded by woods, and rendered almost inaccessible by torrents, by rocks, or by morasses, sufficiently indicated the pursuits and apprehensions of its inhabitant.—"Locus horroris et ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... Opposite to the mansions, on the other side of the gravel crescent, was a bushy enclosure more like a steep hedge or dyke than a garden, and some way below that ran a strip of artificial water, a sort of canal, like the moat of that embowered fortress. As the car swept round the crescent it passed, at one corner, the stray stall of a man selling chestnuts; and right away at the other end of the curve, Angus could see a dim blue policeman walking slowly. These were ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... wife and the darkness of the night, the Sieur de Cande, having the fear of God before his eyes, would have kicked him out of the house. Everyone declared that the monk was a man capable of throwing the castle into the moat. Therefore, as soon as everyone had wiped his mouth, my lord took care to imprison this devil, whose strength was terrible to behold, and had him conducted to a wretched little closet where Perrotte had arranged her machine in order to annoy him during the night. ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... Civile, a Norman gentleman,[565] was the captain of a hundred men in the city of Rouen, when it was besieged by Charles IX., and he was then six-and-twenty. He was wounded to death at the end of an assault; and having fallen into the moat, some pioneers placed him in a grave with some other bodies, and covered them over with a little earth. He remained there from eleven in the morning till half-past six in the evening, when his servant went to disinter him. This domestic, ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... moat unaccountable reason, old Peterkin had a bitter prejudice against the boy, on whose account he had once been turned from the Tracy house; and though he had forgiven the Tracys, and would now have ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... interest occurs on the Etowah River, Georgia. This cut gives us a plan of the work. We notice, first of all, the moat or ditch by which they fortified their position. The ditch is still from five to twenty-five feet deep, and from twenty to seventy-five feet wide. It connects directly with the river at one end, but stops short at the other. It surrounds nearly fifty acres of land. At two points we ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... Baron. "Am I to be everlastingly plagued with bodies? No time allowed me to swallow a morsel. Throw it into the moat!" ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... customary abode, my home these three years; but they beside me saw not the rambling expanse of my leisurely log mansion. They noted not the overhanging gables, the lattices of native wood. To them, yonder lay a castle in a foreign land. Here was moat and wall, then a portcullis, and gratings warded these narrow portals against fire of musketoon. My pet swallows' nest, demure above my door, to them offered the aspect of a culverin's mouth; and, as now, I made my ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... them unawares and likewise find them unarmed; and they send forth their men whom they had divided into five bands. Some kept beside the wood; others came along the river; the third placed themselves in the plain; and the fourth were in a valley; and the fifth battalion spurs along the moat that surrounded a rock, for they thought to swoop down impetuously among the tents. But they have not found a road that they could follow, or a way that was not barred; for the king's men block their way as they very proudly defy them and reproach them with treason. They engage with the ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... present trouble our vanity so greatly? And if our play is of so little importance, why should we care whether the scenery is romantic instead of commonplace, or why should we make furious efforts to shift a Gothic castle, a drawbridge, a moat and a waterfall into the slides occupied by the four walls ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... excommunicating, and as often absolving, the Earl of Arundel for poaching (as he termed it) in Houghton Forest. The Church lost Amberley in the sixteenth century. William Rede, who succeeded Langton to both house and see, wishing to feel secure in his home, craved permission to dig a moat around it and to render it both hostile and defensive. Hence its lion-like mien; but it has known no warfare, and the castle's mouldering walls now give what assistance they can in harbouring live stock. Twentieth-century sheds ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... swans float and float Along the moat Around the Bishop's garden, And the white clouds push Across a blue sky With edges that seem to draw in ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... about, and busying themselves, much as they do at home, with toy pails and spades; but if you take notice you will find that their sand-structures differ widely from those of children in America: you may even see a perfect model of a feudal castle grow into shape, with barbacan, gate, moat, drawbridge, towers, bastions, donjon-keep and banqueting-hall complete. A brass band—the members in full uniform of bright colors, with little rimless red-and-gold caps—is playing under the battlemented ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... workpeople lived, and had with them the arms and ammunition of the whole party. An annexe was attached to one