"Morass" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... essential holiness of his nature it is impossible he should not have given, man deprived himself of the ability to obey. And was the law of God therefore to be annulled? Must the sun cease to shine because the earth has become a morass, so that even that very glory of the sun hath become a new cause of its steaming up clouds and vapors that strangle the rays? God forbid! 'But for the law I had not sinned'. But had I not been sinful the law would ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... there a more capricious trail than the one they set themselves to follow. It skirted the edge of a little morass where the young flags were coming up; it followed the windings of a brook where the wild forget-me-not threw up its little azure buds; it crossed the stream a dozen times by means of shaking bridges, or fallen trees; it had magnificent gateways between twin oaks—gateways ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... November the Euxine winter began with a storm which swept away the tents on the exposed plateau, and wrecked twenty-one vessels bearing stores of ammunition and clothing. From this time rain and snow turned the tract between the camp and Balaclava into a morass. The loss of the paved road which had been captured by the Russians three weeks before now told with fatal effect on the British army. The only communication with the port of Balaclava was by a hillside track, which soon became impassable by carts. It was necessary to bring ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... was adorned for the sacrifice, and the garlands, according to the accustomed usage, were bound upon his temples. He contrived, however, he said, at the last moment, to make his escape. He broke the bands with which he had been bound, and fled into a morass near the shore, where he remained concealed in inaccessible thickets until the Greeks had sailed away. He then came forth and was at length seized and bound by the shepherds of the mountains, who found him ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... them and the attacking troops, as an additional protection, they had the river, now swollen to many times its usual dimensions by the recent rains, which had also made the ground on either bank little better than a morass. Also, what fords there were had been rendered impassable by the floods, and it was only after prolonged and searching examination, which had always to be undertaken at night and by swimming the river many times, that fairly suitable places were marked out as crossings. One ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... the Athens of Pericles. The revolution of 1848 called from the mud the sewermen. Flaubert, his face to the past, gazed sorrowfully at Carthage and wrote an epic of the French bourgeois. Zola and his crowd delved into a moral morass, and the world grew weary of them. And then the faint, fading flowers of romanticism were put into albums where their purple harmonies and subtle sayings are pressed into sweet twilight forgetfulness. ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... arrow, or of spinning flax. Other stories of Hercules are perhaps of later date, and appear to be allegorical, as his conquering the river- god Achilous, and bringing Cerberus up to day light; the former might refer to his turning the course of a river, and draining a morass, and the latter to his exposing a part of the superstition of the times. The strangling the lion and tearing his jaws asunder, are described from a statue in the Museum Florentinum, and from an antique gem; and the grasping Anteus to death in his arms as ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... almost thick here, the ground like a morass, with inches of clayey mud, which stuck to everything, whilst the sparse lanterns, hung to the prison walls and beneath the portico, threw practically ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... time at the farm. It still lay deserted except for the figure of Dandie, who was now seen to be scribbling in his lap, the hour of expected inspiration having come to him at last. Thence she passed rapidly through the morass, and came to the farther end of it, where a sluggish burn discharges, and the path for Hermiston accompanies it on the beginning of its downward path. From this corner a wide view was opened to her of the whole stretch of braes upon the other side, still sallow and in places rusty ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... name of a rocky bluff that stands on the side of Mount Wai-ale-ale, looking to Wailua. It as said to divide the flow from the great morass, the natural reservoir formed by the hollow at the top of the mountain, turning a part of it in the direction of Wai-niha, a valley not far from Hanalei, which otherwise would, it is said by Hawaiians, go to swell the stream ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... disappointment written upon the faces of many of her fellow-students, who had sought in vain a great awakening light in those sacred precincts of learning, but, their confidence betrayed, were now floundering in the devouring morass of materialism. To her keen insight the University stood revealed as the great panderer to this latest century's obsessing idea that the true function of education is expressed in the imparting of changing, human information and a training for the business of earning one's daily bread ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... as at other points, and where it was possible for it to be forded. Ginckle had found a peasant, who, for a large sum of money, disclosed the passage. It traversed the bog at its narrowest point, the hill of Kilcomeden here running out a shoulder far into it. Four regiments entered the morass, with orders to cross it, and make their way to the nearest hedges on the sloping ground, where they were to post themselves till the cavalry, who were to attempt the passage by Aughrim Castle, could come round to ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... I would take care of you," I exclaimed quickly, and putting my arms about her I raised her and carried her safely over the spot where a hundred springs trickled up to the surface and made a morass of the luxuriant grass. I did not set her down at once. For weeks now, sleeping and waking, I had been haunted by a fierce longing to hold her to my heart as I held her now, and it was not so easy to put by so great a joy. When ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... river, we came to King's river, a large salt arm of Oyster Harbour, here my friend Wylie, who insisted upon it that he knew the proper crossing place, took me into a large swampy morass, and in endeavouring to take the horses through, three of them got bogged and were nearly lost, and both myself and Wylie were detained in the water and mud for a couple of hours, endeavouring to extricate them. At ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... serpent, with his mate, Shall 'scape to save his kind to be prolonged, To hiss and sting through some emerging world, 40 Reeking and dank from out the slime, whose ooze Shall slumber o'er the wreck of this, until The salt morass subside into a sphere Beneath the sun, and be the monument, The sole and undistinguished sepulchre, Of yet quick myriads of all life? How much Breath will be stilled at once! All beauteous world! ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... assurances that he was glorying in the discovery; he told himself that he was not made of the human stuff that can forgive bitter wrongs or forget them until cancelled. He painted in lurid colours his past griefs; through a ghastly morass of revenge grown stale, of memories deadened by time, he tried to struggle back to his original starting-point in vanished years, and feel as he felt when he flung Will Blanchard over ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... Millions of English money had been expended in the struggle. English blood had flowed at the Boyne and at Athlone, at Aghrim and at Limerick. The graves of thousands of English soldiers had been dug in the pestilential morass of Dundalk. It was owing to the exertions and sacrifices of the English people that, from the basaltic pillars of Ulster to the lakes of Kerry, the Saxon settlers were trampling on the children of the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in January, 1915, heavy rains put a stop temporarily to the Russian offensive southward in the direction of Neu Sandek, and at the same time to the Austrian offensive in Russian Poland. A thaw following rain converted the whole country into a vast morass. It was physically impossible for the Austrians to bring up heavy artillery, without which the Russian position along the Nida River could ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... good fortune befell the Sabines as they heedlessly pressed forward. Curtius, one of their chiefs, a man with a reputation for dashing courage, rode on horseback far before the rest. His horse plunged into this morass, and he, after trying to extricate him, at last finding it impossible, left him there and saved himself. This place, in memory of him, is still called the Gulf of Curtius. Warned of their danger, the Sabines fought a stout and indecisive battle, in which many fell, amongst them Hostilius. ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... great morass, shot every side With flashing water through and through; a-shine, Thick-steaming, all-alive. Whose shape divine Quivered i' the farthest rainbow-vapour, glanced Athwart the flying herons? He advanced, But warily; though Mincio leaped no more, Each footfall ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... passed and the street was opened. A canal was first dug through the marsh, the small one which passed so close to Jean Poquelin's house was filled, and the street, or rather a sunny road, just touched a corner of the old mansion's dooryard. The morass ran dry. Its venomous denizens slipped away through the bulrushes; the cattle roaming freely upon its hardened surface trampled the superabundant undergrowth. The bellowing frogs croaked to westward. Lilies and ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... honorable, spiritual in the peasant working masses in explaining our plan." And the plan that he referred to was not the grandiose (but obviously sensible) plan for the eventual electrification of all Russia, but a programme of the struggle before them in actually getting their feet clear of the morass of industrial decay in which they are at present involved. Such a programme has actually been decided upon-a programme the definite object of which is to reconcile the workers to work not simply hand to mouth, each for himself, but ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... when there was a sudden shout. At the moment that Osgod was making a long step from one tuft to another the boy stooped and caught his foot, and with a roar of surprise and fury Osgod fell head-foremost into the morass. At the same moment the lad darted away with a yell of defiance, leaping from tuft to tuft with the agility of a hare. Several of the men started after him, but unaccustomed to the treacherous bog four or five were immersed ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... deal of the windy moralizing of the pulpit. All of these German naturalists—and they are the only German novelists worth considering—share the weakness of Zola, their Stammvater. They, too, fall into the morass that engulfed "Fecondite," and make ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... south-west for about three miles, through a very tortuous channel, dry in many parts at low-water, thickly studded with mangrove bushes, over and through which the tide made its way at high-water, giving to that part of the country the appearance of an extensive morass. A slightly elevated table-topped range of land was seen from time to time, some eight or nine miles to the south-east, but in its highest elevation did not reach 200 feet. The apparent width of the inlet in no way diminished so far as the exploring party examined it; and this fact, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... the gloomiest and bitterest bigots that heard him, huddled in some deep morass and encircled by the cold mist, testified that Henry Pollock was greatest when he declared the evangel of Jesus, and besought his hearers, who might before nightfall be sent by a bloody death into eternity, ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... first across a sandy plain and through one or two small rivers, to a saw-mill, situated on the edge of an extensive forest, through which we proceeded for some miles. The road was a difficult one, and our progress was but slow, being often impeded by a morass or by the trunk of a tree which had fallen right across the path, and was now rapidly rotting into touchwood under the influence of the damp atmosphere and incessant rain. Lichens of every colour ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... into the woods, ran for some distance along the edge of a swamp, and leaping in up to his knees in mud and water, doubled on his track, then turned again, and penetrating farther and farther into the depths of the morass, finally climbed a tree, groaning with the pain the effort cost him, and concealed ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... crowned along its ridge with numerous stunted trees. Trusting thus to obtain a firmer foothold and more extended view, I breasted the steep ascent and found the summit a narrow plateau, only a few yards in width, with a still more extensive morass upon the opposite side, which stretched away some distance in a desolate sea of cane and drooping grass. Fortunately it proved easy travelling along the ridge, which appeared of stone formation, probably having ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... will, because you are looked upon as a man without spot or blemish; your home is regarded as a model home, and your conduct as a model of conduct. But all this grandeur, and you with it, is founded on a treacherous morass. A moment may come and a word may be spoken, when you and all your grandeur will be engulfed in the morass, if you do not save ...
