Stronghold

“ So unchanging appeared this place that little imagination was needed to bring back the past and revive a vanished century when the legions flashed where now the great trees frowned and a hive of men, loosed from a hundred galleys, swarmed hither to dig the ditches and pile these venerable earthworks for a stronghold. ”

“ A wide stretch of pasture-land divides the village from the sea. Yet, in old days—before the coming of the friars to the priory yonder, whose tower shows faintly against the low green hill that dies in a rocky headland by the sea, perhaps even before the legionaries stormed the great stronghold whose ruins crown this breezy hill-top—the little hamlet, now so far above the tide line, was, if antiquaries read its name aright, a place of boats. ”

“ The nobles, the representatives of the Past, with their few surviving adherents, have taken refuge in their last stronghold, the fortress of the Holy Trinity, securely situated upon a high and rocky peak overhanging a deep valley, surrounded and hedged in by steep cliffs and rocky precipices. Through these straits and passes once howled and swept the waters of the deluge. As wild an inundation is now upon them, for the valley is almost filled with the living surges of the myriads of the 'New Men,' who are rolling their millions into its depths. ”

“ So that, adding all together, the value of the grand old stronghold has in no wise died out, but only taken another shape. Instead of inspiring awe and terror, it supplies the heart with noble enjoyments, and with new and animating incentives to seek the rewards that attend love of the pure and beautiful. ”

“ With carvings red and gold upon their face.
The lofty stronghold in their midst, appeared
Like pyramid of human beings reared;
From base to summit on each side were seen
Brave men who for tljeir chief felt sorrow keen. ”

“ I exclaimed; for, about eight miles distant from the place we stood on, there exists to this day a stronghold such as he described, a camp so colossal in its scope, so ambitious in its scheme of ramparts, that it is scarcely credible as the achievement of a primitive people, toiling almost literally with their hands alone. ”

“ You also will seek a stronghold because of the enemy. 12 All your fortresses will be like fig trees with the first-ripe figs: if they are shaken, they fall into the mouth of the eater. 13 Behold, your troops in your midst are women. The gates of your land are set wide open to your enemies. ”

“ Therefore a wild people will honour Thee, cities of violent nations fear Thee. For Thou provedst Thyself a stronghold to the lowly, a stronghold to the poor in his distress, as a shelter from the storm of rain, as a shadow from the burning of the sun ”

“ The mean level of the beds is below that of the lake, As you draw near the stronghold it becomes necessary to descend into irregular chasms, Before you have time to study the topography of the place, ledges loom up fifty and sixty feet high, directly in front, and all but compel a halt. The savages, pressed by the troops, retired from ledge to ledge, and each retreat carried them to higher ground and gave them additional advantages. The stronghold proper is about the summit of several of the boldest ledges. They radiate from a common centre and are difficult of access. ”

“ He had worked diligently, and succeeded in making the passage clear, so that the sleigh, with the lady in it, could enter the quadrangle.
He greeted his master with an outburst of dialect too broad for the stranger to understand. Evidently some damage to property had been the result of the storm, for he pointed along the river valley, above which the stronghold towered. ”

“ He will see at intervals what, from a little distance, seems like a solid wall of stone, laid with care, and upon which the lapse of centuries has wrought no change, so regular are the strata of which it is composed, while an occasional boulder, large as a house, and covered with moss, reminds him of the ruined tower of some stronghold. ”

“ The stronghold, which rises a few meters to the northeast of the spring, is a rectangular stone building of no great height, without side towers, and recalls the medieval structures on the Pilgrim Route. ”

“ The next turn of the mountain road was a stronghold, from which we had to expect a new storm of arrows, lances, and fragments of rock.
“The mountaineers always had a retreat,” he continued. “If we drove them from the pinnacles of the hills, they were in a moment in the valleys, where we must follow them at the risk of falling down precipices and being swallowed up by torrents, in which the strongest swimmer in the legions could not live for a moment. ”

“ The Crows assembled in the direction of the report, all drawing toward a centre. When I arrived, I saw that the Black Feet had chosen a strong position, and that we had another fort to storm. It was built partly by nature, but human industry had improved the stronghold. It was low water, and there was a pile of drift on a naked sand-bar, and trees had been felled from the bank upon the drift-pile forming quite a shelter. Over this position the enemy was placed, protected with a breast-work formed of timber taken from the drift. ”

“ It would then be found easier and better to conduct the water to the stronghold than to construct the stronghold in a natural basin of water, however convenient its locality might be. To the transitional period preceding this great change, which culminated in the almost impregnable moated and mediæval castle, may be assigned many of the remains of stone forts, castles, etc., still abundantly found in bogs, drained marshes, and natural or, maybe, artificially built islands. ”

“ Our civil visitors saw that fair words were of no avail to save fighting, and so they ran back to their fellows, and with a few minutes' chatter among themselves, half of them climbed up amid the rocks, to drop on us, as we guessed from above, where they might find foothold among the crevices, and the others with determined aspect ran up to us in single line, taking the narrow ledge for their road to our stronghold. ”

“ It seemed almost impossible to scale this hill as we looked on its slope in the darkness, but we reached its foot where the hill is steepest, and held on northward yet, until we came to where there is a long steady rise up to the very gate of the earthworks.
Now there should have been an outpost halfway along this slope toward the camp, for whatever tribe of the Britons made the stronghold had not forgotten to raise a little fort for one. But we were in luck, for this outpost was not held, and we rode past it, and knew that there was every chance now of our fairly surprising the camp. ”

“ I have read with a great deal of pleasure the book called The Stronghold, which relates the history of the Northern Neck of Virginia in story form and was written by my good friend, Miriam Haynie of Reedville, Virginia. ”