of the buildings, and it was used as a smithy; a few of the people also slept there. The whole of the buildings were enclosed by a trench or moat 15 ft. wide and 9 ft. deep, to protect the settlers from ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... here and there, and none shared with another that which they picked up." So many and such sufferings produced incredible dastardliness; and deserters escaped by night, in some cases throwing themselves down, at the risk of being killed, into the city-moat; in others getting down by help of a rope from the ramparts. Indignation blazed forth against the fugitives; they were called rope-dancers; and God was prayed to treat them as the traitor Judas. William of Tyre and Guibert of Nogent, after naming ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... All around the high flat a valley lay, like a moat, or as if some broad river had been dried up in its course, and, century after century, gradually converted into meadow, woodland, and town. For a little white town sat demurely at the bottom of the hollow, and a score or two of white cottages scattered themselves from this small nucleus ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... A deeper trench cut along the middle of a dry moat; a ditch within a ditch, generally carried down till there ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... The mediaeval castle moat and drawbridge have, indeed, been transferred from the actual world to that of fiction, history, and art, except where preserved as memorials of antiquity; but the civil importance which from the dawn of civilization attached to the bridge ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... were still lying low before their God. When the feast in the palace was broken up, and the gates were shut, the high walls cast their shadows upon the moat. The sentinels still moved with measured tread. The lights gradually disappeared, except those that told of some one watching over the sick or dying, or some chance-beam betraying a late carousal. In the palace, the soft footfall of the attendants in the antechambers, could not ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... when the party drove over a narrow bridge across a half-filled moat, and under the arch of a massive crenellated tower whose unguarded gates stood wide open. A hundred years ago they would have found the portcullis drawn, and, being women, if they had attempted to force an entrance would have been excommunicated, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... Eden, demi-paradise; This fortress built by nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war; This happy breed of men, this little world; This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happy lands: This blessed plot, this earth, this ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... little plot worked perfectly. The friendly keeper, having gotten a peep at the ex-Police Prefect's letter of pardon, needed but the clincher argument of the gold in order to aid de Vaudrey's escape. A rope over the wall, and even a plank across the moat, were mysteriously provided. In the last silent watch of the night, the go-between (who had been waiting) conducted the escaped prisoner to the carter's cavern. Already the East was showing the ghostly light of the first faint ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... across a nubbly bridge, and enters what was once a fair city. It is a walled city, like Chester, and is separated from the surrounding country by a moat as wide as the upper Thames. In days gone by those ramparts and that moat could have held an army at bay—and probably did, more than once. They have done so yet again; ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... only here and there by two or three of the narrowest possible lancet-holes, give it something the air of a fortification. Indeed, if well garrisoned, it would be almost as strong a post as the Chateau of Hougoumont; with this additional advantage, that it has a moat on two sides of it, and a canal, only divided from it by a narrow towing-path, on a third. The front (for it has a front, though, upon my first visit, it took me some time to find it, it being exactly on the opposite side to the approach at present in use, and requiring ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... heavy drawbridge fell That o'er the moat was hung; And, clatter, clatter, on its boards The hoof ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... have been doomed to this species of punishment. Among these is the head of Ugolino, whom Dante describes as eternally gnawing the head of his enemy, who, after placing him and his three sons in the upper chamber of a strong tower near Florence, threw the key of it into the moat and left them to perish with hunger. Grinning in mockery of these ice-bound sufferers, A BLACK IMP [biggest extra black capitals] is seated on a rock, dandling a young monster. On the edge of the opposite side of the frozen ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... as of old; With more exceeding passion than of old: Good, speak the word: my followers ring him round: He sits unarmed; I hold a finger up; They understand: nay; I do not mean blood: Nor need ye look so scared at what I say: My malice is no deeper than a moat, No stronger than a wall: there is the keep; He shall not cross us more; speak but the word: Or speak it not; but then by Him that made me The one true lover whom you ever owned, I will make use of all the power I have. O pardon ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... the house from the village. On