"Moat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... next week—she was becoming an adept at forgetting. That was all that was left for her to do! Day after day and night after night she had raised the drawbridge between her heart and memory, leaving the lonely thoughts to shiver desolately on the other side of the moat. She was weary to the bone of suffering, and they were enemies, for all their dear and friendly guise; they would tear her to pieces if she ever let them in. No, no, she was done with them. She ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... thought of that! There was the castle, truly, beetling against the breakers, very cold, very arrogant upon its barren promontory. He was not twenty paces from its walls, and yet it might as well have been a league away, for he was cut off from it by a natural moat of sea-water that swept about it in yeasty little waves. It rode like a ship, oddly independent of aspect, self-contained, inviolable, eternally apart, for ever by nature indifferent to the mainland, where a Montaiglon was vulgarly quarrelling with ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... meadow at the angle of an island formed by two arms of the river, one of which, the eastern arm, has long since been filled up.[224] Belonging to this castle was a chapel of Our Lady, a courtyard provided with means of defence, and a large garden surrounded by a moat wide and deep. This castle, once the dwelling of the Lords of Bourlemont, was commonly called the Fortress of the Island. The last of the lords having died without children, his property had been inherited by his niece Jeanne de Joinville. ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... 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 ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... justify yet another of its nicknames, "the German Athens," but here were, in this southern and unfashionable suburb, only a few modern structures, and most of the quaint and rather picturesque dwellings, overhanging the stores, dated anterior to the filling up of the town moat ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... street in Ypres is the wide Rue de Lille, which runs from opposite the Cloth Hall down to the Lille Gate, and over the moat water into the Lille road and on to the German lines. The Rue de Lille was especially famous for its fine old buildings. There was the Hospice Belle, for old female paupers of Ypres, built in the thirteenth century. There ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... three times repeated the question, but no voice returned an answer. Then St Gildas took the new-born infant from its mother and placed it on the ground. The child marched alone to the edge of the moat, picked up a handful of earth, and, throwing it against the castle, exclaimed: "Let the Trinity execute judgment." At the same instant the towers shook and fell with a crash, the walls yawned open, and the castle sunk, burying Comorre and all his partners in crime. St Gildas then ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... vegetation of a tropical jungle, the pirates at last reached a spot from which a clear view of the castle could be obtained. As they emerged from the forest to the open, the sight greatly disheartened them. They saw a powerful fort, with bastions, moat, drawbridge, and precipitous natural defences. Many of the pirates advised a retreat; but Bradley, dreading the anger of Morgan, ordered an assault. Time after time did the desperate buccaneers, with horrid ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... not of sufficient width to hold back an advancing army long, but in places its banks rise so high and steep that it serves very much the same purpose as a moat before a castle. In such places comparatively few men could hold back a large number of the enemy. A little south of Lazarevatz the line of intrenchments left the Kolubara and followed the Lyg River, where the country was even more rugged. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... becomes. The words put in "italics," unqualified as they are, would fit and admirably cover the character of the greatest criminal. They would do as they stand, for Wainwright, for Dr Dodd, for Deeming, for Neil Cream, for Canham Read, or for Dougal of Moat Farm fame. And then the touch that, in the Shorter Catechism, Stevenson would have found a cover or justification for it somehow! This comes of writing under a keen sense of grievance; and how could this be truly said of one who was "at bottom an excellent fellow." ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... that is compact together," covering with her huddled houses and crooked, narrow streets, the two or three rounded hills and shallow depressions in which the northern plateau terminates. South and east and west, the valley of the Brook Kidron and the Valley of Himmon surround the city wall with a dry moat three or four ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... as a signal of success, rent the air with shouts of joy. The enthusiasm spread with the news. Bells were rung as for a great victory, and bonfires in all parts of the kingdom proclaimed the joy of the nation at its release from what was regarded the moat oppressive burden of the war. Twenty-five years later the income ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... Nineveh was still 150 ft high, and that the spaces between the 250 towers of the wall of Babylon (Ctes. 417, ap. Diod. ii. 7) were broad enough to let a four-horse chariot turn (Herod. i. 179). The clay dug from the moat served to make the bricks of the wall, which had 100 gates, all of bronze, with bronze lintels and posts. The two inner enclosures were faced with enamelled tiles and represented hunting-scenes. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... now called Wallace Field, the name Bagumbayan being applied to the driveway which was known to the Spaniards as the Paseo de las Aguadas, or de Vidal, extending from the Luneta to the Bridge of Spain, just outside the moat that, formerly ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... though the jewel be but glass, That with a world not often over-nice Ranks as a virtue, and is yet a vice, Or rather a gross compound, justly tried, Of envy, hatred, jealousy, and pride, Contributes moat perhaps to enhance their fame, And Emulation is its precious name. Boys once on fire with that contentious zeal Feel all the rage that female rivals feel; The prize of beauty in a woman's eyes Not brighter than in theirs the scholar's prize. ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... square tower at the south-west angle was joined to the Castle, and two more round towers stood at the northern angles. Near the chapel is a low wall, and looking over it one sees a very steep slope to the river, sixty feet beneath. A wide and deep moat surrounded the ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... railway traffic still follow to-day. The island now known as the Cite, which the founders of Paris chose for their stronghold, was the largest of the group which lay involved in the many windings of the Seine, and was embraced by a natural moat of deep waters. To north and south lay hills, marshes and forests, and all combined to give it a position equally adapted for ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... which may gradually grow to broad alluvial plains, so that the long-surviving, crescent-shaped lake, the remnant of the river bed, may be seen far from the present course of the ever-changing stream. Gradually the accumulations of vegetable matter and the silt brought in by floods efface this moat or oxbow cut-off, as it is so ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... in sight at last. Far on the horizon its towers could be seen, and the sun's rays sparkled on the river and on the broad moat which surrounded the walls; but still no enemy was to be seen. The scouts came in with the report that the Hittites had retreated northwards in terror, and King Ramses imagined that Kadesh was going to fall into his hands without a battle. His army was divided ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... by. The Turks had made a desert of the surrounding country, and held many thousands of its inhabitants as prisoners in their camp. Step by step they gained upon the defenders. By the end of August they possessed the moat around the city walls. On the 4th of September a mine was sprung under the Burg bastion, with such force that it shook half the city like an earthquake. The bastion was rent and shattered for a width of more than thirty ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... a moat fervent embrace. A voice in the distance was heard saying, 'Little fool. I cannot stand ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... queen presented herself at the door unexpectedly one day, this servant hastily carried the child out of the building, and set him down on the grass in the moat, intending to come and get him in a few moments. She could not do so, however, as the queen kept her constantly beside her, and prolonged her visit to ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... wondrous Boat, In which they cross a magic Moat, That's smooth as glass to row on— A Cat that brings all kinds of things; And see, the Queen has angel wings— Then ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... Chevaliers with its big fireplace. Then higher than the entrance towers is the Tour Coquesart built in the fifteenth century and having four storeys with a fireplace in each. The keep is near this, but outside the present castle and separated from it by a moat. The earliest parts of the castle all belong to the eleventh century, but so much destruction was wrought by Henry V. in 1417 that the greater part of the ruins belong to a few years after that date. ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... then rose and joining together approached the castle that very night. Having felled giant trees they threw a bridge over the moat, cast firebrands into the interior, and stormed into the castle-yard through gaps in the ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... and a moat, or rather a deep dry ditch, ought to have memories of fighting, and Farnham Castle has seen some sharp skirmishing. It has the distinction of having been twice held by a poet, once for the Parliament and once for the ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... 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 offer any ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... browse around at ease among the ruins, and smoke and daydream. Unfortunately, certain parts were inaccessible. The donjon was still shut off, on the Tiffauges side, by a vast moat, at the bottom of which mighty trees were growing. One would have had to pass over the tops of the trees, growing to the very verge of the wall, to gain a porch on the other side, for there was ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... rivers that abound in this part of England, or casting nets in the fish ponds which were in the midst of the abbey gardens. Or you might chance to see a castle with round turrets and high battlements, circled by strong walls, and protected by a moat ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... saw the way and the way's price—marvelled that any could have survived to that stiff, towering redoubt, with its moat of trenches and the trenches ringing its sides; and marvelled most of all that any should have scaled its top, though for a moment only. These trenches held abundant dead, Turks and our own. On the reverse ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... of Americans whose delight is to travel thousands of miles, at great expense, only to glance at antiquities not more interesting, in the possession of others, and who would fain transport Shakespeare's house bodily to American soil. The moat surrounding the Walled City is already being filled up, but posterity will be grateful for the preservation of those ancient bulwarks—landmarks of a decadent but once glorious civilization. Most of the Spanish feast-days have been ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... 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 with ornament, and ...
— The Bronze Age in Ireland • George Coffey
