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Inhospitable   /ɪnhˈɑspətəbəl/  /ɪnhɑspˈɪtəbəl/   Listen
Inhospitable

adjective
1.
Unfavorable to life or growth.  "Inhospitable mountain areas"
2.
Not hospitable.  "Her greeting was cold and inhospitable"



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"Inhospitable" Quotes from Famous Books



... he descended. On every reappearance, he turned his face towards the sculptor and gave a nod and smile; for a kindly impulse prompted him thus to assure his visitor of a welcome, after keeping him so long at an inhospitable threshold. ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... auspices less benign we might have found the former mistaken and the latter irrelevant; but it so happens that when Sir Sidney shows us over the garden every goose is a swan. Like travellers who at the end of a long day's journey among an inhospitable peasantry are, against their expectation received in a kindly farm, and find themselves talking glibly to their host of matters which are unimportant and unknown to them—the price of land, and the points of a pedigree bull—so we follow with an ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... Zabriska came to Blent—and brought Mr Cholderton?" He sat smiling a moment. "Forgive me; I'm very inhospitable," he said, and ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... much later. The whole country between Hillah and Bassorah is now little removed from a desert. Here and there rise a few tents or reed huts belonging to the Montefik Arabs, a tribe of savage nomads and the terror of travellers. Europeans have succeeded in exploring that inhospitable country only under exceptional circumstances.[63] And yet it was there, between two or three thousand years before our era, that the intermingling of ideas and races took place which gave birth to the ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... most of the birds had already left these regions, so inhospitable in winter, or were seen high up in the air in collected flocks, flying towards the south entrance of Behring's Straits. Still on the 19th October an endless procession of birds was seen drawing towards this region, but by the 3rd November it was noted, as something uncommon, that a gull settled ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... might of the choice and delicate repast provided for me, in this truly princely hotel, whose fame I discovered had not been over-trumpeted. On my previous visits to New York, the Astor House had been unfinished, and had made in its completion a new era certainly in the "tavern-life" of that inhospitable city of publicans. When the delicious coffee and snowy bread, the eggs of milky freshness, the golden butter, the savory rice-birds, the appetizing fish, had each and all been merely tasted and dismissed, and the exquisite China, in which the breakfast was served, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... are sufficiently memorable. In Sweden two princes died—Haken and Canute, half-brothers of King Magnus; and in Westgothland alone four hundred and sixty-six priests. The inhabitants of Iceland and Greenland found in the coldness of their inhospitable climate no protection against the southern enemy who had penetrated to them from happier countries. The plague wrought great havoc among them. In Denmark and Norway, however, people were so occupied with their own misery that the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... inhospitable shore The houseless wretch a widowed parent bore; Who then, no more by golden prospects led, Of the poor Indian begged a leafy bed. Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain, Perhaps that parent mourned her soldier slain; Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... turning from the road when Johnnie turned, and went with her up the steep, rocky gulch where the door of a deserted cabin flung to and fro on its hinges. At sight of the smokeless chimney, the gaping doorway and empty, inhospitable interior, Johnnie ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... towards evening they reached a domain called Skaun. Here they saw a large mansion, towards which they went, and begged a night's lodging. For the sake of concealment they were clad in mean clothing. There dwelt here a bonde called Bjorn Eiterkveisa, who was very rich, but very inhospitable. He drove them away; and therefore, towards dark, they went to another domain close by that was called Vidar. Thorstein was the name of the bonde; and he gave them lodging, and took good care of them, so that they slept well, and were well entertained. Early that morning ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... fact that the neglected and roadless Spanish zone intervened between the French possessions and Tangier, which is the natural port of Morocco, one of the first preoccupations of General Lyautey was to make ports along the inhospitable Atlantic coast, where ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... burn. Added to that, the whole population crowded in to look at us. It was no fun at all Stephan stood cursing in German that he could not get near the fire to cook, and that he would not cook at all if the mob were not cleared out. This Dr. S. refused to allow, as it would be considered inhospitable. ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... "Keep away from that house!" shouted a Belgian soldier who suddenly appeared from around a corner. "The man who owns it has gone insane from fright. He's upstairs with a rifle and he's shooting at every one who passes." "Well, I call that damned inhospitable," said Thompson, and Roos and I heartily agreed with him. There was nothing else for it, therefore, but to make a dash for the car. We had left it standing in front of a convent over which a Red Cross flag was flying on the assumption that there ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell

... South Saxons, St Wilfrid, wrecked upon the flat and inhospitable shore of Selsey, was, as we know, their first bishop. He established his See, however, not at Chichester, but at Selsey where it remained until the Conqueror began to reorganise England upon a Roman plan, when more than one See was removed from the village in which ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton

... while they protested against everything that was false and vicious. They had a reverence for the good taste and the literature, science, eloquence, and poetry of England, and so I trust it is with their successors in this once bleak and inhospitable, but now rich and prosperous land. They could appreciate poetry, as well as good sense and good taste, and so I call to your recollection the language of a poet who had not loomed up at the time of the Puritans as he has since. It was addressed to his steed, after an ill-starred journey to Islingtontown. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... with just intelligence enough to maintain themselves by hunting and fishing, by the help of dogs, which, it is said, they prize so much that they would rather, in time of scarcity, eat up an old mother than a dog; and they are churlishly inhospitable to strangers, although with an unusual facility for imitating their language, nor had any one ever ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... south, with the wind light at the westward. The sea was greatly diminished about noon; but a mile an hour, for those who had so long a road before them, and who were so near a coast that was known to be fearfully inhospitable, was a cheerless progress, and the cry of "sail, ho!" early in the afternoon, diffused a general joy in ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... challenge fate; for, were justice meted out, the burden would prove more intolerable to you than that King Stork whom Zeus sent down as a Nemesis to quiet clamorous frogs. Justice, let me tell you, long ago fled from this hostile and inhospitable earth and took refuge beyond the stars, where, please God, you and I shall one day confront her and get our long-defrauded dues. Justice? Nay, nay! the thing I recognize as justice would crush you utterly, and you should flee to the Ultima Thule to avoid it. I divine your mission. ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... washed ashore. She was the only living creature out of all that had so lately breathed and moved on board the doomed ship. The wind was howling their requiem over the inhospitable coast. For a few minutes she slept peacefully, but soon she awoke and uttered groans of pain; she cast up her beautiful eyes towards heaven, and said a few words, but no one there could ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... exceptional events, oases in the desert of spiritualistic experiences. Generally speaking, the table, instead of groaning under its accumulated bounties, leapt about as if from the absence thereof; and the only adjuncts of the inhospitable mahogany were paper tubes for the spirit voices, handbells for the spirit hands, and occasional accordions and musical boxes for the delectation of harmonious ghosts. It was a "flow of soul" if not always a "feast of reason;" but, as regarded creature comforts, or any of the ordinary delights ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... has often been otherwise. In wandering over the plains of inhospitable Denmark, through honest Sweden, frozen Lapland, rude and churlish Finland, unprincipled Russia, and the widespread regions of the wandering Tartar, if hungry, dry, cold, wet, or sick, woman has ever been friendly to me, and uniformly so: and, to add to this virtue, so worthy of the appellation ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... Mighty, and inhospitable, and stern; Hiding a meaning over which we yearn In eager, panting haste— Grasping and losing, Still being deluded ever by our choosing— Answer us Sphinx: What is thy meaning double But ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... the palm groves in this great sea are not in the South Pacific; nor the ice floes north or south of a certain degree; nor the swift currents and dangerous rocks near some inhospitable shore, but at home; and the ships that pass ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... pauper, with a ready-made coat perceptibly impregnated with bad brandy, and tasted of every thing but the grape, that, in about six months, I sickened, and no longer frequented these tasteless and inhospitable retreats ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... with an inhospitable snarl when he saw her for the first time; then, showing his teeth, he struck her with his paw. Demid beat him for this behaviour, and he quieted down. Then ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak

... brother! who in me Hast found a sister worthy of thy hate, Authoress of all calamity to Troy, Oh that the winds, the day when I was born, Had swept me out of sight, whirl'd me aloft 425 To some inhospitable mountain-top, Or plunged me in the deep; there I had sunk O'erwhelm'd, and all these ills had never been. But since the Gods would bring these ills to pass, I should, at least, some worthier mate have chosen, 430 One not ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... region from Corinth and still more from the settlement at Corcyra (Corfu) founded not long after Rome (about 44); a traffic, which had as its emporia on the Italian coast the towns of Spina and Atria, situated at the mouth of the Po. The storms of the Adriatic, the inhospitable character at least of the Illyrian coasts, and the barbarism of the natives are manifestly not in themselves sufficient to explain this fact. But it was a circumstance fraught with the most momentous consequences ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... "Mrs. Thorne took tea at Sam Cotting's last evening," (the Cottings being notoriously inhospitable) and the picture showed Mrs. Thorne, a sour-faced woman, departing from the store with a package of tea. Then came the announcement that "Eph Hildreth got shot at West's hardware store," and there was a picture of West weighing out a pound of buckshot for his customer. The next ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne

... parties presented their pleadings in 2007 with Argentina's reply in January and Uruguay's rejoinder in July 2008; the joint boundary commission, established by Chile and Argentina in 2001 has yet to map and demarcate the delimited boundary in the inhospitable Andean Southern Ice ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... no time for speculation. The urgent problem of locating the Bara Jannati Shahr, beyond that inhospitable sierra, banished thoughts of all else. He inspected his charts, together with the air-liner's record of course and position. He slightly corrected the direction of flight. "Captain Alden" was already in the ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... should like to put Mr. Pike on his guard; and yet I know that the revealing of Mr. Mellaire's identity would precipitate another killing. And still we drive south, close-hauled on the wind, toward the inhospitable tip of the continent. To-day we are south of a line drawn between the Straits of Magellan and the Falklands, and to-morrow, if the breeze holds, we shall pick up the coast of Tierra del Fuego close to the entrance of the Straits of Le Maire, ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... meeting of the directors. (I was at that time under-secretary of the Savonarola Fire Insurance Company.) The recollection of the business which had caused me to be on foot at this unusual hour brought me to a dead halt. I dropped my cousin's arm, and stood looking at him helplessly. It seemed so inhospitable, not to say cold-blooded, to send him off to get his breakfast alone. Flagg ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... asked, could the scattered remnants of Israel have had the courage to penetrate through unknown regions, and encounter the hardships and privations of that inhospitable country? Could they have had the fortitude, the decision, the power, to venture on a dreary pilgrimage of eighteen months, the time mentioned by Esdras as the period of their journey? Could they not? What obstacles had ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... at sea, expecting every hour the return of a messenger from his son, whom he had sent to solicit protection from the African prince, Mandras'tal. 9. After long expectation, instead of the messenger, his son himself arrived, having escaped from the inhospitable court of that monarch, where he had been kept, not as a friend, but as a prisoner, and had returned just time enough to prevent his father from sharing the same fate. 10. In this situation they were informed that Cinna, one of their party who had remained at Rome, had put himself ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... in spite of its rounded, outstanding sash-windows, two on either side the glass door; the air of it holding, in permanent solution, an odour of leather-bound volumes. A place, in short, which, though not inhospitable, imposed itself, its qualities and traditions, to an extent impossible for any save the most thick-skinned and thick-witted wholly to ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... of Oriental soldiers, regular and irregular, pipe-bearers, and household servants formidably armed, and they will not be far from a just conception of the case. After marching for five hours over this inhospitable tract, we halted at the mouth of a valley where the hills open out into a small plain. This forms the entrance to the Pass of Koryta, whence we had just emerged. It is a spot of ill repute even amongst the barbarous inhabitants of these regions; and more Turks have ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... few days were spent by the sisters waiting for stormy weather to subside, and they then sailed for Nome. Here they landed during the last days of September, amid falling snow, bleak winds and boiling surf, upon the sands of the most inhospitable beach in all that dreary Northland. No tree was to be seen. Not a rock under whose friendly shelter one might hide from the storms. There was almost no lumber in the camp with which to build houses, and no incoming steamers expected. A few rude shacks, tents ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan

... short time Estein hesitated, but as the outlook grew more threatening and the wind beat in flaws and gusts, now from one quarter, now from another, the Vikings changed their course and ran under oars and sails for the shelter of the land. Little shelter it promised as they drew nearer: a dark, inhospitable line of precipices stretched north and south as far as the eye could reach, and even from a long distance they could see white flashes breaking at the cliff foot. Again they changed their course; and then, with a dull hum of approaching rain, a south-easterly storm broke over them, and ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston

... sweltering here," he decided; "let's try somewhere else—" and with a sense of relief Charity followed him from that scene of inhospitable splendour. ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton

... breeze, I would take its bearings in the fast-ebbing twilight, thinking that it was for the last time. Vain hope. A night of fitful airs would undo the gains of temporary favour, and the rising sun would throw out the black relief of Koh-ring looking more barren, inhospitable, and grim than ever. ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad

... present thrift, wealth, genius, enterprise and intelligence of the people of the New England States is the legitimate outworking of the training bestowed on their sons by the stern, old Puritans that first peopled these inhospitable shores. ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... custom in every well-conducted war, Harmony was left in peace, only one mild attempt being made a few days after the occupation of Pretoria, by the officer in command of the Montmorency Scouts, to obtain entrance for himself and fellow officers at Harmony's inhospitable door. ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt

... together the bones of Theseus, and, laying them in some honorable place, keep them as sacred in the city. But it was very difficult to recover these relics, or so much as to find out the place where they lay, on account of the inhospitable and savage temper of the barbarous people that inhabited the island. Nevertheless, afterwards, when Cimon took the island (as is related in his life), and had a great ambition to find the place where Theseus was buried, he, by chance, spied an eagle upon ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... it to the open plain. Thus far he facilitates movements. But while doing this he also places upon the land a dense population, closely attached to the soil, strong to resist incursion, and for economic reasons inhospitable to any marked accession of population from without. Herein lies the great difference between migration in empty or sparsely inhabited regions, such as predominated when the world was young, and in the densely populated countries ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... Livonia, on the shores of the Baltic. He overran the territory, seized the capital and established order. His son Vsevolod, who was stationed at Novgorod, made an expedition into Finland. His army experienced inconceivable sufferings in that cold, inhospitable clime. Still they overawed the inhabitants and secured tranquillity. Another son, Georges, marched to the Volga, embarked his army in a fleet of barges, and floated along the stream to eastern Bulgaria, conquered an army ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... "when will that laggard burst through this agelong silence? Here's dust enough for all to see. And all this ruin, this inhospitable peace!" ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... took another hour to gain the principal ascent, then, pursuing our way along the high land, we reached a small hamlet, where we stopped a few minutes to comfort ourselves with what could be procured. The path from hence to Cettigna passes over a country which, at any season, must appear barren and inhospitable. The peaks of the highest mountains in Montenegro rise immediately above it. The ground was now covered with about an inch of snow, and the air extremely cold. A few stunted bushes of beech underwood, which serves for fuel, seemed to be the only vegetation. Every thing else, grey rocks, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... proceed on our voyage. Storms of sand of a similar nature several times attacked us, but by using the same precautions we preserved ourselves repeatedly from destruction. Having travelled more than nine thousand miles over this inhospitable plain, exposed to the perpendicular rays of a burning sun, without ever meeting a rivulet, or a shower from heaven to refresh us, we at length became almost desperate, when, to our inexpressible joy, we beheld some mountains at a great distance, and on our nearer approach ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe

... own fireside. It is not I that am a wanderer and a stranger now; it is the crow and the buzzard. The chickadees were silent at first, but now they approach by little journeys, as if to make our acquaintance. The nuthatches, also, cry "Yank! yank!" in no inhospitable tones; and those purple finches there in the cedars,—are they ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... Roylake repeated. "With your friends at the mill of course. Very inhospitable not to offer you lunch. When are we to ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins

... the marble god, the Greek, the Dane, the love-sick boy, the maiden foredoomed to death. But how short is the roll-call of these deathless ones! Through what raging floods of destruction have they lived, through what tempests have they been tossed, upon what inhospitable shores have they been cast up by the changing tides of time! Since they were called to life by the great, half-nameless departed, how often has their very existence been forgotten by all but a score in tens of millions? Has it been given to ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... house with wide lawns and an inhospitable air of wealth and importunate rank; over the sward two peacocks swung, ambulating like caravals in a green sea; and one expected a fine lady to come smiling and glittering from the door. Oddly enough, though he had never seen the place before, it struck Harkless with a sense of familiarity. ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... was flung on a desert beach. Erasippus, perished with his ship, has all the ocean for his grave; somewhere far away his white bones moulder on a spot that the seagulls alone can tell. Thymodes rears a cenotaph to his son, who on some Bithynian beach or island of the Pontic lies a naked corpse on an inhospitable shore. Young Seleucus, wrecked in the distant Atlantic, has long been dead on the trackless Spanish coasts, while yet at home in Lesbos they praise him and look forward to his return. On the thirsty uplands of Dryopia the empty earth is heaped up that ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail

... kindness of your reception, even were there no other indications, would have satisfied me that you are French. What accidents have brought you so far from our native soil? Children of my country, what tempest has thrown you upon this inhospitable shore?" ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... evident that the entire tract above described must have been at all times a valuable and much coveted region. Compared with the arid and inhospitable deserts which adjoin it upon the north and south, Khorasan, the ancient Parthia and Hyrcania, is a terrestrial Paradise. Parthia, though scantily wooded, still produces in places the pine, the walnut, the sycamore, the ash, the poplar, the willow, the vine, the mulberry, the apricot, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson

... or two from the door in order to point the way for me, and then turned upon his heel. I had already taken a stride or two away from him and his inhospitable hut, when he suddenly called ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle

... mattered more was that the portages were frequent, and carrying the canoe over rock coated with frozen spray became dangerous as well as difficult, and Nasmyth working on short rations began to feel the strain. It was only since he had entered that inhospitable region that he had ever been compelled to go without his dinner; and now breakfast and supper were sternly curtailed. When they were stopped for two days by a blinding snowstorm he grew anxious, and his uneasiness had increased when some time afterward they made their ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... than I had ever before heard of. No less than eleven of them; unable to bear their lives; had deserted at Bonny, on the coast of Africa,—which is a most unusual thing,—choosing all that could be endured, though in a most inhospitable climate, and in the power of the natives, rather than to continue in their own ship. Nine others also, in addition to the loss of these, had died in the same voyage. As to the rest; he believed, without any exception, that ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... unsatisfying a supper was biscuit, after a long day's ride! Was this how the regular army habitually lived? . . . What a pig's-sty of a barracks! . . . Well, it would rest upon Government, if he buried his men in this inhospitable hole. He raised himself on his pillow and stared at the fire. Strange, to think that only a few hours ago he had slept in Looe, and let the hours strike unheeded on his own parish clock! Strange! And his men must be feeling it no less, and he was responsible for them, for ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... no heed to these words, but pushed forward, shifting the bundle to his shoulder and holding it so that it was thrust into the Swede's face. Involuntarily the watchman drew back, whereupon the unwelcome visitor crowded past, jostling his inhospitable host roughly, laughing the while, although in his laughter there rang a dangerous metallic note. Emerson's quick action gained him entrance and Fraser followed behind into the living-room, where a flat-nosed squaw withdrew before them. The young man flung down his ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... beasts, [Greek: dermata thaereia enaemmenon]. At a distance of twelve days' sail he came to some Ethiopians, who could not endure the Carthaginians, and who spoke unintelligibly even to the Lixite interpreters. These are the people whose women, Mr. Bannister says, they killed. Hanno sailed from this inhospitable coast fifteen days, and came to a gulf which he calls [Greek: Notou Kera], ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.04.06 • Various

... up the path to the cave very slowly, and with many groans. And when he saw the strangers (for now some of the ship's crew were with Prince Neoptolemus) he cried, "Who are ye that are come to this inhospitable land? Greeks I know you to be by your garb; but ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church

... waited whilst the terribly slow business of ticket-taking and registration was got over, thankful enough that I had breakfasted overnight—that is to say, had made tea at three o'clock in the morning. Not a cup of milk, not a crust of bread, would that inhospitable inn offer its over-charged guests before setting out. As I have nothing but praise to bestow upon the hostelries of the Lozere and the Cantal, I must give vent to ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... being introduced into the "parlor," actually found everything in the furniture line so dainty and "prinked up," that we were afraid to sit down on the frail things stuck around by way of seats, for fear of breaking them; and everything about it looked so gingerly and inhospitable, that we felt an absolute relief when we could fairly get out of it, and take a place by the wide old fireplace, in the common living room, comfortably ensconced in a good old easy, high-backed, split-bottomed chair—there was positive comfort in that, when in the "parlor" there ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen

... scaled a stone wall, however, in time to shake off the company of this inhospitable host. In the next field there were two or three skittish colts, which they scared into all manner of hysterical ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes

... opposition with profound indifference,—the only appreciable result was a greater attraction for the solitude that protected him, and he grew even to love the bleak shore and barren sands that had proved so inhospitable to others. There was a new meaning to the roar of the surges, an honest, loyal sturdiness in the unchanging persistency of the uncouth and blustering trade-winds, and a mute fidelity in the shining sands, treacherous to all but him. With such bandogs ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... become sober, lonely, even threatening. When the charm of a country consists so entirely in its colouring, any modification of the atmosphere and light cause such a change in its character that the same view may look either like Paradise or entirely dull and inhospitable. What had been thus far a pleasure trip, a holiday excursion, turned suddenly into a business journey, and this change in our mood was increased by a slight illness which had attacked the Resident, making the jovial gentleman morose ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... or the frozen regions of Lapland, there to enjoy the blessings of civilization and the charms of lunar philosophy, in much the same manner as the reformed and enlightened savages of this country are kindly suffered to inhabit the inhospitable forests of the north, or the ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... steep hillside steps we shall mount some day to see the fine view of the river and valley from the outer walls and terrace of the chateau, as its doors are said to be inhospitable to those who wish to inspect the interior. This afternoon Langeais and Azay-le-Rideau are beckoning us, although we were tempted to stop for a nearer view of the strange Pile de Cinq Mars, which is, we are told, an unsolved architectural puzzle. The most probable ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

... granite, back from which are scattered groups of modest buildings and huts which form the aboriginal settlement. The choice of the site for the settlement was influenced by the character of the country. Although but a short distance by sea from the port, it is isolated by its background of hard and inhospitable hills patched with almost impenetrable jungle. Few consigned there ever leave of their own motive, however earnest the longing may be. The home-sick realise that escape is difficult and, if successful, futile, for are not the police everywhere, and strong and compelling? Why undertake ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... having published his poem on the Art of Love (Ars Amatoria). The real cause of his banishment is unknown, for the publication of the Art of Love was certainly a mere pretext. Ovid draws an affecting picture of the miseries to which he was exposed in his place of exile. He complains of the inhospitable soil, of the severity of the climate, and of the perils to which he was exposed, when the barbarians plundered the surrounding country, and insulted the very walls of Tomi. In the midst of all his misfortunes he sought some relief in the ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... months old, the mother places it perfectly naked astraddle on her shoulders, its legs hanging down on both sides in front. In this guise the mother roves about all day, exposing her helpless charge to the hot rays of the sun and the chilly winds that sweep over the inhospitable country" (306. 185). ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... are much like the desert below, except that the nights are cool and the wind is not fanned out of a furnace, Casey fought sand and brush and rocks and found a trail now and then which he followed thankfully, and so came at last to a short range of mountains whose name matched well their inhospitable stare. The Starvation Mountains had always been reputed rich in mineral and malevolent in their attitude toward man and beast. Even the Joshua trees stood afar off and lifted grotesque arms defensively against them. But Casey was not easily daunted, ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower

... accidents to which men are exposed, and the wonderful expedients which may be found out, even in the most dismal circumstances." "It is very true, indeed," answered Tommy; "but pray what became of these poor men at last?" "After they had lived more than six years upon this dreary and inhospitable coast," answered Mr Barlow, "a ship arrived there by accident, which took three of them on board, and carried them in safety to their own country." "And what became of the fourth?" said Tommy. "He," said Mr Barlow, "was seized with a dangerous disease, ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... insane on Induction these two hundred years. This unholy divorce has, as it always must do, brought poverty and impotence into the sciences, many of which stand apart, stand haggard and hostile, accumulations of incoherent facts, inhospitable, dead. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... stocked with deer, and the waters with fat seals and great fish, which were caught just when the people pleased to go after them. Still, the nation were discontented, and wished to leave their barren and inhospitable shores. The priests had told them of a beautiful world beyond the Great Salt Lake, from which the glorious sun never disappeared for a longer time than the duration of a child's sleep, where snow-shoes were never wanted—a land clothed with perpetual verdure, and bright with never-failing gladness. ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous

... atmosphere fauned by the wholesome breath of freedom. The highest fertility of soil, the greatest benignity of climate, the most commanding superiority of position, will otherwise be unavailing. Freedom may in the end convert the most barren and inhospitable waste into a paradise; but the inevitable result of tyranny ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... will not think that all Virginians are as inhospitable as we appear to be, Mr. Henley," she exclaimed, with a graciousness that was ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale

... anniversaries, but it is chiefly because it is so sad when the days come when they cannot be celebrated as of yore. 'Nessun maggior dolore.' Do not anniversaries stir this great fountain of sadness? I feel sad when I look at this inhospitable sea, and think of the smiling countenances with which I should have been surrounded at home, and the joyous laugh when papa, with affected surprise, detected the present wrapped up carefully in a paper parcel on the breakfast table. Is it ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... is already hateful to me." And turning, with flushed cheek and gleaming eyes, she entered the cosy, cleanly-kept little cottage of her father. But she soon reflected that she had been guilty of an unpardonably inhospitable act in not asking the strangers to enter. Suddenly turning, she walked rapidly back, and overtook the crest-fallen wooer and his companion, and said in a voice from which every trace of her late ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins

... joyed to see you. Every morning lately I have been expecting to see you drop in, even before your letter came; and I have been setting my wits to work to think how to make you as comfortable as the nature of our inhospitable habits will admit. I must work while you are here; and I have been slaving very hard to get through with something before you come, that I may be quite in the way of it, and not teize you with complaints all day that I do not ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... and as soon as his eyes became, accustomed to the tobacco smoke, he surveyed the room. There was a bowl on the floor, the chair where it belonged being occupied. There was a very inhospitable looking bed, two shake-downs, and four Windsor chairs in more or less state of dilapidation—all occupied likewise. A country glass lamp was balanced on a rough shelf, and under it a young man sat absorbed in making notes, and apparently oblivious to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... travel, and above all, never travel alone, if your heart is sad! How hostile and inhospitable the first sensation is that one feels then when entering an unknown city! Amedee was obliged to submit to the tiresome delay of looking after his baggage in a commonplace station; the hasty packing into an omnibus of tired-out travellers, darting glances of bad humor and suspicion; to the reception ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... ships, transports, colliers, and all sorts of cargo ships down to the little native sailing boats, and the steam cutters which tore up and down all day looking very busy. The island itself looked very uninviting, stony, barren, and inhospitable, and a route march only confirmed our opinions—the race ashore in the ship's boats, however, compensated ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie

... another city, but I think the state will keep them here as guests for a nice long time, Cleary. They say New York is inhospitable to strangers, but we occasionally pay for board and room from the funds of the taxpayers without a kick. We saved the day for the Van Clefts, all right. The paper told of a beautiful but quiet funeral ceremony, while the daughter has postponed ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... that public distinction and dignity which may richly console a man for the severest private sacrifice. It is a kind destiny which veils their future from mortal men. Fifteen years passed before De Maistre's exile came to a close. From 1802 to 1817 he did not quit the inhospitable latitudes ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley

... American antelope; the body is of the same square build, but is sadly lacking in plumpness, and he seems to be an altogether lankier and less well-favored animal. For this constitutional difference, he is probably indebted to the barren and inhospitable character of the country over which he roams, as compared with the splendid feeding-grounds of the—Far West. The Persians sometimes hunt the antelope on horseback, with falcons and greyhounds; the falcons are taught to fly in advance and attack ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... the Prince of Wales, and the demonstrations made toward him in the Northern States, evidently made a deep impression on Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort, who also doubtless felt chagrined by the inhospitable manner in which the young traveler was treated in Virginia. In the darkest hours of the Civil War which followed, when so many leading British statesmen espoused the cause of the Confederates, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were always ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... all has been done, and I shall have no more to do with the trade of this inhospitable coast, you may be assured. My only hope and desire is once more to see you and your mother safe in England, where I can make you by ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray

... degrees of combination, have unquestionably played a most prominent part in making the different races of mankind what they at present are. We have only to look at the low type of life exhibited by the primitive inhabitants of certain inhospitable regions of the globe to see how profoundly the physical structure of man is affected by his natural surroundings. Even a comparatively slight difference of environment is not without effect upon the population subjected to its influence. According to M. de Quatrefages, the bodily structure ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison

... culture of a people; whilst, on the other hand, without this sheltering home, the genius will not, generally speaking, be able to rise to the height of his eternal flight, but will at an early moment, like a stranger weather-driven upon a bleak, snow-covered desert, slink away from the inhospitable land." ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche

... the Union had inundated it with nearly $100,000,000, of new circulating medium. Those who unfortunately owed money lost all the fruit of long work, and skilled laborers were obliged to exchange the shelter of their old homes for the inhospitable western forests. Forced sales of provisions, merchandise, and implements were made, greatly below their purchase price. Many families were obliged to limit their most necessary wants. Money and credit were so scarce ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar

... because he is not sure of his foothold, so deeply is he absorbed in reading. It is a triumph of concentration. Donatello has enlisted every agency that could intensify the oblivion of the world around him. It is from this aloofness that the figure leaves a detached and inhospitable impression. One feels instinctively that this St. John would be friendless, for he has nothing to offer, and asks no sympathy. There is no room for anybody else in his career, and nobody can share his labours or mitigate his privations. In short, ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

... lively, and may be easily and aptly applied on many occasions by those whose wit is not so perfect as their memory. This Diogenes (as every one will recollect) was citizen of a little bleak town situated on the coast of the Euxine, and exposed to all the buffets of that inhospitable sea. He lived at a great distance from those weather-beaten walls, in ease and indolence, and in the midst of literary leisure, when he was informed that his townsmen had condemned him to be banished from Sinope; he answered ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... of upright life and pure from wickedness, O Fuscus, has no need of the Moorish javelins, or bow, or quiver loaded with poisoned darts. Whether he is about to make his journey through the sultry Syrtes, or the inhospitable Caucasus, or those places which Hydaspes, celebrated in story, washes. For lately, as I was singing my Lalage, and wandered beyond my usual bounds, devoid of care, a wolf in the Sabine wood fled from me, though I was unarmed: such ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... like an overflowing torrent. With difficulty restraining the exhibition of his passions, as soon as he got by himself he swore that not another sun should roll by and find him under that roof. Late at night he silently arose, and turning his back on what he thought an inhospitable home, in mood in which the child should never leave the parental roof, bent ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... of his wife's fears, or his promise to her, or the inhospitable nature of his errand founded on suspicion, certainly Chauncey showed no spirit of rashness in conducting his search. He knocked the mud off his boots loudly on the doorsill before proceeding to attach the padlock to the outer door. He searched the loom-room, lighting a candle and peering into ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... who under no circumstance could have been cold or inhospitable, received the intimation that Deleah was to stay until Reginald came home with less ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann

... here before, and you may be sure I will never return, if I can once reach home again." "I will give you cause to remember having been here," said he; and attacked me with a thigh-bone, like a very devil, whilst I avoided his blows as well as I could. "By heavens," said I, "this is a most inhospitable country to strangers. Is there a justice of the peace here?" "Peace!" said he, "what peace do you deserve, who will not let people rest in their graves?" "Pray, sir," said I, "may I be allowed to know your name, because ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... mansion reared before me a closed and inhospitable front. The shutters of all the windows were fastened. Since the last rain no wheels had passed over the carriage-way. For all the signs of life visible, Cairncross might have been ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... creaked on its rusty fastenings, and with each fresh gust the bracketed lamps rocked gently to and fro, and as they rocked their trembling shadows slid back and forth along the walls. The very air of the place was inhospitable, forbidding, and Mr. Shrimplin was strongly inclined to close the door ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester

... a peak of 6,970 feet altitude, on treacherous Shelikof Strait, opposite Kodiak Island. It rises from an inhospitable shore far from steamer routes or other recognized lines of travel. Until it announced itself with a roar which was heard at Juneau, seven hundred and fifty miles away, its very existence was probably unknown except to a few prospectors, fishermen, geographers, and geologists. Earthquakes followed ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... inhospitable third-class of the Verdun train made mental pictures of Vinson's progress south. He ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... she said in a whisper. She might have spoken through a megaphone and still been quite safe. We were tramping up the stairs. "Don't you think your guests will consider you rather inhospitable if you stay away ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... 'What say you to my marrying? I intend next autumn to visit Miss Bosville in Yorkshire; but I fear, my lot being cast in Scotland, that beauty would not be content. She is, however, grave; I shall see.' Letters of Boswell, p. 81. She married Sir A. Macdonald, Johnson's inhospitable host in Sky (ante, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... different exposures. This was cold enough, in fact, too cold for comfort, and we were obliged to put on all our furs. When fully wrapped I could have filled the eye of any match-making parent in Christendom, so far as quantity is concerned. The doctor walked as if the icy and inhospitable North had been his dwelling-place for a dozen generations, and promised to continue so a few hundred years longer. We were about as agile as a pair of prize hogs, or the fat boy in the side show of ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... heard nothing from England or Ireland since I left Yarmouth, nothing of Union, and nothing of you; but how can I till the summer, if the last ten days of soft weather will not unlock the inhospitable ice of the Elbe at Cuxhaven? We are all well. God send that you and yours are so. Love to Lord B. and George and Mary. The Major is, I trust, soon expecting you ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... said he; "drink by all means so long as it amuses you. I had far rather you exceeded than that I should appear inhospitable." ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... to Stephen and Nevill to see one of the horsemen coming up the rough hill-track to the gate, and to think that they need no longer wait upon the fears or inhospitable whims of the Arab servants on the ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... proceeded to bestow his name and his rule upon Britain. In support of this we may quote Milton, with a suggestion that he was a greater poet than historian: "The Iland, not yet Britain but Albion, was in a manner desert and inhospitable, kept only by a remnant of giants, whose excessive force and tyranny had consumed the rest. Them Brutus destroies, and to his people divides the land, which, with some reference to his own name, he thenceforth calls Britain. To Corineus ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon

... circumstances, the gourmands of the gunroom were most unfeignedly delighted at abandoning such an inhospitable region as that of "The Widespreading-sand Island," where they had to starve in the midst of plenty; so likewise was I, the only thing which I had to thank our sojourn off the province of Shan-tung for being the nickname ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson

... stop for lunch?" said he. "It is past half-past one. I never knew anything so inhospitable as turning ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... "An inhospitable reception England affords us, after an absence of so many years. Methinks I like Gascony the better ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... did not seem in the least more pleased when Ethel entreated her friend Laura not to take her bonnet, not to think of going away so soon. She came to see us the very next day, stayed much longer with us than usual, and returned to town quite late in the evening, in spite of the entreaties of the inhospitable Laura, who would have had her leave us long before. "I am sure," says clear-sighted Mrs. Laura, "she is come out of bravado, and after we went away yesterday that there were words between her and Lord Farintosh ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... any time for classical quotation, for there was obviously a fray about to ensue, at which, feeling myself indiginant at the inhospitable insolence with which I was treated, I was totally indifferent, unless on the Bailie's account, whose person and qualities were ill qualified for such an adventure. I started up, however, on seeing the others rise, and dropped my cloak from my shoulders, that I might be ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... scorned to give themselves any trouble about the matter, except to breathe a slumberous execration against the disturbers of their sleep. On the other hand, our anathemas were louder, and quite as bitter upon these inhospitable inmates. Finally, after half an hour's vigorous but ineffectual assault upon the portal, we retreated in despair, and betook ourselves to walk the streets. The night was beautifully clear, but too cool for the enervated frame of an African voyager. We were tired with dancing, and occasionally ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge

... accomplished their business, and when he was seen, he was still more despised; and because he would sit silently on the baggage, he gave them the notion of being a person of mean condition and a very timid man. However Cato would call them to him, and would say, "Ye miserable wretches, lay aside this inhospitable practice. All those who come to you will not be Catos. Dull by your kind reception the power of those who only want a pretext to take by force what they cannot get from you ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... by your care? No, sir; your oppressions planted them in America! They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated and inhospitable country, where they exposed themselves to all the evils which a wilderness, filled with blood-thirsty savages, could threaten. And yet, actuated by true English love of liberty, they thought all these evils light in comparison with what they suffered in their own ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... sanguinary prince, whose filthy dungeons resounded with the moans of heavily ironed, half-starved prisoners; among a people who detested foreigners; he, the only European who had ever passed over their inhospitable threshold, naturally felt uncomfortable. The Amir, it seems, had four principal wives, and an army of 200 men armed chiefly with daggers. Burton describes the streets of Harar as dirty narrow lanes heaped with garbage, and the houses as situated at the bottom of courtyards, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... simultaneously with the attacks on Ireland came those on the western coast of Scotland. In the course of their westward expeditions the Northmen had already discovered the Faroe Islands, the Orkneys, the Shetlands and the Hebrides. These barren and inhospitable islands received large numbers of Norse immigrants and long remained ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... doctor," said the squire, as the former shook hands to go, after giving orders for his patient to be kept quiet, and assuring the squire that the young fellow would be none the worse for the adventures of the night—"I'm not an inhospitable man, but one has to think twice before asking a hundred such to have a mug of ale. I should have liked to do it, and it was on my lips, but the barrel would have said no, I'm ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn

... told of a lady in Uist, who refused, on religious grounds, the usual sacrifice to this domestic spirit. The first and second brewings failed, but the third succeeded; and thus, when Brownie lost the perquisite to which he had been so long accustomed, he abandoned the inhospitable house, where his services had so long been faithfully rendered. The last place in the south of Scotland supposed to have been honoured, or benefited, by the residence of a Brownie, was Bodsbeck in Moffatdale, which has been the subject of an entertaining tale by ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... day by day, the visible deepening of the soft woodland tints, hearing the cheerful sounds of labor, far and wide, in the vapory air, and feeling at once the repose and the beauty of such a quiet, pastoral life, could have turned his back upon it, to battle with the inhospitable wilderness of the West. Gilbert Potter had had ideas of a new home, to be created by himself, and a life to which none should deny honor and respect: but now he gave them up forever. There was a battle to be fought—better here than elsewhere—here, where every scene was dear and familiar, ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... ship at sea; the roof continually leaks, the windows are always "coming abroad," and the panes drop out at "scattered times," while even when shut, the wind whistles through as if to show his utter disdain of our inhospitable and paltry efforts to keep him outside. On stormy nights, in spite of closed windows, the rooms resemble huge snowdrifts. Seven maids with seven mops sweeping for half a year could never get it clear. The building heaves so much with the frost that the doors constantly ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding

... Maenalus, to be dreaded for its dens of beasts of prey, and the pine-groves of cold Lycaeus, together with Cyllene.[44] After this, I entered the realms and the inhospitable abode of the Arcadian tyrant, just as the late twilight was bringing on the night. I gave a signal that a God had come, and the people commenced to pay their adorations. In the first place, Lycaon derided their pious supplications. Afterwards, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... we passed it by about four in the afternoon. Above this scattered bush lay a long steep slope of boulder-strewn ground, which ran up to the foot of the little peak some three miles away. As we emerged, footsore and weary, on to this inhospitable plain, some of the men looking round caught sight of the spears of Wambe's impi advancing rapidly not more ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard

... must pass, from the first transport of joy on meeting till that painful anxious hour when you must bid adieu to your darlings, with faint hopes of ever seeing them again in this life; and then, what you may both have to pass through in those inhospitable regions.... ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... from Marsden Vale, our savage friends laughed heartily at us. They had warned us of the reception we should meet with; and their delight at seeing us again formed a strange contrast to that of their Christian teachers, whose inhospitable dwellings we determined ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle

... which we had first struck on Saturday. Every glass was directed along the shore (as they had been throughout the day) to discover any trace of our absent consort; but as none was seen our solicitude respecting her was much increased, and we feared the crew might be wrecked on this inhospitable shore. Guns were frequently fired to apprise any who might be near of our approach; but as no one appeared and no signal was returned and the loose ice was setting down towards the ship we bore up to proceed to the next appointed ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... the North Carolina shore, which, when the daylight dawned, they could distinctly see, with its ominous line of breakers and inhospitable perilous coast. The men had continued rowing all night, and as the summer sun rose flaming over their heads, the task of pulling the boat became dreadfully severe; still they followed the coast, Mr. C—— looking out for any opening, creek, or small inlet, that might give them a ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... out fifteen or twenty miles to the Diamond, you may find really rare and valuable animals. There is a risk, of course, of being blown over to the coast of France, by a change of wind; there is a risk also of not being able to land at night on the inhospitable Hastings beach, and of sleeping, as best you can, on board: but in the long days and settled fine weather of summer, the trip, in a stout boat, ought to be a safe and ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley

... the Nancy Bell had closed with the land so much that its features could be distinguished. A bare, inhospitable coast ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... INQUIRY. The Christian attitude toward inquiry was from the first inhospitable, and in time became exceedingly intolerant. The tendency of the Western Church, it will be remembered (p. 94), was from the first to reject all Hellenic learning, and to depend upon emotional faith and the enforcement of a moral life. By ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... inhospitable, wild, I rove, Where armed travellers bend their fearful way; Nor danger dread, save from that sun of love, Bright sun! which darts a soul-enflaming ray. Of her I sing, all-thoughtless as I stray, Whose sweet idea strong as heaven's shall ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... loud lament: "Hector, of all my children dearest thou! Dear to th' Immortals too in life wast thou, And they in death have borne thee still in mind; For other of my sons, his captives made, Across the wat'ry waste, to Samos' isle Or Imbros, or th' inhospitable shore Of Lemnos, hath Achilles, swift of foot, To slav'ry sold; thee, when his sharp-edg'd spear Had robb'd thee of thy life, he dragg'd indeed Around Patroclus' tomb, his comrade dear, Whom thou hadst slain; yet so he rais'd not up Ilis dead to life again; ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... turned to go; glad to wash his hands of the whole affair, and feeling thoroughly ashamed that it had ever fallen to his lot to treat a guest in so inhospitable ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday

... continued wandering in a weak and feeble state for twelve days longer, making twenty-six in all from the period of their shipwreck, and subsisting on what they could find on a barren and inhospitable land. But after the first four or five days, they suffered no hunger, for, as they themselves said, their misfortunes were so great as to banish its influence, and to deprive them of the sense of feeling.—The snow besides was so deep during the last two days, as to prevent ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... was merely with the view of weakening the army, that the six thousand troops were required for the Cardinal Infante; it was solely for the purpose of harassing it by a winter campaign, that they were now called on, in this inhospitable season, to undertake the recovery of Ratisbon. The means of subsistence were everywhere rendered difficult, while the Jesuits and the ministry enriched themselves with the sweat of the provinces, and squandered the money intended for the pay of the troops. ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.

... work of constructing the post as laid out by him. In those days the Government did not provide very liberally for sheltering its soldiers; and officers and men were frequently forced to eke out parsimonious appropriations by toilsome work or go without shelter in most inhospitable regions. Of course this post was no exception to the general rule, and as all hands were occupied in its construction, and I the only officer present, I was kept busily employed in supervising matters, ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan

... its opposite neighbor, Pearl Hill, have witnessed the transformation of a rude, inhospitable wilderness into a beautiful and busy city. We of the present day, proud of our heritage, are striving to improve it by all means within ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... productions as impartially as was in my power; I thought they had merit; and it was a delicious idea that I should be called a clever fellow, even though it should never reach my ears—a poor negro-driver—or perhaps a victim to that inhospitable clime, and gone to the world of spirits! I can truly say, that pauvre inconnu as I then was, I had pretty nearly as high an idea of myself and of my works as I have at this moment, when the public has decided in their ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... glow of life and flush of beauty upon the maiden's cheek, the ruby lips and the grace and elegance of her movements and winning manners? We may speak of ideal beauty in countries where the physical development of the inhabitants is blasted by the severities of the extreme heat and cold of an inhospitable clime, where the blasts of winter make every form shiver for many months of the year; but the superior beauty of the daughters of Northern Italy, if they were placed side by side with Venus de Medici, would laugh that frigid ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner

... said the captain sadly; "but as far as we can make out there is no chance for a human being to exist there. Any one wrecked in such an inhospitable place would certainly have taken to a sheltered spot under the cliffs, where he would be protected from the coldest ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn

... a November evening it was not an inviting prospect. Bush and bush, and more bush, grew down to the very verge of the water in a mass that spoke of heavy swamp and no landing. Behind that, I knew, was rising land, country rock, and again swamp and more swamp,—and all of it harsh, ugly, and inhospitable. But the queer thought that came over me was that it was more than inhospitable: it was forbidding. High over my head poured the bitter wind in a river of sound through the bare tree tops; close at hand it rustled with a flurry of dead leaves ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... is by far the most capable of the Siberian tribes; he values the gifts of the life-giving sun and enjoys them to the full. When he escapes from his narrow, stinking winter-yurta he fills his hitherto inhospitable country with life and movement; his energy is doubled, his vitality pulsates with greater strength and intensity. When the 'Ysech', the feast of spring, is over, the animated mood of the population does not abate in the least. ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... Each Moorish passenger paid half a dollar for the voyage. I have been thus particular in describing our coaster and its live freight, to show what misery is endured in these coasting voyages. It was, however, a fit introduction to my painful journeyings through the still more inhospitable ocean desert. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... several kingdoms, among which are the Arinchi, a most savage tribe, the Sinchi, and the Napaei, whose cruelty, being aggravated by continual licence, is the reason why the sea is called the Inhospitable,[129] from which by the rule of contrary it gets the name of the Euxine, just as the Greeks call a fool euethes, and night euthrone, and the ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... July and August was taking shape in Lorry's mind. July and August! Where would she be? Boye had said something about Europe, and at the time it had seemed to her the ultima Thule of her dreams. Now it looked as far away as the moon and as inhospitable. ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... and in the soft whir in his face of a leatherwing bat as it wheeled low in the twilight. There was no smoke in the chimneys, and the square old house, with its hooded roof and its vacant windows, assumed a sinister and inhospitable look against the background of oaks. His mother and his aunt, he concluded, were doubtless away for their winter's shopping, so lifting his horse's head from the grass, he passed between the marble urns and the ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... "You may tell the archdeacon that wherever I am I shall receive what letters I please and from whom I please. And as for the word 'disgraceful,' if Dr. Grantly has used it of me, he has been unmanly and inhospitable," and she walked off to the door. "When Papa comes from the dining-room I will thank you to ask him to step up to my bedroom. I will show him Mr. Slope's letter, but I will show it to no one else." And so saying, she retreated to ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... India had been made vicariously, but in this case it was an Englishman who had performed the journey. He believed he was right in saying that no Englishman before Mr. McNair had ever visited the Swat Valley. It was now inhabited by a most inhospitable race, who had become Afghanised, but rumours had often been heard about the Buddhist there. Eighteen or twenty centuries ago it was one of the most sacred spots of Buddhism, filled with Buddhist monasteries and temples, but, as far as he knew, no ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard

... officers, together with a crowd of idlers, visited her. One only of the crew appeared to have arrived with her. He had got to shore, and had walked a few paces towards the town, and then, vanquished by malady and approaching death, had fallen on the inhospitable beach. He was found stiff, his hands clenched, and pressed against his breast. His skin, nearly black, his matted hair and bristly beard, were signs of a long protracted misery. It was whispered that he had died of the plague. No one ventured on board the vessel, and strange sights were ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... by his great lines of roads, which did on a smaller scale for the Highland valleys what railways have since done for the whole of the civilized world; he also laboured to improve her means of transit at sea by constructing a series of harbours along that bare and inhospitable eastern coast, once almost a desert, but now teeming with great towns and prosperous industries. It was Telford who formed the harbour of Wick, which has since grown from a miserable fishing village into a large town, the capital of the North Sea herring fisheries. ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen

... urge you to be inhospitable, Bert, let him finish his dinner in peace. After dinner, however, the sooner young Bayliss returns to his home, or at least, goes away from here, the better I shall be pleased. As for you, young man, I have had enough ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock

... of hills rises black against the sky, and there, set upon a boldly jutting spur, the Castle of Sagan dominates the inhospitable landscape like a frown ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard

... tread through the trees, and the man with the musket hailed him, tramping to the gate. He carried a great iron key in his free hand, and this he fitted to the lock of the gate, which, unused to its inhospitable condition, creaked and groaned as he tugged at it. As at length it yielded the man of Harby opened one-half wide enough to admit the passage of a human body, and signalled to Halfman to come through. Halfman, smilingly observant, obeyed the invitation, and looked ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... was bound to be inhospitable to parasites. By the very ease with which it assimilated all food of earth and heaven, it starved ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... there under the burning sun, and there was no water near; so they were obliged to proceed three or four miles further, to the Moslem village of Zorava. The nature of the disease was now painfully certain. The Mohammedan villagers were terrified and inhospitable. They would not even allow a morsel of bread to be sold to the faithful Nestorians who accompanied the family, nor even barley for their tired, hungry horses. And when the limbs of the child were cold and stiffening under the power of the deadly disease, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson

... people, commerce, and productions of half North America, concentrate around a single point. No other place has the same advantage of radial lines. Quebec is relatively on the Atlantic. The upper end of Lake Superior is comparatively on an inhospitable land. Chicago is at a lateral point on the south end of Lake Michigan,—three hundred miles from the main channel of commerce. At Mackinaw concentrate all the radial lines of water navigation in the upper lakes. ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland

... persecution was when it is remembered that, in the early part of the seventeenth century, there were two millions of Christians, and, about the same time, almost as many martyrs. All missionaries who, since 1630, landed on the inhospitable shores of Japan, were immediately seized, tortured, and put to death. It was generally believed that the Christian people were totally exterminated. Pius IX., notwithstanding, as if actuated by some secret inspiration, ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... under Col. Green, where Count Donop the commander was killed, and the Hessians defeated. All this appears to be forgotten now; and the descendants of these men, to whom we are indebted for the part they took in the struggle for independence, are intended to be removed to a distant and inhospitable country, while the emigrants from every other country are permitted to seek an asylum here from oppression, and to enjoy the blessings of both civil and religious liberty, equally with those who are entitled to it ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... Mexico afford grounds for considering it a typical structure for its times and for the natives of the southwestern region. Many other structures were mentioned or described by the Spanish explorers, but the impressions of these explorers were tinctured by previous experience in an inhospitable region, and their descriptions were tinged by the romantic ideas of the age; very few of these structures were within the limits of the United States, and nearly all of these situated in the neighboring republic of Mexico disappeared long ago; there is hardly ...
— The Repair Of Casa Grande Ruin, Arizona, in 1891 • Cosmos Mindeleff

... side. Unfavourable conditions of life overrule the power of selection. Our improved heavy breeds of cattle and sheep could not have been formed on mountainous pastures; nor could dray-horses have been raised on a barren and inhospitable land, such as the Falkland islands, where even the light horses of La Plata rapidly decrease in size. Nor could the wool of sheep have been much increased in length within the Tropics; yet selection has kept Merino sheep nearly ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... seas, how many were those who were never heard of again; how many a little exploring bark with its adventurous crew have been sunk in Australia's seas, while those poor wretches who might, in times gone by, have landed upon the inhospitable shore would certainly have been killed by the wild and savage hordes of hostile aborigines, from whom there could be no escape! With Stokes the list of those who have visited and benefited Australia by their labours ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... Highlanders, at the same time that ships were hiring in the north to transport men. The fairness of Dr. Cameron's character, compared with the severity he met from a government most laudably mild to its enemies, confirmed this report. That Prussia, who opened its inhospitable arms to every British rebel, should have tampered in such a business, was by no means improbable. That King hated his uncle: but could a Protestant potentate dip in designs for restoring a popish government? Of what religion is policy? To what sect is royal revenge ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... of murder and superstition. Since that day, the belief in witchcraft has fled from the populous abodes of men, and taken refuge in remote villages and districts too wild, rugged, and inhospitable to afford a resting-place for the foot of civilisation. Rude fishers and uneducated labourers still attribute every phenomenon of nature which they cannot account for, to the devil and witches. Catalepsy, that wondrous ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay



Words linked to "Inhospitable" :   unfriendly, hostile, barren, wild, godforsaken, bare, waste, hospitable, inhospitality, windswept, desolate, bleak, water-washed, uncongenial, stark



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