the left of the manor lay prosperous barns and byres, full of sleek pigs and busy crested fowls. The teams came clanking home across the water-meadows. The house itself became more and more beautiful as I approached. It was surrounded by a moat, and here, close at hand, stood another ancient chapel, in seemly repair. All round the house grew dense thickets of sprawling laurels, which rose in luxuriance from the edge of the water. Then I crossed a little bridge with a broken parapet; and in front of me stood the house itself. I ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Castle of Rest was reached it justified all that Senorita Estacardo had said of it, though it lacked moat and drawbridge and the other feudal accessories. It was of massive rock and stone, sixty or more feet in length and almost as broad. The lowest floor consisted of two large rooms, with broad openings instead of doors, rough and unfurnished and with walls several feet in thickness. At the ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... rooms, where Colleoni entertained his guests, are given over to the silkworms. Half a dozen families, employed upon a vast estate of the Martinengo family, occupy the still substantial house and stables. The moat is planted with mulberry-trees; the upper rooms are used as granaries for golden maize; cows, pigs, and horses litter in the spacious yard. Yet the walls of the inner court and of the ancient state-rooms are brilliant with frescos, executed by some good Venetian hand, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... at nightfall, Father Coiffe, Nicholas Rolfo, and five or six other veterans, loading their cannon for the evening salute of twenty-one guns, while half of Pfalzbourg stand on the opposite bastion looking at the red light, and smoke, and watching the wads as they fall into the moat; then the illuminations at night and the crackers and rockets, I hear the children cry Vive l'Empereur, and then some days after, the death notices and the conscription. Under Louis XVIII. I see the altars and the peasants with their carts full of moss and broom ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... closed at nine o'clock, when the Jews are shut in for the night. The houses are filthy, stinking, and out of repair. The Corso is like a street in an English town, broad, long, the houses low, and with a trottoir on both sides. The Castle, surrounded by a moat, stands in the middle of the town, a gloomy place. In it lives the Cardinal Legate. I went to see the dungeon in which Tasso was confined; and the library, where they show Ariosto's chair and inkstand, a medal found ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... said the apparition, "and tell him that in twenty-two years, one month, and one day, he will lose the governorship of the city." Like a small cloud the spirit vanished. At the very time predicted, Philip, Duke of Milan, besieged the city, and the water being frozen, he was enabled to pass the moat, and having scaled the walls, surprised the city, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... one side the sea, and on the other the celebrated bay, generally called the Groyne. It is divided into the old and new town, the latter of which was at one time probably a mere suburb. The old town is a desolate ruinous place, separated from the new by a wide moat. The modern town is a much more agreeable spot, and contains one magnificent street, the Calle Real, where the principal merchants reside. One singular feature of this street is, that it is laid entirely with flags of marble, along which troop ponies and cars as if ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... valorously through a rampart of cold provision, when his ears were suddenly assailed by a tremendous alarum, and sallying forth, and looking from his castle wall, he perceived a large party of armed men on the other side of the moat, who were calling on the warder in the king's name to lower the drawbridge and raise the portcullis, which had both been secured by Matilda's order. The baron walked along the battlement till he came opposite to these unexpected visitors, who, ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... noble lord, is Adam Kerr of the Moat, but he is commonly called by his companions the Black Rider of Cheviot. I fear, I fear, he comes hither for no good; but if the Lord of Cessford be near, he will not dare ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... very slight heel (thanks to a pair of small bilge-keels on her bottom) in a sort of trough she had dug for herself, so that she was still ringed with a few inches of water, as it were with a moat. ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... in sight of London Bridge I knew that Olaf was right, for since the Danes had gained the city they had not been idle. They had built a great fort on the Southwark side of the river, girt with a wide moat, and all the stronger that the walls thus surrounded were partly of timber and stone. The road from across London Bridge runs through this fort, so that one might by no means pass over it until the place was won. And at the other end ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... witnessed the gorgeous marriages of Holy Roman Emperors; and every one of them was provided with some choice and selected first-class murders. Ghosts could be arranged for or not, as desired; and armorial bearings could be thrown in with the moat ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... annuitants gazing at the horizon through spy-glasses, philosophers of want, bent double, with their hands upon their knees, the