... 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 trust is in God. You do well ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... some gunboats with rockets were directed to try their powers; at last flames burst forth from several parts of the works, and at one o'clock the magazine in the principal fort exploding cast destruction around. The batteries having been now silenced, the squadron stood closer in and destroyed moat of the vessels which had taken shelter behind the mole. Soon after the fleet retired from before Odessa, the Tiger, which had been stationed off the coast, ran on shore. While attempts were being made to get her off the Russians brought down a field ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... always building? That's why some people say it hasn't any intelligence at all. They won't even allow that it can build. They think its architectural talent is all a delusion and a sham; because it builds in season and out of season. Keep it in your study, and it will make a moat round the hearthrug with tobacco pouches and manuscripts and boots—whatever it can lay its hands on. It will even take the ideas out of a man's head, if it can't find anything better. Is there any logic in an animal that can do that?" And if Flossie did not understand the drift ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... draper at Holloway, had built himself a moated grange. The moat was supplied from the water-works under special arrangement, and all the electric lights were imitation candles. He had done the thing thoroughly. He had even designed a haunted chamber in blue, and a miniature ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... the figure, with a most mournful wail, passed in a blue flame over the moat of the castle, and the man fell sick, and died ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... portcullis, nor moat, nor drawbridge to her feudal stronghold at Corellia, but there was big, white Argo. Argo alone would pin ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... after half an hour's run he arrived at the entrance of a building, whose aspect proclaimed it to be the abode of a Saxon franklin of some importance. It would not be called a castle, but was rather a fortified house, with a few windows looking without, and surrounded by a moat crossed by a drawbridge, and capable of sustaining anything short of a real attack. Erstwood had but lately passed into Norman hands, and was indeed at present owned by a Saxon. Sir William de Lance, the father ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... pined, I said his mighty heart declined, He loathed and put away his food; It was not that 'twas coarse and rude, For we were used to hunter's fare, 130 And for the like had little care: The milk drawn from the mountain goat Was changed for water from the moat, Our bread was such as captives' tears Have moistened many a thousand years, Since man first pent his fellow men Like brutes within an iron den; But what were these to us or him? These wasted not his heart or limb; My brother's soul was ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... attenuated proportions with which we are familiar to-day, stretching from Whitchurch, on the Cheshire border, to Aberystwyth, on the shores of Cardigan Bay, with its two chief subsidiary "sections," one (including some half dozen miles of the original track) from Moat Lane Junction to Brecon, and another from Dovey Junction to Pwllheli; shorter branches or connecting lines from Ellesmere to Wrexham, Oswestry to Llangynog, Llanymynech to Llanfyllin, Abermule to Kerry, Cemmes Road to Dinas Mawddwy, Barmouth Junction ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... the receipt, took his papers, and went out in dead silence. He followed Enrico to the massive gate; and, without a word of farewell, descended to the water's edge, where a ferryman was waiting to take him across the moat. As he mounted the stone steps leading to the street, a girl in a cotton dress and straw hat ran up to him ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... and sniffed quite like a dog. 'I must look into this,' said she, and disguising herself as a toad, she crept unseen into the pipe by which the copper emptied itself into the palace moat—for of course there was a copper in one of the palace cellars as there always is in cellars in the ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... the cluster of adobe houses and frame shacks that made up the town. The fort proper consisted of a mud wall about three feet high, inclosing perhaps half an acre of bare clayey soil. Outside the wall was a moat, upward of a foot deep, and inside was a barrack. This barrack—I avoid using the plural purposely—was a wooden shanty that had been whitewashed once, but had practically recovered from it since; and its walls were pierced—for artillery-fire, no doubt—with two windows, to the ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... by, and then the sound of a splash and splutter reached us as we disappeared in the darkness. On the morrow we learned that the spirits of Hassan and Hussein were seen skimming the earth in their flight toward the Holy City. We reached the bridge, and crossed the moat, but the gates were closed. We knocked and pounded, but a hollow echo was our only response. At last the light of a lantern illumined the crevices in the weather-beaten doors, and a weird-looking face appeared through the midway opening. "Who's there?" said a voice, ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... invasion—such malodorous 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 insecticide ... "mort ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... remainder of the day is marked by a series of violent assaults with brief intervals of repose. In rapid succession the south-easter brings up its battalions and hurls them on the mountain. It leaps over the moat and ramparts of the "castle" with fury, roars down the cannons' throats, shrieks out at the touch-holes, and lashes about the town right and left, assaulting and violating, for the south-easter respects neither person ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... idleness, the traditions, the mannerisms, the stately ennui; the yearning of love, like a spinal marrow, inside of all; the costumes brocade and satin; the old houses and furniture—solid oak, no mere veneering—the moldy secrets everywhere; the verdure, the ivy on the walls, the moat, the English landscape outside, the buzzing fly in the sun inside the window pane. Never one democratic page; nay, not a line, not a word; never free and naive poetry, but involved, labored, quite sophisticated—even ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... raised high in air, And balconies hanging here and there, And signal lanterns and flags afloat, And eight round towers, like those that frown From some old castle, looking down Upon the drawbridge and the moat. And he said with a smile, "Our