— Pillars of Society • Henrik Ibsen
... deal of shouting and whipping to get the poor brutes to take to this treacherous morass, but one after the other they were driven in, until at length the whole dozen of the pack-train were distributed, half-submerged, over the hundred yards of the mucky trail. Uncle Dick, not stopping to think of ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... with her comic-opera coronets and her worm-eaten stage decorations, and her pomp and chivalry built on a morass ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... old trunk, and gray herons motionless on one leg, solemn flamingoes who from a distance looked like red umbrellas scattered in the foliage, and phenicopters of every color, enlivened the temporary morass. ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... avoid a foe. There is, however, one species of aquatic hare, found only in the Southern United States. It is amphibious, like the musk-rat, is a most expert swimmer, and makes its nest, or "form," on the edge of the morass, where it sleeps all day, sallying forth morning and evening for a swim in search of the delicate water-plants upon which it feeds. The young ones enter the water at a very early age, and may be seen paddling about with the mother ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... or not he would succeed in getting back the same night. The road was of the usual Belgian type, with a paved causeway in the middle just capable of allowing two motors to pass, and on each side was a morass, flanked on the right by a canal and on the left by a field. The slightest deviation from the greasy cobbles landed the car in the mud, with quite a chance of a plunge into the canal. A constant stream of heavy army lorries tore along the road at thirty or more miles an hour, ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... the good knight overturned hundreds at a touch. The perils that lay in the discoverer's path, and the sufferings he had to sustain, were scarcely inferior to those that beset the knight-errant. Hunger and thirst and fatigue, the deadly effluvia of the morass with its swarms of venomous insects, the cold of mountain snows, and the scorching sun of the tropics, these were the lot of every cavalier who came to seek his fortunes in the New World. It was the reality of romance. The life of the Spanish adventurer was one ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... of hurdles and fascines being made; which, as I hear, are to be employed in one of two different plans. The first plan is, To attack the French retrenchment generally; the ditch which is before it, and the morass which lies on our left wing, to be made passable with these fascines. The other plan is, To amuse the Enemy by a false attack, and throw succor into the Town.—One thing is certain, in a few days we shall have a ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... life a million years beyond their grasp. It fascinated and disturbed Lee: it had a definite interest, a meaning, for him. Was it to this that Savina had turned? Had the world only in the adherence to the duty typified by Fanny left such a morass as he saw about him? Was he, Lee Randon, instead of advancing, falling back into a past more remote than coherent speech? Nothing, he asserted, could be further from his intention and hope. Yet, without doubt, he was surrounded by the denial of order, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Coast to Kumassi leads through heavy primeval forest. "The thick foliage of the trees, interlaced high overhead, causes a deep, dank gloom, through which the sun seldom penetrates. The path winds among the tree stems and bush, now through mud and morass, now over steep ascent or deep ravine." And, in addition to the difficulties of locomotion, there was the haunting menace of the heavy dews and mists which come at night laden ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... it, as it welled up from the earth. So hot was it that they could not endure to hold their hands in it, and in such volumes did it rise, that it overflowed its large natural basin continually, and converted a large tract of ground into a morass, while finding its way, by many rills and channels, into ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... bearing the fleets of war and peace because it is confined between banks and narrowed. But when the Rhine comes down to the flats and approaches the sea and casts off all restraints, and tries to include everything, it turns into a swamp, a morass, losing its power for commerce, and becoming a source of disease and death. Lincoln's culture was limited to the English, and to a mastery of the Constitution—the principles of fundamental justice, to one country—the Republic, to one topic—the Union, and to one reform—Slavery. ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... "I am not such a slave, after all, as to love my chains; but don't you understand that one gets into this morass, and one can keep a ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... land in the southwest corner of Lake Michigan, which, seventy years ago, was half morass from the overflowing of the sluggish creek, whose waters, during flood, spread over the low-lying, level plain, or were supplemented in the dry season by the inflow from the lake, showed no sign of any future development and prosperity. The few streets of wooden houses that had been built ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... with pistols and swords, bound the wretched man, hand and foot, threw him into the boat and rowed into the inlet. Just at the mouth of it there was a morass filled with gad-flies and other poisonous insects. Into this dreadful ditch they threw their former comrade, and then withdrew to a short distance to jeer at and mock him. In about an hour they drew him out again; ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... cheered by the knowledge that so long as the world recognizes the divine right of Kings, no monarch by descent could lay better claim to a throne than he. And he was young, and in love, and ready to believe that youth and love can level mountains, make firm the morass, bridge the ocean. ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... you—if it were not too dark to read—INFANTRY MUST NOT HALT HERE, and then a lance-corporal with a good nose for shovels looks through the more likely hiding-places. The search is rendered pleasant as well as interesting by the fact that all the Brigade has been trodden into a morass by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... Babs, and I'll bless you. If the singing of these larks means nothing, if that blue up there is a morass of our invention, if we are pettily, creeping on furthering nothing, if there's no purpose in our lives, persuade me ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... rod; In haunts of fashion where each day All with urbanity betray, Where harsh frivolity proclaims Its cold unfeeling sentences; Amid the awful emptiness Of conversation, thought and aims— In that morass where you and I ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... him engaged, with other men of enterprise, in a project to drain the great Dismal Swamp, and render it capable of cultivation. This vast morass was about thirty miles long, and ten miles wide, and its interior but little known. With his usual zeal and hardihood he explored it on horseback and on foot. In many parts it was covered with dark and gloomy ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... singular energy, his head uncovered notwithstanding the severity of the night, and the rain pouring in torrents upon him, when he found it necessary to cross a level of rough land, at all times damp and marshy, but in consequence of the rains of the season, now a perfect morass. Over this he had advanced about half a mile, and got beyond the frightful noises of the woods, when some large object rose into the air from a clump of plashy rushes before him, and shot along the blast, uttering a booming sound, ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... spent much time and labor in the attempt to make a permanent road through this morass, cutting trenches and throwing in load after load of stones and brush and earth, but all in vain, and at length he gave it up—though with great reluctance. For, not only did the teamsters avoid us, but we, ourselves, ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... may be imagined, was a Scotchman. He fled to Brittany, became Bishop of Aleth, and died in the Saintonge in 561. Ever since the tenth century a shrine had been erected to his memory outside the earliest walls of Rouen, in that morass which gives its name to the Rue Malpalu in front of the present church. Twice burnt and twice rebuilt, it became a parish church within the walls by 1250. A larger building was soon necessary; even during the miseries of the English Occupation it was determined to make the new church worthy ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... from Paul to pay himself. His boyhood friend he simply plunders. This Ernest, in reality the Graf von Trautenau, is an idealist of the type that Wedekind is fond of delineating. He would save the world from itself, rescue it from the morass of materialism, but he relapses into a pathological mysticism which ends in a sanitarium for nervous troubles. The marquis is a Mephisto; he is not without a trace of idealism; altogether a baffling nature, Faust-like, and as chock-full of humour as an egg is full of meat. ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... young woman marries a clergyman in her dream, she will be the object of much mental distress, and the wayward hand of fortune will lead her into the morass of adversity. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... their own souls a penetrating knowledge and an intense enthusiasm for the real welfare of mankind. A true history can never be born outside this region; the world, without such a conviction, can only wander out of one morass into [p.85] another; and failure after failure will be the inevitable result of all the attempts. Movements will have value and duration only in so far as they are the outcome of a need of a spiritual life which includes demands of ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... speak. "You must n't bother, really. Last night I lived with you a big, clean, thrilling experience and saw strong men doing men's work in the raw, cold, salt air—and I saw a new life. And then—" she was looking straight ahead—"then I was led into a morass where the air was heavy like the tropics, and things all strange, unreal. And why—why now the doubt which of the two I had rather believe to-night. You were too late. I bade you come to us. I am glad, I am proud that I did—for now I know the reason. ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... extricate ourselves? Who knows where the cutting may be found? Can staggering men again survive the treacherous morass? It is lighter now. We will pick our way better. But where is the cutting? Chantrill and the Captain despair. Have we missed it in, the dark? Then we are done for. Where is the "I" Co. detachment again? Lost? Here Corporal Grahek, and you, Sgt. Getzloff, ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... then returned toward my right flank, and as I reached the Nineteenth Corps the enemy was contesting the ground in its front with great obstinacy; but Emory's dogged persistence was at length rewarded with success, just as Crook's command emerged from the morass of Red Bud Run, and swept around Gordon, toward the right of Breckenridge, who, with two of Wharton's brigades, was holding a line at right angles with the Valley pike for the protection of the Confederate ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 4 • P. H. Sheridan
... a specialist in theology will lead us, if he can, a merry "ignis-fatuus" chase and land us in a morass. The only thing that saved the priest in days agone was the fact that he had so many duties to perform that he exercised all his mental muscles, and thus attained a degree of all-roundness which is not ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... sergeant alluded had evidently extended at one time right across the path, but now, thanks to the dry weather, a narrow isthmus of half-dried mud traversed the morass, and along this Mr. Draper proceeded to pick his way. The sergeant was about to follow, when suddenly he stopped short with his eyes riveted upon the muddy track. A single glance showed me the cause of his surprise, ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... advanced very slowly that they might keep their ranks until they had gained possession of the ground they wanted; they then turned their backs to the wind, and formed into the line of battle. The field which they intended to occupy was skirted by a deep morass as they came foot by