“ The hill-fort,—palpably the most primitive form of fortalice or stronghold originated in a mountainous country,—seems to constitute man's first essay towards neutralizing, by the art of fortification, the advantages of superior force on the side of an assailing enemy. It was found, on the discovery of New Zealand, that the savage inhabitants had already learned to erect exactly such hill-forts amid the fastnesses of that country as those which were erected two thousand years earlier by the Scottish aborigines amid the fastnesses of our own. ”

“ A fair general idea of this stronghold may be given by supposing a circular platform of 200 yards diameter to be bordered on the east and adjacent sides by a steep natural slope falling from its edge, and on the west and adjacent sides by a steep artificial slope falling to its edge. Then on the western margin is placed a conical table mound, 60 feet or 70 feet high, and about 120 yards diameter at the base, which necessarily converts the western slope into the further side or counterscarp of a ditch, and reduces the eastern side to an open crescent-shaped platform. ”

“ They are therefore the defensive strongholds of a population located upon the arable lands, and not in the mountain fastnesses of the country; and their peculiar nature as exceptionally secure places of refuge for non-combatants and cattle, and for storage of produce, explains the fitness of their association with the arable soil of the area in which they are most abundantly present. ”

“ At the south-west end is also a natural depression dividing the rock from the town, and which has been deepened somewhat by art, as has the cliff been scarped and, where necessary, revetted, so that the general result was the production of an almost impregnable stronghold. This description, however, requires, as regards the east front, some little addition. Here, immediately beyond the wall, is a ditch nearly all artificial, and beyond it a nearly level area, beyond which, again, is the natural valley. ”

“ Many of those bluff headlands, peninsulas, and isolated hills presented all the requisite adaptations for native strongholds. They have, accordingly, been fortified with great labour and skill. Embankments and ditches enclose the whole space, varying in strength according to the natural resources of the ground. The approaches are guarded by trenches and overlapping walls, more or less numerous in different forts; and have occasionally a mound alongside of the other defences of the approach, but rising above the rest of the works, as if designed both for out-look and additional defence. ”

“ Part of the inclosure of both yards consists of tall, thin boarding, full of cracks and crevices, that might be breached with no extraordinary exertion of foot or shoulder; and there is hardly any part of the stronghold out of which a man, of average ingenuity, armed with a common clasp-knife—if unwatched—could not make his way in a couple of hours. ”

“ They usually feared a close proximity to civilized lands, but carried on their nefarious business upon the open ocean, making sudden and unexpected dashes from the Isle of Pines, which was their stronghold. ”

“ They have numerous, impregnable strongholds on the rocks; which you can see rising sheer up hundreds of feet, from among the woods on the slopes; and can, if pressed, shift their quarters, and move fifty miles away among the trees, while the troops are, in vain, searching for them. ”

“ Within the land which thus lay open to his attack, we see from every height the sites, not of one or two only, but of a whole crowd of strongholds which have passed away. A very few only of these strongholds could ever have been needed for the protection of any town or for the general defence of the country. ”

“ After more than five years of the bitterest war in human experience, the last great stronghold of force, surrendering to the demands of America and her allies, agreed to cast aside the sword and live under the law. ”

“ That the people thus occupying these peculiar strongholds were the people of the soil, and not strangers effecting a lodgement in a hostile territory, is obviously suggested both by the character and relations of the typical structure, and by the character and relations of the relics of their domestic life. ”

“ The great landholders live at a distance from the road, and in forts or strongholds. These are generally surrounded by fences of living bamboos, which are carefully kept up as the best possible defence against attacks. The forts are all of mud, and when the walls are exposed to view they look ugly. The houses of the peasants in the villages are, for the most part, covered with mud, from which the water is carried off, by tubes of wood or baked clay, about two feet long. ”

“ It played a part in the British, Roman, Saxon, and Danish occupations of the island, and, after having been held as a frontier fortress, by the Scots against the English, became, in its turn, the great stronghold of northern England against the Scots, and the scourge of the wild tribes of the debatable land.
City and castle are naturally strong. The castle occupies a bluff, projecting towards the north, in a position which no doubt created its early, and caused its long-continued importance. ”

“ The mountain itself has steep, boulder-strewn, bush-grown sides, generally inaccessible, except where the narrow, difficult paths lead up to the various strongholds, and these paths have been fortified by the rebels with stockades and with stone breastworks, and in many places they pass between huge rocks, where only one man could squeeze through at a time. ”

“ The town was surrounded by a mud wall, pierced by six gates, and was further protected by a ditch 5 ft. deep, filled with a dense growth of prickly acacia, the usual defence of West African strongholds. ”

“ Similar records of the aboriginal fort-builders must no doubt frequently be turned up in the course of agricultural operations: but they can only tell us what is already obvious, that this class of strongholds, or duns, as they are locally termed, pertain to a people whose arts were still in their infancy. ”

“ Some of the governor’s people, however, were very agile in climbing these blocks, and they need to be so if they wish to subject the native inhabitants, who, when pursued, retire to these natural strongholds, which are scattered over nearly the whole of this country. ”

“ The Anglo-Saxon farmers had scarce conquered foothold, stronghold, freehold in the Western wilderness before they became sowers of hemp—with remembrance of Virginia, with remembrance of dear ancestral Britain. ”

“ It has been objected to the map theory that in the parts of Scotland and England where circle-and-channel scorings occur most numerously, no raths or forts, or, if any, very few, are to be found. But it may be urged that the early British strongholds, corresponding to our raths, duns, and stone forts, were very frequently composed of perishable materials, such as timber stockades,30 or the interwoven branches of trees, of which, in the course of a few centuries at most, no trace would remain. ”