ship, I wis, Shall be of another form than this!" It was of another form, indeed; Built for freight, and yet for speed, A beautiful and gallant craft; Broad in the beam, that the ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... latter; why is not explained at the moment; nor, indeed, till the next scene, when it is quite apparent; for if one sees an impregnable castle, rigidly guarded by supernumeraries, with an impassable river, bristling with chevaux-de-frise it is impossible to get over, and a moat that it would be death to cross, a prison-escape may be surely calculated upon. In the present instance, this formulary is not omitted, for Wilhelm jumps into the river from a bridge which he has contrived to reach. Though several shots are fired into the tank of water ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... voice of doves, smiting upon their breasts." Now, we have already seen that at the northwest angle of Nineveh there was a sluice or floodgate, intended mainly to keep the water of the Khosrsu, which ordinarily filled the city moat, from flowing off too rapidly into the Tigris, but probably intended also to keep back the water of the Tigris, when that stream rose above its common level. A sudden and great rise of the Tigris would ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... works, in neither instance exceeding two volumes duodecimo. They have the merit of exhibiting, in a simple, perspicuous form, those events, which, lying on the surface, may be found more or less expanded in moat general histories. ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... When we first got to know him (it was over some baked potatoes, and is quite another story) we called him Albert-next-door's-Uncle, and then Albert's uncle for short. But Albert's uncle and my father joined in taking a jolly house in the country, called the Moat House, and we stayed there for our summer holidays; and it was there, through an accident to a pilgrim with peas in his shoes—that's another story too—that we found Albert's uncle's long-lost love; ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... born in the old place where my father, and his father, and all his predecessors had been born, beyond the memory of man. It is a very old house, and the greater part of it was originally a castle, strongly fortified, and surrounded by a deep moat supplied with abundant water from the hills by a hidden aqueduct. Many of the fortifications have been destroyed, and the moat has been filled up. The water from the aqueduct supplies great fountains, and runs down into huge oblong basins in the terraced gardens, one below the other, ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... town had been destroyed, there began to be a certain severe dignity rising up with the building of the forts and the castle by Robert D'Oily, who came over with King William. The fine and massive tower, with a swiftly flowing branch of the Isis at its very feet, forming a natural moat, still stands as the single relic of D'Oily's castle, and the first in point of age of the existing charms of Oxford. Standing, as it does, inextricably mixed up with breweries and the county jail, it must feel itself in a forlorn position, and slighted by those who give it ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... the steep, solid, fortification-like rocks, rising from the rugged ravines, Kedron, Siloam, Jehoshaphat, Gehenna, that form, as it were, a deep moat round the walls, and natural defences, bulwarks planted by the Lord's own hand around His own City, while He was still her Tower of Salvation, and had not left her to the spoiler. There stood the double walls, the low-built, flat-roofed, windowless houses, like so many ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the rampart and, never stopping to gauge its height, sprang down into the moat, landing upon his feet in the bottom of the dry ditch. Faster still, he flew to the second rampart and scaled it as he had done the first, clambering up by means of projecting ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... that Scarthwaite Hall had been built in those days of foray, for one little, ruined, half-round tower rose from the brink of a ravine whose sides the hardiest of moss-troopers could scarcely have climbed. A partly filled-in moat led past the other, and in between stretched the curtain wall which now formed the facade of the house itself. Its arrow slits had been enlarged subsequently into narrow, stone-ribbed windows, and a new entrance made, while the ancient courtyard ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... 30 feet high overshadow the moat of the castle, and aloes plants as luxuriant as those of Andalusia, shoot up their stems crowned with flowers along the shores of the bay, and by the sides of the roads, whose windings are lost amongst the gardens ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... taken on a wonderful flavor and I now know how dissolved German tastes. The cook, instead of sending back two miles for water to cook with, has been using water from the moat in which a Boche had been ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... was somewhat embarrassed at first meeting me—for she could not forget our last interview; but she gradually got over it, and, as the evening wore on, she became her old, lively, laughing, original self. O'Halloran, too, was in his best and moat genial mood, and, as I caught at times the solemn glance of the dark eye's of Marion, I found not a cloud upon the sky that overhung our festivities. Marion, too, had more to say than usual. She was no longer so self-absorbed, and so abstracted, ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... domains, he was on good terms with Philippe le Bon, who granted him 3000 gold florins a month, and the castle of Genappe as a residence. This castle was situated on the Dyle, midway between Brussels and Louvain, and about eight miles from either city. The river, or a deep moat, surrounded the castle on every side. There was a drawbridge which was drawn up at night, so Louis felt himself ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... 