foot, within ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... was tremendous: once more the French gave way. Napoleon himself, lost in the tumult, was borne backwards, forced over the dyke, and had nearly been smothered in the morass, while some of the advancing Austrians were already between him and his baffled column. His imminent danger was observed: the soldiers caught the alarm, and rushing forwards, with the cry, "Save the general," overthrew the Germans with irresistible violence, ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... fear no law of man or God. To-day their self-satisfaction has made them indifferent to anything that elevates. I had led them into a morass, and deeper in the mire have ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... the rest of life fall far short of their expectations. Her voice had acquired a perpetual wail, and the corners of what had once been a pretty mouth drooped in an eternal peevishness. She found herself in a morass of misery and shabby discomfort, but had her days continued in an even tenor she would still have lamented. "A dingy body," was Mrs. Morran's comment, but she laboured in kindness. Unhappily they had no common language, and it was only by signs ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... could answer "Whither are we drifting?" Or hope to wallow out of the morass— I might continue boosting and uplifting; But as ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... having been distinctly heard, as of some benighted traveller who had lost his way. After listening intently, and firing several rifles to guide the wanderer or apprize him that assistance was at hand, the party crossed the creek in a canoe, and moved along the skirts of the morass, hallooing loudly all the time; the cries, however, heard only at intervals at the commencement, became gradually indistinct, and at last ceased altogether. After an ineffectual search for an hour or more, the party again turned towards Huron, ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... become a sodden pulp, a Morass, a sponge, a lake, a running stream, What time a sad repentant Mea culpa ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... companion once more had a clear road. Although hungry from long fasting, they ran swiftly over the swampy ground, and felt so elated to find themselves again in a state of freedom, that they laughed and joked like boys released from school, and pushed on until the verge of an extensive morass was reached and passed, and they found themselves in a section of country well wooded and watered, the alternate hills and vales presenting a ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... the Romans were in difficulties, ventured nearer. Caesar surveyed his position. It had been well chosen behind a deep morass. The legions clamored to be allowed to advance and attack him, but a victory, he saw, would be dearly purchased. No condemnation could be too severe for him, he said, if he did not hold the lives of his soldiers dearer than his own interest,[4] and he led ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... forest." The mind of man with difficulty endeavours to realise this immensity of wooded wilderness, covering a territory half as large again as the whole of France, where the rays of the sun never penetrate, where in the dark, dank air, filled with the steam of the heated morass, human beings dwarfed into pygmies and brutalised into cannibals lurk and live and die. Mr Stanley vainly endeavours to bring home to us the full horror of that ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... our travellers had to encounter on their way across the great plain. There were tracts of moist ground, sometimes covered with tall forest-trees, at others opening out into a sedgy morass, with perhaps a small lake or water-patch in the centre. The first required them to make way through mud, or thick stagnant water covered with scum, often reaching above their knees. These places were especially ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... through squad-drill and the manual, while other groups were having special kinds of exercises—climbing up walls, digging trenches, making roads, shooting at targets. It rained every other day, and the ground was a morass, but no one paid the least attention to that; the men came in plastered with mud, and steaming like lard-vats. They seemed to enjoy it; nothing ever interfered with their ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... entering Switzerland till my arrival in Paris my spirits, which had sunk into a dreamlike apathy, rose gradually to a level of freedom and comfort that I had never enjoyed before. I felt like a bird in the air whose destiny is not to founder in a morass; but soon after my arrival in Paris, in the first week of June, a very palpable reaction set in. I had had an introduction from Liszt to his former secretary Belloni, who felt it his duty, in loyalty to the instructions ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... with them a kind of bed over which our impedimenta might travel. Hour after hour went by amidst incessant labour. An ammunition waggon containing only half its proper load required the efforts of a dozen horses to pull it over that morass, whilst, as for the guns, each of the 12's required even more horses. It was three o'clock on the afternoon of the 18th when the last gun was got across. Three gun-carriages were broken during those efforts, but our men managed to save the pieces. Late in the operations the ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... vaulted arcade supporting an open gallery, which is invaluable for decorative purposes at Easter and on imperial festival days. Erected in 1735, very much in its present shape, the one common throughout the country, on what had been an impassable morass a short time before, and where the ground still quakes at dawn, it may not contain the largest and best shops in town, and its merchants certainly are not "guests" in the ancient acceptation of the word; but we may claim, nevertheless, that it presents a compendium ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... quite fresh, and were therefore easily vanquished. Nevertheless, in this great defeat, famous throughout all Italy, no death occurred except those of Lodovico degli Obizi and two of his people, who having fallen from their horses were drowned in the morass. ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... obeyed; and, supported by staffs, they endeavoured to place their feet {on the top} of the high hill. They were {now} as far from the top, as an arrow discharged can go at once, {when} they turned their eyes, and beheld the other parts sinking in a morass, {and} their own abode alone remaining. While they were wondering at these things, {and} while they were bewailing the fate of their {fellow countrymen}, that old cottage of {theirs}, {too} little for even two owners, was changed into ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... News to Williamsburgh, and could we get possession of it we could turn the flanks of the enemy, obliging him to abandon his position and enabling us either to prevent his escape or to harass him in his flight. In front of the fort the creek had been dammed and a deep morass interposed between us and the works. General McClellan and his immense suite rode to the point from which the attack was to be made, and communicating a few minutes with Generals Keyes and Smith, left the field. Mott's battery was now brought into position on the open ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... which lies north and south between the rivers Slaney and Barrow, is of a diversified and broken soil, watered with several small streams, and patched with tracts of morass and marsh. It was then half covered with wood, except in the neighbourhood of Old Leighlin, and a few other places where villages had grown up around the castles, raths, and monasteries of earlier days. On reaching the border of the forest, King Richard ordered all the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... north, and separated from him by two great rivers, wide and deep, and by the whole breadth of that dangerous district called the Foul-meadow (Vel-uwe), and by the vast quagmire known as the Rouvenian morass, which no artillery nor even any organised forces had ever traversed since the beginning of the world, had felt no hesitation in throwing his army in boats across the Waal. He had no doubt of reducing a not very powerful fortress long before relief could be brought to it, and at the same time ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... rush out. Then the Roman horse were thrown into disorder by the assault of a new army, and the cohorts sent out to support them, broken in upon by the body of troops that fled, had augmented the consternation, and were now being pushed into the morass—a place well known to the pursuers, but dangerous to those unacquainted with it—had not Germanicus drawn out the legions in order of battle. Hence the enemy became terrified, our men reanimated, and both retired without advantage on either side. Germanicus, soon ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... perfect skeleton, a Mr. Peale, of Philadelphia, purchased these bones, with the right of digging for others. He was indefatigable in his exertions, but was unable, for some time, to procure any more. He made an attempt in a morass about twelve miles distant from Newburgh, where an entire set of ribs was found, but unaccompanied by any other remains. In another morass, in Ulster county, he found several bones; among the rest a complete under jaw, and upper part of the head. From the whole ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... its present shape. It is thus that the work went on growing for a thousand years after it was first compiled and put together in the form of an Epic; until the crystal rill of the Epic itself was all but lost in an unending morass of religious and didactic episodes, ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... is generally fixed on a very large and lofty tree, often in a swamp or morass, and difficult to be ascended. On some noted tree of this description, often a pine or cypress, the bald eagle builds, year after year, for a long series of years. When both male and female have been shot from the nest, another pair has soon after taken possession. The nest is large, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... very honourable; for Mr 0 Frizzle assures me, he values not her portion a brass varthing — And, indeed, what's poor ten thousand pounds to a Baron Knight of his fortune? and, truly, I told Mr 0 Frizzle that was all she had trust to — As for John Thomas, he's a morass fellor — I vow, I thought he would a fit with Mr 0 Frizzle, because he axed me to dance with him at Spring Garden — But God he knows I have no thoughts eyther ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... he was some distance from camp, and having to equip himself for flight, was left a good way in the rear. It was not long however, before he came up with a party, whose horses were unable to extricate themselves from a deep morass, over which they had attempted to pass. Slover's was soon placed in the same unpleasant situation, and they all, alighting from them, proceeded on foot. In this manner they traveled on until they had nearly reached the Tuscarawa, when a party of ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... bold; The British soldier trembles When Marion's name is told. Our fortress is the good greenwood, Our tent the cypress-tree; We know the forest round us, As seamen know the sea. We know its walls of thorny vines, Its glades of reedy grass, Its safe and silent islands Within the dark morass. ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... the boats over the rock, we commenced the descent of the Echemamis. This small stream has its course through a morass, and in dry seasons its channel contains, instead of water, merely a foot or two of thin mud. On these occasions it is customary to build dams that it may be rendered navigable by the accumulation ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... had departed for the north to seek Evangeline. She and the good priest who had been her stay in a year of sorrow turned back in pursuit, and for weary months, over prairie and through forest, skirting mountain and morass, going freely among savages, they followed vain clues, and at last arrived in Philadelphia. Broken in spirit then, but not less sweet of nature for the suffering that she had known, she who had been named for the angels became a minister of mercy, and in the black robe of a nun went about ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... bay into which the White Water runs, and they could trace the yellow glimmer of the river stretching into the island through a level valley of bog and morass. Far away towards the east lay the bulk of the island,—dark green undulations of moorland and pasture; and there, in the darkness, the gable of one white house had caught the clear light of the sky, and was gleaming ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... is the result? Is the American people as well educated or as well informed or as well cultivated as the English? To endeavour to make a comparison between the two is to traverse a very morass, full of holes, swamps, sloughs, creeks, inlets, quicksands, and pitfalls of divers and terrifying natures. If it is to be threaded at all, it must be only with the greatest caution and, at ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... rock