greasy coats characteristic of old men, and black hats worn as red as their red beards. The air was full of rich harmonies. Below her, in the moat, a musical society was playing at each corner. Before her eyes was a multi-colored crowd, white blouses, children in blue aprons running around, a game of riding at the ring in progress, wine shops, cake shops, fried fish stalls, and shooting galleries half hidden in clumps of verdure, from which ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... had descried our movements, and the ramparts and walls and also the top of the breaches were alive with men, who poured in a galling fire on our troops Soon they reached the outer edge of the moat, and amidst a perfect hailstorm of bullets, causing great havoc among our men, the scaling-ladders were let down. The ditch here, 20 feet deep and 25 feet broad, offered a serious obstacle to the quick advance of the assaulting columns; the men fell fast under the withering fire, and some delay ensued ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... on up to the principal house in the place—Hayslope Grange. This was a large, rambling, roomy building, half farm-house, half mansion, standing in the midst of an old-fashioned garden, surrounded by fields, and enclosed with a moat. The moat was dry now, and had been for some years, and a permanent bridge of planks had been laid across, leading to the village; Master Drury would not have it filled up. "It might be useful yet," he would say, when his son Harry pressed ...
— Hayslope Grange - A Tale of the Civil War • Emma Leslie
... most ancient cities in France; it is the Condivunum of the Romans, and the Civitas Namnetum of Caesar. It is mentioned by several Latin writers as a town of moat considerable population under the Roman prefects; and there is every appearance, in several parts of the city, that it has declined much from its original importance. It is still, however, in every respect, a noble ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... the eastward, half hidden by the trees, a glimpse could be had of the walls of the village of Hem. In the distance a solitary church spire marked the site of Peronne, a fortress surrounded by its moat ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... drawing-room so that it should resemble perfectly a Louis XV. salon. He invited an expert to visit it and express his opinion. The critic came, inspected, left the room, and locked the door; then he said, "It is perfect," and promptly threw the key into the moat. "Why did you do that?" asked the collector. "For fear," replied the expert, "lest anybody should spoil the effect of your salon by entering it in modern costume inharmonious with it." There is another tale about a hostess who ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... differs from a fringing reef in being placed at a much greater distance from the land with reference to the probable inclination of its submarine foundation, and in the presence of a deep water lagoon-like space or moat within the reef." The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs by Charles ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... outlook was restricted by the outer edges of the splay in which the window was built. From the same cause, also, Frobisher was unable to see the ground close enough to the wall to judge whether the fort was surrounded by a moat or a dry ditch of any description, although from the general appearance of things he surmised that ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... come to it first as the bride of Girolamo Riario, but the townspeople had refused to recognise his authority and had stabbed him to death, throwing his naked, mutilated body into the moat before ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... preparations had been made. There was no town here, but the great fortress, with its citadel, barracks, machine-shops, gardens, church, and protecting forts, was almost a city in itself. It had a garrison of twenty thousand, and its gigantic concrete walls, covered over with earth and grass, its, moat and barbed wire, looked formidable enough. It had no modern heavy artillery, however, and even if it had, artillery in a fixed, known spot is comparatively helpless against the mobile guns, screened by hills and timber, besiegers can bring against ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... who had been attracted to the square by the unwonted scene understood a word that was said. The carriages next proceeded to the Beguinage, a kind of convent or nunnery. The establishment is a little town by itself, with streets, squares, and gates, and is surrounded by a wall and moat. In the centre there is a church. The houses are occupied by the Beguines, a sisterhood of nuns in Belgium which has six thousand members. They are bound by no vows, as ordinary nuns are, and may therefore ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... nor moat, nor drawbridge to her feudal stronghold at Corellia, but there was big, white Argo. Argo alone would pin ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... a fine old castle of the Norman type, with a large moat surrounding it, and having all the characteristics appertaining to the feudal state. To the rear of the moat, behind the castle, stretched broad lands, on which were scattered many cottages, whose occupants had paid feu-duty to the Lords of Dunmorton for ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... by the Chinese commandant at the head of a large force. The former fled, and the latter pursued, only to fall into the inevitable ambush; and the Chinese troops, on retiring in their turn, found that the bridge across the moat had been destroyed by traitors in their own camp, so that they were unable to re-enter the city. Thus Mukden fell, the prelude to a series of further victories, one of which was the rout of an army sent to retake Mukden, and the chief of which was the capture of Liao-yang, ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... Torres paused at sunrise upon the crest of a small eminence, whence they commanded a view of an extensive plain. On their right front, and at the distance of a mile, lay a town, composed of dark buildings of quaint and ancient architecture, surrounded by walls and a moat, and on the battlements of which sentries were stationed; whilst from the church tower the Spanish colours, the gaudy red and gold, flaunted their folds ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... half below. At St. Leger, near Loudun, is a fine mediaeval castle, with a fosse round it cut out of the rock: and this fosse is alive with people who have grubbed out houses for themselves in the rock through which the moat (which ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... and indeed did she allow her fancy to dwell, for a moment, upon them she was besieged at once by so horrid a panic that she lost all control and self-possession. She therefore very quickly put those things from her and thenceforth lived in the world as in a castle surrounded by a dark moat filled with horrible and slimy creatures who would raise a head at her did she so much as ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... thousands were swept away by famine. Fruit is abundant and little meat is necessary in hot countries. Before the morning meal was partaken of Jack Everson asked Dr. Marlowe to explain the cause of the low moaning noise that had been in his ears for moat of the night. The elder listened for ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... that point ever rushed darkly and stormily along; the mount, though not steep, was full two miles in circumference, from base to brow occupied by the castle, which was erected in that massive yet irregular form peculiar to the architecture of the middle ages. A deep, broad moat or fosse, constantly supplied by the river, defended the castle wall, which ran round the mound, irregularly indeed, for there were indentations and sharp angles, occasioned by the uneven ground, each of which was guarded by ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... one of the churches stood, as well as the building where the officers were quartered, the Museum of Antiquity, and perhaps a dozen others. Across the moat, which led to the gateway of what were formerly the inner fortifications, were piles of rotting horseflesh. The bronze statue of De Smet, the Jesuit missionary, looked calmly on the scene. All the rest was blotted out. There was no sign ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... terms of his contract, and finally withdrew, and supervisors were appointed. The prison was a six-rayed building with a chapel in the centre. Each ray was pentagonal in shape, and had three towers on its exterior angles. The whole was surrounded by an octagonal wall overlooking a moat. At the closing of the prison in Tothill Fields it became the sole Metropolitan prison for females, "just as," says Major Griffiths, "it was the sole reformatory for promising criminals, the first receptacle for military prisoners, the great depot ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... moat, and Christabel Took the key that fitted well; A little door she opened straight, All in the middle of the gate; The gate that was ironed within and without, Where an army in battle array had marched out. The ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... the road showed Highstead before him, two furlongs distant. The thatched roof of the hall rose out of a cluster of shingled huts on a mound defended by moat and palisade. No smoke came from the dwelling, and no man was visible, but not for nothing was Jehan named the Hunter. He was aware that every tuft of reed and scrog of wood concealed a spear or a bowman. So ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... that time, as you may have heard, by an instance of filial piety. The town was greatly straitened for want of provisions; a youth, whose father was in the garrison, was accustomed nightly to get into the deep dry moat, climb up the glacis, and put provisions through a hole, where the father stood ready to receive them. He was perceived at length; the soldiers fired on him. He was taken prisoner, and sentenced to be hanged in sight of the besieged, in order to strike terror into those ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the valley I descry, Gleaming vermilion, as if they from fire Had issu'd." He replied: "Eternal fire, That inward burns, shows them with ruddy flame Illum'd; as in this nether hell thou seest." We came within the fosses deep, that moat This region comfortless. The walls appear'd As they were fram'd of iron. We had made Wide circuit, ere a place we reach'd, where loud The mariner cried vehement: "Go forth! The' entrance is here!" Upon the gates I spied More than a thousand, who of old from heaven Were ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... and ran along the wall to a deep breach which had been left unrepaired. Over the sharp rocks I clambered, and at the risk of breaking my neck I jumped off the wall into the moat, which was almost dry. Dawn was breaking when I found a place to ascend from the moat, and I hastened to the fields and forests, where all day and all night long I wandered without food or drink. Two hours before sunrise ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... at which the soul sickened. At Sichem, the indignation of the Burgundians against a body of French troops which, after the battle of Gembloux, had pledged itself never again to bear arms against Spain, caused them to have a hundred soldiers strangled by night, and their bodies flung into the moat at the foot of the citadel; after which the town was given up by Prince Alexander to pillage and spoliation! Terrified by such an example, Diest and Leeuw hastened to capitulate. And still, at every fresh conquest, and while receiving day after day, and week after week, the submission of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... land was divided and the number of owners named from time to time in ancient deeds, the yearly rentals, even in Henry VIII's time being from 3s. to 5s. per year. At the back of the lower side of Edgbaston Street, were several tanneries, there being a stream of water running from the moat round the Parsonage-house to the Manor-house moat, the watercourse being now known as ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... when the bridge-approach was passed; and then, on Castle Hill, he was in an unknown region. There the street widened to the great square of the esplanade. The cavalry wheeled and dashed down High Street, but the infantry marched on and up, over the sounding drawbridge that spanned a dry moat of the Middle Ages, and through a ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... locks of the hall had been tampered with so that their keys were of no avail. The bars by which the gates were barricaded were removed from their accustomed place. Planks had been surreptitiously placed across the moat that the enemy might obtain easy access to the stronghold; and Sir Richard Graeme, with three hundred followers in his train, was waiting for the signal ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... bishop's castle of St. Andrews seems but a cottage compared to it. From the hill-top there is a wide prospect over the tower and the valley of the Vienne, which I liked to gaze upon. My master, then, went in by the drawbridge, high above the moat, which is so deep that, I trow, no foeman could fill it up and cross it to assail the walls. My master, in limping up the hill, had wearied himself, but soon passed into the castle through the gateway of the bell-tower, as they call it, while I waited for ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... sycamores. I crossed the river in a boat, and in the after part of the day I found myself before the high and massive walls of the chateau of Chambord. This chateau is one of the finest specimens of the ancient Gothic castle to be found in Europe. The little river Cosson fills its deep and ample moat, and above it the huge towers and heavy battlements rise in stern and solemn grandeur, moss-grown with age, and blackened by the storms of three centuries. Within, all is mournful and deserted. The grass has overgrown the pavement of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... again. Yesterday I went in the afternoon to put our cemetery straight. It was being shelled at the time, and as I crept round some of our batteries afterwards, the guns were being hit, also a rather nice farm in which they were placed surrounded by a moat. The enemy have been shelling us this morning too, very closely, but I am tired, and my nerves, as you know, are not very jumpy! I was up just after 3 o'clock this morning, and went to various places, nearly being lost in a quagmire! Two of my men were hit, one by a spent ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... custom which the elevator-boy (flown with the insolent recollection of a sunny summer in Milan) said was invariable in Nuremberg; but after the one-o'clock table d'hote they took a noble two-spanner carriage, and drove all round the city. Everywhere the ancient moat, thickly turfed and planted with trees and shrubs, stretched a girdle of garden between their course and the wall beautifully old, with knots of dead ivy clinging to its crevices, or broad meshes of the shining foliage mantling its blackened masonry. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... their own age, had often more or less fully rationalized it; transforming, for instance, the black river of Death which the original heroes often had to cross on journeys to the Celtic Other World into a rude and forbidding moat about the hostile castle into which the romancers degraded the Other World itself. Countless magic details, however, still remained recalcitrant to such treatment; and they evidently troubled Malory, whose devotion to his story ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... Although it would be a poor defense and protection against modern projectiles, it was impregnable down to the mutiny of 1857. The walls are two miles and a quarter in circumference; they are protected by a moat 30 feet wide and 35 feet deep; they are 70 feet high and 30 feet thick, and built of enormous blocks of red sandstone. There are two entrances, both very imposing, one called the Delhi Gate and the other the Elephant Gate, where there used to be two large stone elephants, but they ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... swift stream which obtained life from these falls, big and little, ran along the base of the cliff for some distance and was then diverted by means of a deep, artificial channel into an almost complete circuit of the chateau, forming the moat. It sped along at the foot of the upper terrace, a wide torrent that washed between solid walls of masonry which rose to a height of not less than ten feet on either side. There were two drawbridges—seldom ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... who, it seems, was poorly at the time, and, of course, must have been called up to speak to the chambermaids, and have the sheets aired, if Lady G. had had a room to herself. They do not get to their bed, however in the poem, quite so easily as we have carried them. They first cross the moat, and Lady C. 'took the key that fitted well,' and opened a little door, 'all in the middle of the gate.' Lady G. then sinks down 'belike through pain;' but it should seem more probably from laziness; for her fair companion having lifted her up, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... where deep trenches could be traced, green now, but clearly once a moat, but there was not even a tradition about it. On the Downs overlooking the Idovers was an earthwork or entrenchment, of which no one knew anything. Hilary believed there was an old book—a history of Overboro' town—which might perhaps contain ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... round-bottomed vessel of Neolithic times. Some of these round-bottomed bowls have been found with Neolithic remains at Portstewart, County Down, and there is one in the National Collection described as found in a cavern associated with stone implements beside the moat of Dunagore, near the town of Antrim. The development from the Neolithic bowl can be clearly traced in the Irish series. The earliest are flat, almost saucer-shaped bowls, which are generally covered all over ...
— The Bronze Age in Ireland • George Coffey
... feet high, on which were 250 towers, or, according to some writers, 316. The top of the wall was wide enough to allow six chariots to drive abreast. The materials for building the wall were dug from a vast ditch or moat, which was also walled up with brickwork and then filled with water from the River Euphrates. This moat was just outside of the walls, and surrounded the city as another ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... began by surrounding the town with a double line of circumvallation. The marshes were crossed by dykes, and two streams were dammed so as to fill a broad deep moat round the lines and flood the country outside. Other lines, three miles long, connected the investing lines with the village of Crevecceur on the Meuse, Frederick Henry's base of supplies, which were brought by water from Holland. These ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... his friend's arm, and they pressed on. The shadow behind them advanced when they advanced and stopped when they stood still. Through the pleasure garden the pair proceeded with hurried steps, through the gate at the castle moat they entered upon the Willow-bank suburb, then down the deserted little streets of wretched huts. They reached the great Willow-bank meadow without the walls, passing through a gate not far from the bridge ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... hail! Sure 'tis flagrant folly Now to rave and rail. Truce—beneath your holly! Darkest England waits Care Co-operative; Mood that moat elates Is to-day—the dative! You need not doubt, You're no "Grecian" giver. Many "cold without," Foodless, hopeless, shiver; Many a poor man's pot, Even at your season, With no pudding hot Bubbles. Is't not treason Unto more than kings To waste time ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various
... sounds—ZENOCRATE dies.] What, is she dead? Techelles, draw thy sword, And wound the earth, that it may cleave in twain, And we descend into th' infernal vaults, To hale the Fatal Sisters by the hair, And throw them in the triple moat of hell, For taking hence my fair Zenocrate. Casane and Theridamas, to arms! Raise cavalieros [91] higher than the clouds, And with the cannon break the frame of heaven; Batter the shining palace of the sun, And shiver all the starry firmament, For amorous Jove hath snatch'd my love from hence, ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... Frances to Isoult; but he arrived alone. Mr Monke thanked them heartily for their loving care, and would readily undertake to warn Wynscote and Combe; but he declined to join them. Potheridge was well fortified with walls and moat; and he had seven able-bodied men-servants, and double the number of tenants, who could be called within at a few minutes' notice: the house was well provisioned, and his armoury equipped: and he ended his letter by saying,—"My ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... four corners had pointed roofs covered with leaden tiles, and the foundation rested upon solid rocks, which descended abruptly to the bottom of the moat. ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... made Philip regard the whole as a flimsy, Frenchchified erection, but he now saw it to be of extremely solid stone and lime, and with no entrance but the great barbican gateway they had entered by; moreover, with a yawning dry moat all round. Wherever he looked he saw these tall, pointed red caps, resembling, he thought, those worn by the victims of an auto-de-fe, as one of Walsingham's secretaries had described them to him; and he ground his teeth at ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Kung was standing before the city moat. Said he to himself: "To first buy the weapons would take a great deal of time. I would rather make magic and take some." So he blew on the ground. Then a tremendous storm-wind arose which drove ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various |