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 when the lumbersome ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... considerable distance along the coast. The principal remains consist of a massive wall, flanked with pyramidal bastions at regular intervals, and with the traces of gateways, draw-bridges and towers. It was formerly surrounded by a deep moat. Within this space, which may be a quarter of a mile square, are a few fragments of buildings, and toward the sea, some high arches and masses of masonry. The plain around abounds with traces of houses, streets, and court-yards. Caesarea was one of the Roman ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... or other wild animals. The height, however, of the palisade was such that even a lion or leopard would have found it difficult to leap over. Within it could be penned also a considerable number of cattle and horses and sheep. The front was, however, left open, a drawbridge only crossing the moat; but materials for filling up the gap were kept stored on either side, so that in a few hours the whole circle could be completed. The planks were of such a thickness, that neither assegais nor bullets could pierce them, and certainly no force ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... daily dust Of moving men, I move a moat Within the sunbeam where we float, With mutual ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... springs, and forming little cascades where their course was checked by granite boulders, lent an additional charm. Towards the centre of the forest these streams united to form a lake, or rather a natural moat, surrounding an island in the midst of which stood a gigantic oak. This was the only tree on the island; round it, at even distances, were placed twelve stones, beyond which a meadow glittering with varied hues extended ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... church, ruins of 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, ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... not now as when, of yore, In Tower encircled by a moat, The lion-hearted chieftain wore A corselet ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... which we now conceive to belong to real objects are for the moat part images of sight and touch. One of the first classes of effects to be treated as secondary were naturally pleasures and pains, since it could commonly conduce very little to intelligent and successful action to conceive our pleasures and pains as resident in objects. But emotions ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... wonder upon the decay of glories that once dazzled all Europe. Here the earl of Leicester entertained his virgin queen hoping to marry her. As Elizabeth crossed the draw-bridge a song in her praise was sung by a Lady of the Lake on an island floating in the moat. Story writers have never tired of telling of the magnificence of these entertainments that cost the ambitious earl $20,000 ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... its wonderful record of triumphant industry and its associations with many great events in history. Henry III, recognizing the important strategical position of the town in 1260, granted a charter to the townsfolk empowering them to fortify the place with a wall and a moat, but more than a century elapsed before the fortifications were completed. This was partly owing to the Black Death, which left few men in Yarmouth to carry on the work. The walls were built of cut flint and Caen stone, and ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... the Witwatersranden stretches a long valley called the Moat. In the centre runs a gray ridge or rand, parallel to the mountains, and rising into kopjes to the east, near Hekpoort. Thither our commando moved a few days later to meet the enemy, who were approaching from Commandonek, most probably with revengeful ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... blood, was not likely to exist much longer by dragging him towards their employer, and that delay might even lose them his dead body, they mounted him, and redoubled their speed. When they came to the moat, they compelled him to leap his horse across it. In the attempt the horse fell and broke its leg. They then ordered his majesty, fainting as he was, to mount another and spur it over. The conspirators had no sooner passed the ditch, and saw their king fall insensible ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... heir of the family, I should say—we have just been having a highly interesting and informative chat. Comrade Maloney, who has just left us, acted as interpreter. The father, I am told, is in the dungeon below the castle moat for a brief spell for punching his foreman in the eye. The result? ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... distance along by the river, and here there is a broad promenade, with trees, and blocks of stone for seats; on one side "the arrowy Rhone," generally carrying a cooling breeze along with it; on the other, the gray wall, with its battlements and machicolations, impending over what was once the moat, but which is now full of careless and untrained shrubbery. At intervals there are round towers swelling out from the wall, and rising a little above it. After about half a mile along the river-side the wall turns at nearly right angles, and still there is a wide road, a ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... earliest period of which there is any record. The explanation is simple. The name of the borough supplies the clue. Southwark is really the south-work of London, that is, the southern defence or fortification of the city. The Thames is here a moat of spacious breadth and formidable depth, yet the Romans did not trust to that defence alone, but threw up further obstacles for any enemy approaching the city from the south. It was from that direction assault was most likely to come. From the ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... Hunting parties invaded the woods. Scorpions were unnested, and bats and owls made unhappy by daylight where daylight had never been before. Convents and monasteries were not exempt. The sea was dragged, and the great moat from the Golden Gate to the Cynegion raked for traces of a new-made grave. Nor less were the cemeteries overhauled, and tombs and sarcophagi opened, and Saints' Rests dug into and profaned. In short, but one property in Byzantium was respected—that of the Emperor. By noon the excitement had ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... polished helms and corselets, giving them a most spectre like and supernatural appearance. They stood directly before the arched barbacan, which formed the entrance to the court, and appeared waiting for the warder, to lower the drawbridge over the moat, for their exit. Without expressing any astonishment at the strange scene thus presented to him, Conrad D'Amboise glided from his post, and favored by the shadows of the frowning battlements, ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... board the Susquehanna. Officers and sailors forgot the terrible danger they had just been in—the danger of being crushed and sunk. They only thought of the catastrophe which terminated the journey. Thus, therefore, the moat audacious enterprise of ancient and modern times lost the life of the bold adventurers who ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... one man in England that might do such a deed." "The postern gate shakes," continued Rebecca; "it crashes—it is splintered by his powerful blows—they rush in—the outwork is won! O God! they hurry the defenders from the battlements—they throw them into the moat! O men, if ye be indeed men, spare them that can resist no longer!" "The bridge—the bridge which communicates with the castle—have they won that pass?" exclaimed Ivanhoe. "No," replied Rebecca; "the Templar has destroyed ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... hard, a principle that played up like a fine steel spring at the lightest pressure of too near a footfall. Thus insuperably guarded was the truth about the girl's own conception of her validity; thus was a wondering pitying sister condemned wistfully to look at her from the far side of the moat she had dug round her tower. Certain aspects of the connexion of these young women show for us, such is the twilight that gathers about them, in the likeness of some dim scene in a Maeterlinck play; we have ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... 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 ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... young men, so that they spoke very freely to one another at all times, and most of all when they had drunk their wine and sat together in the evening in Prince Rudolf's chamber that looked across the moat toward the gardens; for the new chateau that now stands on the site of these gardens was not then built. And one night Monsieur de Merosailles made bold to ask the prince how it fell out that his sister the princess, a lady of such ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... conspirator very little is known apart from the plot. His residence was at Norbrook, a few miles south of Warwick,—a walled and moated house, of which nothing remains save a few fragments of massive stone walls, and the line of the moat may be distinctly traced, while "an ancient hall, of large dimensions, is also apparent among the partitions of a modern farmer's kitchen." Before May, 1602, he married Dorothy Winter, the sister of two of the conspirators. He had been active in the Essex insurrection, for which ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... a great omission in my narrative; but come, this will explain it; see here"—so saying, he drew from a little drawer a large lithographic print of a magnificent castellated building, with towers and bastions, keep, moat, and even draw-bridge, and the walls bristled with cannon, and an eagled banner floated proudly ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... and Flemish men-at-arms, who were already engaged in carrying away the dead and wounded, he rode up to within a short distance of the wall, then the pursuivant and trumpeter advanced to the edge of the moat, and the ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... this exploit an entrance 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
... 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 ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... without the poetic spirit which now breathes about the names of many of its most prominent objects, for the ground bears all the traces of having been the residence of some famous people in early days. "The deep sunk moat, the stony mound," are visible in places where modern taste would shrink at erecting a temporary cottage, much less a castellated mansion; fragments of Roman brick are readily found on ridges which still hint the unrecorded history of a far distant period, and ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... River (1770), Washington says of it: "The fort is built on the point between the rivers Alleghany and Monongahela, but not so near the pitch of it as Fort Duquesne stood. It is five-sided and regular, two of which next the land are of brick; the others stockade. A moat encompasses it." Fort Pitt was invested by the Indians during Pontiac's War (1763). It was fully garrisoned until 1772, when a corporal and a few men were left as care-takers. In October of that year, the property was sold, and several ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... on Isle St Joseph was in the nature of a strong fort. Its walls were of stone and cement, fourteen feet high and loopholed. At each corner there was a protecting bastion, and the entire structure was surrounded by a deep moat. It was practically impregnable against Indian attack, for it could not be undermined, set on fire, or taken by assault. A handful of men could hold it against ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... lay with a 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
... daybreak, I reached Roche-Mauprat. I waited in a moat until the gates were opened, and then slipped up to my room without being seen by anybody. As it was not altogether an unfailing tenderness that watched over me at Roche-Mauprat, my absence had not been noticed during the night. Meeting my Uncle John on the stairs, I led him to believe ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... the more sedate citizens and been the means of bringing about a general exodus: men in disguise and provided with forged papers of Alsatian citizenship made their escape by way of Saint-Denis; others let themselves down into the moat in the darkness of the night with ropes and ladders. The wealthy had long since taken their departure. None of the factories and workshops had opened their doors; trade and commerce there was none; there ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... 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 happier lands, This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England. King Richard II, Act ii, sc. 1, l. 40-46. "Histories", p. ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... that live in the moat of the Chateau de Miramel (in the zone of the armies in France) are of an age and ugliness incredible and of a superlative cynicism. One of them—local tradition pointed to a one-eyed old reprobate with a yellow face—is the richer these hundred years ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... exclamation, but alas! before he could get inside the garden, there was a deep moat to cross. He walked along the edge, hoping to come to a bridge; but found none. Still the brave, determined boy was not in the least discouraged, but said aloud, "I won't stir from this place until I find some way ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... a stately house stood in Kittery, Maine, a strongly guarded place with moat and drawbridge (which was raised at night) and a moated grange adjacent where were cattle, sheep, and horses. Here, in lonely dignity, lived Lady Ursula, daughter of the lord of Grondale Abbey, across the water, whose distant grandeurs were in some sort reflected in this ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... of a lofty submarine mountain, protected by a great wall of coral-rock, always steep externally and sometimes internally, with a broad level summit, here and there breached by a narrow gateway, through which the largest ships can enter the wide and deep encircling moat. ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... made their assault, and carried the outworks one by one. Then the castle of Chapultepec was stormed. First the outer works were scaled, which made them much more desirable, and the moat was removed by means of a stomach-pump and blotting-pad, and then the escarpment was up-ended, the Don John tower was knocked silly by a solid shot, ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... sitting above London as above a green sea of slate. 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 ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... south-west coast of the island. It has a population of almost 127,000, which has been increased at the expense of Galle, as we generally call it to economize our breath. It is located on a peninsula, with the sea on three sides of it, with a lake and moat on the land side. By the way, Mr. Woolridge, do you happen to remember the Italian name of Christopher Columbus, whose discovery of America you are to ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... lovely. The old house is a great curiosity. It was built in the reign of Henry the Eighth, and has passed through many vicissitudes. The place, as well as the edifice, is a study for the antiquarian. Remains of the old moat which surrounded it are still distinguishable. The twisted and variously figured chimneys are of singular variety and exceptional forms. Compton Wynyate is thought to get its name from the vineyards formerly under cultivation ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... worse the longer it stands, and the diseased parts burnt. If Agaricus melleus is the destroying agent, a similar procedure is necessary; but regard must be had to the much more extensive wanderings of the rhizomorphs in the soil, and it may be imperative to cut the moat round more of the neighboring trees. Nevertheless, it has also to be remembered that the rhizomorphs run not far below the surface. However, my purpose here is not to treat this subject in detail, but to indicate the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... the Grange. Helen will await me there. But why do you call it 'moated'? We do not boast a moat." ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... moat were overgrown with furze and brambles, and we stole into this cover as they approached. The foremost bore the light, was armed at all points, and mounted on a fresh horse. I started with exultation where I lay—he was her father. His companion's black breeches and canting seat proclaimed a priest. ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... ago, a certain Mr. St. John Deloraine. He held the sacrosanct position of a squarson, being at once Squire and Parson of the parish of Little Wentley. At the head of the quaint old village street stands, mirrored in a moat, girdled by beautiful gardens, and shadowy with trees, the Manor House and Parsonage (for it is both ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... with flanking red-tiled turrets, whose gaudy appearance had last night 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 them, as thought they grinned at ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... ruins from the road is by upwards of a hundred rough hardwood steps, and the castle must have been a well-nigh impregnable stronghold in former times, protected as it was on three sides by the water of the loch and by a moat on the fourth, the position of the drawbridge being still ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... as Torksey's lord Attends that bannered host; But the lover is deaf to the omen-bird— The fatal moat is crossed! ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... and Juggut Khan moved in the van, with two men to hold the fakir. Next marched, or rather tiptoed, Sergeant Brown, followed by the other men in single file. In that order they hastened after Juggut Khan, through the darkness, across a dried-out moat and round the corner of a huge stone buttress. There they disappeared inside the wall, and a stone swung round and closed the gap behind the last of them. There was no alarm given, and not a sign or a sound ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... desolation which spread over and around it: fragments of stone, above which clomb the rank weed, insolently proclaiming the triumph of Nature's meanest offspring over the wrecks of art; a moat dried up; a railing once of massive gilding, intended to fence a lofty terrace on the right from the incursions of the deer, but which, shattered and decayed, now seemed to ask ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... London, for ages protected on the north by a vast forest, full of deer and wild boars, and which, even as late as the reign of Henry II., covered a great region, and has now shrunk into the not very wild districts of St. John's Wood and Caen Wood. On the north the town found a natural moat in the broad fens of Moorfields, Finsbury, and Houndsditch, while on the south ran the Fleet and the Old Bourne. Indeed, according to that credulous old enthusiast Stukeley, Caesar, marching from Staines to London, encamped on the site of Old St. Pancras Church, round ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Island of Cape Breton which commanded the mouth of the St. Lawrence. This fortress was called Louisburg in honour of King Louis, and it was the strongest and best fortified in the whole of New France. The walls were solid and high, and bristled with more than a hundred cannon. The moat was both wide and deep. Indeed the French believe that this fort was so strong that no power ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... 