everywhere thrusting itself through. The old people of the isles say that their fathers could remember when the sea, at high tide, flowed quite through the valley in which the hotel stands, and that boats used to pass. Afterwards it was a standing pond; then a morass, with cat-tail flags growing in it. It has filled up, so far as it is filled, by the soil being washed down from the higher ground on each side. The storms, meanwhile, have tossed up the shingle and paving-stones at each end of the valley, so as to form a barrier against the ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... paradise, the capital of a kingdom and a great mart of trade, since burnt down and destroyed by the Dutch, exhibits nothing but ruins. There still remain numberless delicious fruit-trees, and a country still susceptible of general cultivation, being yet clear of jungle and morass. It is utterly abandoned: that it has not been rebuilt is owing to the Rajah of Pontiana, at whose suggestion it was destroyed, and whose interest it was to keep it down, having himself risen ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... lay some distance from the village, near the big pines and deep morass of Przykop. Starydwor was a large farm, and there were many in Starawie['s] who envied Mrs. Tiralla. She had been as poor as a church mouse before her marriage—her mother was the widow of a village schoolmaster—and ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... profit as the farmer would in tilling it. But as to its power to bear the weight of passing trains the engineers had little doubt. The canal already crossed it, and though in making soundings the surveyors once lost their 35 foot rod in the morass, this, was near the canal bank, and it did not deter them in their efforts to discover a means of securing the railway from similar disaster. The average depth of the moss was found to be twelve feet, but there were areas where it was only nine feet ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... inland, and finally it ended in a treacherous bog, which threatened to engulf both men and guns; and to make matters worse, the enemy, entrenched behind some trees at the little village of Reduction, a mile or so away, now opened fire on our troops, as they struggled to get across the morass. ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... few feet of level ground from the abrupt, wooded hill by which Tournebut was sheltered. A wall with several doors opening on the woods enclosed the chateau, the farm and the lower part of the park, and a wide morass, stretching from the foot of the terrace to the Seine, rendered access impossible ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... she still lingered in the South. So fretting, he tossed himself against the bars through the long snows of an unusually severe March, until April broke the frost, and the road to the Byrdsnest became a morass ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... (*33) assistance coming to him, he (Barlow) intrenched under fire and continued to hold his place. Gibbon was not so fortunate in his front. He found the ground over which he had to pass cut up with deep ravines, and a morass difficult to cross. But his men struggled on until some of them got up to the very parapet covering the enemy. Gibbon gained ground much nearer the enemy than that which he left, and here he ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... heights of Kedesh and attempt a surprise. But while the army of Sisera, warned by Heber, were awaiting them on the plains of Esdraelon, a sudden thunder storm with rain (commemorated in the Song) converted the whole plain into a morass. The army of Barak fell on the foe while their horses were struggling in the mud, and extirpated ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... we seemed to have luck. We turned westwards away from the beaters and found and passed the upper end of the morass which had stopped us the night before. From there the going was good, through open underbrush, beneath big beeches and chestnuts, over firm and gently rolling ground. Stopping and listening we tried to judge by the sounds ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... is thereby often given a new meaning, radically different from that originally given to it and commonly understood. The student of Socialism who fails to appreciate this fact will most frequently land in a morass of confusion and difficulty, but the careful student who fully understands it will find it of great assistance. Take, as an illustration, the phrase "the abolition of capital" which frequently occurs in Socialist literature. The reader who thinks of capital as consisting of things, ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... passed away, and its property merged in Banff. The laird was intensely disliked in the neighbourhood. Sir George Ramsay was, on the other hand, universally popular and respected. On one occasion, Sir George, in passing a morass in his own neighbourhood, had missed the road and fallen into a bog to an alarming depth. To his great relief, he saw a passenger coming along the path, which was at no great distance. He called loudly for his ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... the great struggle, which was to determine the fate of Scotland, the Bruce carefully avoided the errors which had led to Wallace's defeat at Falkirk. He selected a position which was covered, on one side by the Bannock Burn and a morass, and, on the other side, by the New Park or Forest. His front was protected by the stream and by the famous series of "pottes", or holes, covered over so as to deceive the English cavalry. The choice of this narrow position not only prevented the possibility of ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... early English author who damned it by calling it "more wholesome than toothsome", to Pasqua Rosee and his contemporaries, who urged its more fantastic claims, it was forced to make its way through a veritable morass of misunderstanding and intolerance. No harmless drink in history has suffered more at ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... interfere with His methods. Let my cousin go his way . . . he will learn something which he wanted, I doubt not, on his present path, even as I shall on mine. "Se tu segui la tua stella" is my motto. . . . Let it be his too, wherever the star may guide him. If it be a will-o'-the- wisp, and lead to the morass, he will only learn how to avoid morasses better ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... a solid and stately wall, it appears to have arisen to the height of threescore feet in the valleys; and wherever less art and labor had been applied, the ground was supposed to be defended by the river, the morass, and the mountains. Notwithstanding these fortifications, the city had been repeatedly taken by the Persians, the Arabs, the Greeks, and the Turks; so large a circuit must have yielded many pervious points of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... thunder. There was a crash of falling timber. Terror-stricken, Rena flew forward through the forest, the underbrush growing closer and closer as she advanced. Suddenly the earth gave way beneath her feet and she sank into a concealed morass. By clasping the trunk of a neighboring sapling she extricated herself with an effort, and realized with a horrible certainty that she was lost in ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... swamp, n. marsh, morass, slough, quagmire, bog, fen, marish. Associated Words: paludine, paludinous, paludism, paludose, palustrine, draco, muck, effluvium, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... shame to feel, our pride to show, Glad, angry—but indifferent, no! Whether it be thy lot to go, {660} For the good of us all, where the haters meet In the crowded city's horrible street; Or thou step alone through the morass Where never sound yet was Save the dry quick clap of the stork's bill, For the air is still, and the water still, When the blue breast of the dipping coot Dives under, and all is mute. So at the last ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... with the heroes of the past, Grundtvig again turned his attention to their descendants in the present. And the contrast was almost startling. The war still was dragging on and the country sinking deeper and deeper into the morass of political, commercial and economic difficulties. But the majority of the people seemed completely indifferent to her plight. "They talked of nothing," Grundtvig says, "but of what they had eaten, worn and amused themselves ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... the morass and the mountain-snows lie sunny valleys where life would be pleasant; but he flew into a rage, vehemently protesting that he would never be content with the pitiable middle course of Horace. Then he exclaimed: ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... neighboring forest to cut timber for that purpose. Captain Little, with fifty British regulars, was deputized to protect these men at their labors. This supporting party was posted on a narrow ridge leading to the fort, with a morass on one side, a creek on the other, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... of grass Where the truant had to pass; And they wriggled through the rushes And the reeds of the morass, Where they danced, in rapture sweet, O'er the leaves that laid a street Of undulant mosaic for The ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... first wrench of his mighty arm he tore up a pine- tree by the roots. Oaks, beeches, maples, whatever he met in his path, yielded in like manner. The ancient forest soon became as bare as the borders of a morass, where the fowler has cleared away the bushes to spread his nets. The shepherds, hearing the horrible crashing in the forest, abandoned their flocks to run and see the cause of this unwonted uproar. By their evil star, or for their sins, they were led thither. When they saw the furious state the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... unfrequently so far, as to excite serious apprehensions for his safety. While at Aberdeen, he used often to steal from home unperceived;—sometimes he would find his way to the sea-side; and once, after a long and anxious search, they found the adventurous little rover struggling in a sort of morass or marsh, from which he ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... downward and touch the earth with their elbows—to rest, as it were—and then rise up again, refreshed. These salines are about three miles from Tozeur and an uncommonly simple establishment; they dig a ditch in the morass which promptly fills with water; the liquid evaporates, leaving the salt, which impregnates it, to be piled up in heaps on dry land. Next, they stow the mineral in sacks and transport it to Tozeur on donkeys. It undergoes no ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... scorched all those great bowmen with showers of arrows like the sun scorching (everything below) with his burning rays. Thus struck, O king, by Drona, the Pandavas and the Srinjayas beheld no protector, like elephants sunk in a morass. The mighty arrows of Drona, as they coursed (through the welkin), looked like the rays of the sun blasting everything around. In that encounter, five and twenty warriors among the Panchalas were slain by Drona, who were all regarded as Maharathas and all approved (as such) by Dhrishtadyumna. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... curiously painted carts of the countryside, in great clouds into the sky; in winter and after the autumn rains lost in the white curtain of mist that so often surrounds Ravenna, it is an almost impassable morass of mud and misery. Even at its best in spring time it is melancholy and curiously mean without any beauty or nobility of its own, though it commands so much of those vast spaces of flat and half desolate country which the sea has destroyed, on the verge of which stands ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... the Egyptian ports with their traditional corruption that at sunset was beginning to tremble and steam like a fetid morass; Alexandria in whose low coffee houses were imitation Oriental dancers with no more clothes than a pocket handkerchief, every woman of a different nation and shrieking in chorus all the languages ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... another Scot. The English despatches prove that Wharton had full time for preparation, and led a competent force of horse, which, near Arthuret, charged on the right flank of the Scots, who slowly retreated, till they were entangled between the Esk and a morass, and lost their formation and their artillery, with 1200 men: a few were slain, most were drowned or were taken prisoners. The raid was no secret of the king and the priests, as Knox absurdly states; nobles of the Reforming ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... strange to say, instead of being lower than the level of the surrounding country, it is in the centre higher than towards its margin; indeed, from three sides of the swamp the waters actually flow into different rivers at a considerable rate. Probably the centre of the morass is not less than twelve feet above the flat country around it. Here and there some ridges of dry land appear, like low islands, above the general surface. On the west, however, the ground is higher, and streams flow into the swamp, but they are free from sediment, and consequently ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston |