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 happier lands; This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, Fear'd by their breed, and famous by their birth, Renowned for their ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... are still celebrated for their ingenuity in making toys, lace, cloth, silk, satin, velvet, and other useful articles. They are also famous for the culture of flowers, in which they excel even the Dutch. Every house has a garden attached, which is frequently surrounded by a moat. The country is small, but every part of the land is made fertile by the industry of the farmers, of whom there are a great number; many of them grow flax, which is woven into linen by the women. There is a weekly ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous
... the second enclosure, he said, there ran another fosse, and a third, both of the same unusual dimensions, was led between the second and the innermost inclosure. The verge, both of the outer and inner circuit of this triple moat was strongly fenced with palisades of iron, serving the purpose of what are called chevaux de frise in modern fortification, the top of each pale being divided into a cluster of sharp spikes, which seemed to render any attempt to climb over an ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... 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; but ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... castle with its gardens stood on a small island that was surrounded by a moat twenty feet wide and thirty feet deep, having very steep sides. And this moat was spanned by a drawbridge. This, without a moment's delay, Jack ordered should be sawn on both sides at the middle, so as to ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... A little daunted by this all-enveloping stillness, I skirted the terraces and approached the house on the eastern side. Here I found an old-world drawbridge—now naturally in disuse—spanning a ditch fed from the main river for the erstwhile purposes of a moat. I crossed the bridge, and entered an imposing courtyard. Within this quadrangle the same silence dwelt, and there was the same obscurity in the windows that overlooked it. I paused, at a loss how to ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... Freeman at Wells. The whole life of that charming cathedral town and its neighborhood was delightful. Freeman's kindness opened all doors to us. The bishop, Lord Arthur Hervey, showed us kindly hospitality at his grand old castle, which we had entered by a drawbridge over the moat. Of especial interest to me was a portrait of one of his predecessors—dear old Bishop Ken, whose morning and evening hymns are among the most beautiful ties between England and the United States. In the evening, dining with the magistrates and lawyers, I ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... of Kent and Princess Victoria paid a visit to the Duke of Wellington at Walmer Castle—the old tower with fruit-trees growing in the dry moat, and a slip from the weeping-willow which hung over the grave in St. Helena flourishing in its garden, where the Warden of the Cinque Ports could look across the roadstead of the Downs and count the ships' masts like trees in a forest, and watch the waves ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... would suffer from a flood. No one could make him think otherwise; he said he was willing to die for the common good. This is how he was cured: a message was sent to him, supposedly from the commandant, saying that the town was threatened with a siege and there was no water in the moat, and asking him to fill it to keep the enemy out. The patient was delighted to be able to save both his fatherland and himself; so he got rid of his water and of his ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... and we're quite half-way round. No signs either of another opening in the reef. Fine island to annex, Sir John. It's a regular fortification, a natural stronghold with an impregnable wall round it, and a full mile-wide moat inside. A fort at the point commanding the entrance ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... 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
... upon it by a winding ledge of road, which clung to the bare side of the hill like the battlements of some huge castle. Some two hundred feet below, a brawling upland stream stood for the moat, and for the enemy there was on the opposite side of the valley a great green company of trees, settled like a cloud slope upon slope, making all haste to cross the river and ascend the heights where I stood. Some intrepid larches waved green pennons in the very midst of the turbulent ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... while the maiden, suspecting what was coming and pretending to be abashed, ran behind her mother, said he, "To end the foolery, what say you, son of the snail, to marrying my daughter? She is well brought up, and is the moat industrious girl in the village. She will flap more wall with her tail in a day than any maiden in the nation; she will gnaw down a larger tree betwixt the rising of the sun and the coming of the shadows than many a smart beaver of the other sex. As for her wit, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... accommodating eight hundred men. It mounted thirty guns. After it fell into the hands of the English it was great improved. A stone magazine (a part of which is still standing) was built outside the southern embankment. The moat was excavated to a much greater depth. Of late years the place has been shamefully neglected. On account of its historic associations many yearly visit the "Old Fort," and efforts have been made to enclose the grounds and make them ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman |
