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Devastation   /dˌɛvəstˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Devastation

noun
1.
The state of being decayed or destroyed.  Synonym: desolation.
2.
The feeling of being confounded or overwhelmed.
3.
An event that results in total destruction.  Synonym: desolation.
4.
Plundering with excessive damage and destruction.  Synonym: ravaging.
5.
The termination of something by causing so much damage to it that it cannot be repaired or no longer exists.  Synonym: destruction.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Devastation" Quotes from Famous Books



... secret some people could be in their designs. There was no saying what Lady Hunter might think of it; it really seemed as if Deerbrook, that had had such a good character hitherto, was going to be on a level with Popish places—a place of devastation and conflagration. Lady Hunter looked excessively grave when she heard this; and, if possible, graver than ever, when she was told that not only had a lantern been found in the churchyard with a bit of candle left in the socket, but that a piece of charred stick, full three ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... wars, it became a sovereign state in 1806 and joined the Germanic Confederation in 1815. Liechtenstein became fully independent in 1866 when the Confederation dissolved. Until the end of World War I, it was closely tied to Austria, but the economic devastation caused by that conflict forced Liechtenstein to enter into a customs and monetary union with Switzerland. Since World War II (in which Liechtenstein remained neutral), the country's low taxes have ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... when their lines are broken, When their shrapnel falls less fast, Shalt thou fail to send a token Undefeated to the last? Surely not. Red devastation Still shall urge by land and sea Every proud advancing nation While Marconi's installation Rules the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various

... ushered in by one of the most terrible hailstorms ever witnessed in London. It lasted for more than three hours, and created great devastation. Inundations spread, and the windows of the public buildings were extensively shattered. The glass in the roof of the picture-gallery at Buckingham Palace was totally destroyed; the damage was estimated at L2000. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... Deities confound you, Ergasilus, and your stomach, and all Parasites, and every one who henceforth shall give a dinner to Parasites. Destruction and devastation and ruin have just now entered our house. I was afraid that he would be making an attack on me, as though he had been an hungry wolf. And very dreadfully, upon my faith, was I frightened at him; he made such a gnashing with his teeth. On his arrival, the whole larder, ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus

... bony hand deprecatingly. "The universal complaint, monsieur. It is the one great drawback to our Cause that we have as yet discovered no means of propagating it save only by the theory of devastation. It is only strong men and, I regret to say it, desperate men who can accept the gospel of dynamite. There are teeming millions of others ready enough to blow up society as it is at present constituted, but who shrink from the only means ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

... allowance should be made for verbal modelling which, in many cases, is but the mere expression of a mood pro tempo. There is, however, somewhat of truth in the description. About the granite walls there is a grimness and gauntness of decay; of changed plans and projects; of devastation; of restoration; and, finally, of what is, apparently, submission to ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... of terror, destroying the cane in the fields of loyalists and burning their sugar mills. To protect the loyalists and repress the rebels the Queen Regent sent General Valeriano Weyler to the island in 1896, with orders to end the war. Weyler replied to devastation with concentration. Unable to separate the loyal natives from the disloyal, or to prevent the latter from aiding the rebels, he gathered the suspected population into huge concentration camps, fortified his towns and ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson

... unaccountably as it began,—attacking, weeks after, the previously unscathed division of the army, or not attacking it at all at the time, yet returning at a distant interval, when all traces of the former epidemic had ceased, and committing the same devastation. Now, will any man, not utterly blinded by prejudice, candidly reviewing these facts, pretend to say, that this could be a personal contagion, cognizable by, and amenable to, any of the known or even supposable laws of infection—that ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest

... murmured, in a sort of wail or whine. "Take notice, comrade, that I weep when I speak of it. If you write anything about me be sure to say that I cried when the war was mentioned. We Germans have been so misjudged. When I think of the devastation of France and ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock

... fragments of all the hams they had eaten; while a heap of broken bottles filled the whole left-hand corner of the cellar, and a tun, the cock of which was left running, was yielding, by this means, the last drop of its blood. "The image of devastation and death," as the ancient poet says, "reigned as over a field ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... economy of civilized man," says Dr. Fernow; for, as he adds, the cone-bearing trees "have furnished the bulk of the material of which our civilization is built." As usual, civilization has destroyed ruthlessly, thoughtlessly, almost viciously, in using this material; wherefore the devastation of the forests, moving them back from us farther and farther until in many regions they are but a thin fringe, has left most of us totally unfamiliar with these trees, of the utmost beauty as well as ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland

... was the cause of the expatriation and subsequent wandering life of these people, must be abandoned as untenable. At the time he is stated by the Arabian writer to have annihilated the Gypsy hordes of Samarcand, he had but just commenced his career of conquest and devastation, and had not even directed his thoughts to the invasion of India; yet at this early period of the history of his life, we find families of Zingarri established at Samarcand, living much in the same manner as others of the race have subsequently ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... have your features florid, Lithe limbs, bright eyes, unwrinkled forehead, From age's devastation horrid, Adopt this plan— 'Twill make, in climate cold or torrid, A ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... she broke in, coldly furious, but with a volcano in her breast that threatened eruption and devastation shortly. "Will you let me go, Captain Carey? Or must I call my servants to my assistance? ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... one of the most fatal eruptions of Mount Vesuvius that is mentioned in history took place in the year 79, during the reign of the Emperor Titus. All Campagna was filled with consternation, and the country was overwhelmed with devastation in every direction; towns, villages, palaces, and their inhabitants were consumed by molten lava, and hidden from the sight by showers of volcanic ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... bringing in, for one harvest in Norway treads on the heels of the other. The woods were more variegated, interspersed with shrubs. We no longer passed through forests of vast pines stretching along with savage magnificence. Forests that only exhibited the slow decay of time or the devastation produced by warring elements. No; oaks, ashes, beech, and all the light and graceful tenants of our woods here sported luxuriantly. I had not observed many oaks before, for the greater part of the oak-planks, I am ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft

... main deck. The name of this ship, be it mentioned, was the Good Samaritan, as ill-fitting a name as could be for such a craft, which, instead of being designed for the healing of wounds, was intended to inflict such devastation ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle

... men must move if a better world is to arise on the ruins of the one which is now hurling itself into destruction. We see that men's political dealings with one another are based on wholly wrong ideals, and can only be saved by quite different ideals from continuing to be a source of suffering, devastation, and sin. ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell

... cavalry sent to pursue him—he even shot his horses as they gave out, in the forced flight—his expedition had accomplished its object. It had proved that no point of harassed territory was safe from Federal devastation; that the overtaxed and waning strength of the South was insufficient ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... mate and spouse, Such answering passion in her heart could rouse, Or wake such tumult in her soul as this. Let come what will, let Greece and Asia meet, Let heroes die and kingdoms run with gore; Let devastation spread from shore to shore - Resplendent Helen finds her bondage sweet. The whole world fights her battles, while she lies Sunned in the fervour ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... over the “surround” presented the appearance of one vast slaughter-house. He who had been the most successful in the work of devastation was celebrated as a hero, and received the highest honours from the fair sex, while he who had been so unfortunate as not to have killed a single buffalo was jeered at and ridiculed ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... insurrection of the gladiators and their devastation of Italy, which is generally called the war of Spartacus,[27] originated as follows:—One Lentulus Batiates kept gladiators in Capua, of whom the majority, who were Gauls and Thracians, had been closely confined, not for any misbehaviour on their part, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... seen that the only thing mentioned as breaking out more suddenly and being more dreadful in its devastation than an earthquake is the "plague": "quo IMPROVISIOR GRAVIORque PESTIS fuit." Bracciolini spoke from personal observation. When he was here in England in 1422, he would not venture abroad nor leave London, on account ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... the ship on the 2nd July, we found a despatch from Earl Russell, containing instructions for the withdrawal of the Expedition. The devastation caused by slave-hunting and famine lay all around. The labour had been as completely swept away from the Great Shire Valley, as it had been from the Zambesi, wherever Portuguese intrigue or power extended. The continual ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... any leaning towards the Albigensian heretics on the score of creed or religious liberty; but his sense of justice and moderation was shocked at the violence employed against them, and he had a repugnance to the idea of taking part in the devastation of the beautiful southern provinces. He took it ill, moreover, that the pope should arrogate to himself the right of despoiling of their dominions, on the ground of heresy, princes who were vassals of the King ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... poured forth its bowels in a spout of broken mineral; man with his picks and powder, and nature with her own great blasting tools of sun and rain, labouring together at the ruin of that proud mountain. The view up the canyon was a glimpse of devastation; dry red minerals sliding together, here and there a crag, here and there dwarf thicket clinging in the general glissade, and over all a broken outline trenching on the blue of heaven. Downwards indeed, ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the village in total paralysis of all natural activities. It was like a deadly pall. This was no new terror; it was old devastation—bred into the ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... strewn with grovelling, shrieking bodies, trampled beneath the feet of their uninjured but insane companions. Dead and wounded, crushed and maimed, made up the surging humanity in the fatal pass. The rocks had mowed them down. Devastation had come like lightning from ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon

... Germans must have been obliged to retreat suddenly, for heaps of unexploded shells for the three-inch and five-inch German field-guns were abandoned, and in wicker baskets were loads of three-inch unexploded shells, apparently about to be served to the gunners. Wanton, ruthless devastation everywhere! In a field was a wrecked aeroplane, a white and yellow taube, with its right wing reaching into the air, looking like some gigantic, wounded bird. Towards sunset, an automobile passed along the road through this terrible ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard

... and live under their own laws; that they should possess such cities and territories as they had enjoyed before the war, and with the same boundaries, and that the Romans should on that day desist from devastation. That they should restore to the Romans all deserters and fugitives, giving up all their ships-of-war except ten triremes, with such tamed elephants as they had, and that they should not tame any more. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... my new undertaking, and my heart began to beat high with the hope of being able one day to visit the pomp of the Southern and Western people in my vengeance; and of seeing their cities and towns one common scene of devastation, smoked ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough

... a circlet of green marked the location of a military hospital. Ah!... Yes, some came back. But even then they must brand their pain-racked sanctuary with the mercy imploring emblem of the Red Cross so that enemy planes, bent on devastation, would mingle mercy with hope of victory and save their bombs for those not yet carried into the long wards where white-robed doctors and nurses battled with death and spoke words of ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke

... the windows of those habitations which had neglected the adoption of measures of security, to kill the poultry, and lay level with the earth the shrubs and the corn. In fact, storms of this description never fail to occasion the most extensive devastation, and to commit injuries to the settlers, which the labour of months is ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann

... her name was Maud!" It was in the height of Opper's popularity, his "comic supplements" the chief dependence of the road-houses for wall-paper. The reference was so apposite that we burst into laughter, but there was nothing funny about the devastation that had been wrought. That good trail was all gone—the bottom pounded out of it—and nothing was left but a ploughed lane punched full of sink-holes. We had no trouble following the trail on the river after ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... recovered its territory and its harbours; and the barbarous fury of Cotta against the unhappy city met with the sharpest censure in the senate. Lucullus had deeply and sincerely regretted that fate had refused him the happiness of rescuing Sinope and Amisus from devastation by the Pontic soldiery and his own: he did at least what he could to restore them, extended considerably their territories, peopled them afresh—partly with the old inhabitants, who at his invitation ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... sometimes have questioned, when lingering near The home of the dead, of the friends who were dear, If the brightest enchantments of earth could repair The sad devastation that time has made there; If the joys of the world had a balm to impart, That would act as a charm to the woes of the heart. Yes, there is such a balm, but it comes from above, It is wafted to ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney

... treason and disarming the Union, and most adroitly were its plans in this respect carried into effect. It had gained over to its side most of the Southern material in the little army and navy of the country, and prepared it for perfidy, in committing devastation or theft on the public property. Thus allied and thus equipped, in the confidence of its pernicious strength, it commenced ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... Iowa, had grown very pale. He buttoned his coat and kept one hand in the region of his belt. One second he peered wildly out of the windows on his side, the next he strained to see if devastation and ruin ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... other, feeling ill at ease as he always did in the presence of officialdom. The officer sat at a heavy table which had evidently been the kitchen table of the French peasant people who had originally occupied the poor cottage. Signs of petty German devastation were all about the humble, low-ceiled place, and they seemed to evidence a more loathsome brutality even than did the blighted country which Tom ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... 'sentent trop la campagne[4].' But the hour of pastoralism had come, and while the ladies and gallants of the court were playing the parts of Watteau swains and shepherdesses amid the trim hedges and smooth lawns of Versailles, the gates were already bursting before the flood, which was to sweep in devastation over the land, and to purge the old order of ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... way of retaliation for the fate of the mines. Could the burghers have foreseen that the entire country would be laid waste in any case as the war proceeded, nothing could have saved the mines. But the devastation of Boer homesteads was not to begin until a much later period, and to this fact the "Destroyers" no doubt owed the ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt

... Surrounding Country. Destroying Earthquake Comes Without Warning, in the Early Hours of the Morning; Immense Structures Topple and Crumble; Great Leland Stanford University Succumbs; Water Mains Demolished and Fire Completes Devastation; Fighting Fire ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... Alexandrian lineage of the Princes. 2. Badakhshan and the Balas Ruby. 3. Azure Mines. 4. Horses of Badakhshan. 5. Naked Barley. 6. Wild sheep. 7. Scenery of Badakhshan. 8. Repeated devastation of the Country from War. 9. Amplitude of ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... necessary things, we are not too exacting with respect to such as are unnecessary, especially since heretofore these rites have, to a great extent, remained in the churches of these regions.... We know that much is said against this moderation, but the devastation of the churches, such as is taking place in Swabia, would be a still greater offense." (7, 251ff.) The plan of Melanchthon therefore was to yield in things which he regarded as unnecessary in order to maintain the truth ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... suicide, and frustrating one's own objects, these are the six kinds of faults born of wrath, that have also been mentioned. Diverse kinds of machines and their actions have been described there. Devastation of the enemy's territories, attacks upon foes, the destruction and removal of landmarks and other indications, the cutting down of large trees (for depriving the enemy and the enemy's subjects of their refreshing shade), siege of forts, supervision of agriculture and other useful operations, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... I come in full dress. And do the honour to the Duke's motto. I saw my little man off on Monday, after expedition over Bank and Tower. Thence to Pym's, Poultry: oysters consumed by dozings. Thence to Purcell's: great devastation of pastry. Thence to Shoreditch, where Sons calmly said: "Never mind, Papa; it is no use minding it. I shall soon be back to you," and so administered comfort to his forlorn Dad.—My salute to the Conquered One, and I am your ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther

... The king, forbidden to expose himself. Meanwhile the queen, with poniard in her hand, Laughs at the feeble check of our brass gates. To crush them she attends the fatal engines, Breathing, in short, but blood and devastation. Some priests, my sister, at the first proposed, That in a secret cave, our fathers' dug, The precious ark at least should be concealed. "O base insulting fear my father cried, The ark which caused so many gorgeous towers To fall, ...
— Athaliah • J. Donkersley

... shore. I found that I was at the Isle of France, having, in the course of twelve hours thus miraculously shifted my position from one side of the globe unto the other. I found the island in a sad state of devastation; the labour of years had been destroyed in the fury of an hour—the crops were swept away—the houses were levelled to the ground—the vessels in fragments on the beach—all was misery and desolation. ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... relieve his impatience, therefore, I wrote a more or less 'sensational' novel dealing with the absinthe drinkers of Paris, entitled "Wormwood," which did a certain amount of good in its way, by helping to call public attention to the devastation wrought by the use of the pernicious drug among the French and other Continental peoples—and after this, receiving a strong and almost imperative impetus towards that particular goal whither my mind was set, I went to work again with renewed vigour on my own favourite and long studied ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... sacred—all were suspended; these last alone continued, but with delays, then with retrenchments, which desolated nearly all the families of Paris and many others. At the same time the taxes—increased, multiplied, and exacted with the most extreme rigour—completed the devastation of France. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... And Mnestheus: 'Whither next, whither press you in flight? what other walls, what farther city have you yet? Shall one man, and he girt in on all sides, fellow-citizens, by your entrenchments, thus unchecked deal devastation throughout our city, and send all our best warriors to the under world? Have you no pity, no shame, cowards, for your unhappy country, for your ancient gods, for ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... they for the lady, / large and heavy there, As she was wont to hurl it, / a sharply-pointed spear; Strong and massive was it, / huge and broad as well, And at both its edges / it cut with devastation fell. ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler

... now upheaved at such short intervals that the scene of devastation was completely shut out from the observers on the hills; but every few minutes they felt a sickening shock, and heard a momentary and horrible crash and hiss which seemed to fill all the air. The instantaneous motor-bombs were tearing up the ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton

... assistance, especially as to supplies of food. The Prince, with prophetic truth, pointed out that though we might restore Shah Soojah, we would not carry the Afghans with us, and would fail in the end. He alluded to the devastation which our march had already caused in the country; but having been granted a subsidy, unwillingly consented to afford us assistance; and the army, leaving possible enemies in its rear, passed on, and reached Candahar without opposition in April. At the end of June it recommenced its march ...
— Indian Frontier Policy • General Sir John Ayde

... not lessened, by that fact. People in no way connected, and who can have no perception of the cause of their suffering, who are unconscious of everything, save the one fact that they are suffering, feel its consequences. When a great war spreads devastation all over the world, can it be said that any useful purpose is served by the sufferings of millions who are not in the slightest degree aware of the cause of their agony? When a shady financial operation brings an innocent man to ruin, and effects all ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... the last revelations. Our Christian Brother "forgets" to remind the visitor that the difference of opinion regarding these two Testaments of God has caused more sorrow, bloodshed, harm, devilment, misery, and devastation than any other single item in the life and ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... is more enduringly fatal to the welfare of humanity than the deadly comma bacillus which is supposed to convey the scourge of Asia to our shores. The latter comes at stated periods, and disappears after a season or two of devastation, in which the least fit to survive of our population, by reason of feeble organic resisting power, are destroyed; while resisting tolerance is established in the remainder. But this scourge is with us always, transmitting weakness ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various

... is bent on discovering the cause of this devastation, and not disposed to waste time over its consequences. At the end he produces a panacea which neither Crabbe nor ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... waste, even as if your pastime had consisted not in harmless novelty and display, in gentlemanly games or good-humoured sport, but in destruction and devastation for their own sake. ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... narrative in BRADLEY JOHNSON'S Life of Joseph E. Johnston. Nor was I so philosophical when I followed the raiders of 1863, nor when I saw the fires that lighted up the Valley of Virginia in 1864, and that was before the systematic devastation recorded by MERRITT, who carried it out. "When our army," says MERRITT (Battles and Leaders, 4, 512), "commenced its return march, the cavalry was deployed across the Valley, burning, destroying or taking nearly everything of value, or likely to be of value to the enemy. ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve

... and reducing their weaker neighbours to slavery. Indeed, no bodies of armed men throughout the whole of the great African continent, including even the Tuaregs, were so reckless in their attacks, or so fiendish in their wholesale butchery of those who resented the ruin and devastation of their homes. It was therefore scarcely surprising that this brigandish horde, whose power even European nations failed to break, should throw themselves into the conflict with reckless enthusiasm, and repel our attack by the exertion ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... repeatedly nerved up his spirit, till by habit it has become as unyielding as a rock. The latter has learnt to be brave. So we should learn to be soldiers in the war with selfishness, by perseveringly girding our minds to the deadly conflict.—Has depraved man such energy of will in spreading devastation and death; and shall not Christians exhibit as great force of resolution in diffusing the blessings of salvation? Who dare say, I cannot, or will not, exercise it? Let us be mindful of our obligations. If our minds may be wrought up ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark

... interesting methods of extension of infection, showing on what small circumstances infection may depend, is seen in the case of the hookworm disease, which causes such devastation in the Southern States. The organism which produces the disease, the Uncinaria, belongs to the more highly developed parasites, and is a small round worm one-third of an inch long. The worms which inhabit ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

... overview: Like many other South Pacific island nations, the Cook Islands' economic development is hindered by the isolation of the country from foreign markets, lack of natural resources, periodic devastation from natural disasters, and inadequate infrastructure. Agriculture provides the economic base with major exports made up of copra and citrus fruit. Manufacturing activities are limited to fruit-processing, clothing, ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... sight of in the general misery and misfortunes of the times. The Emperor Valerian had just been defeated and taken prisoner by Sapor. Pretenders had started up in nineteen different places for the imperial purple. Banditti had spread devastation in Sicily. Alexandria was disturbed by tumults. Famine and the plague raged for ten years in nearly all parts of the empire. Rome lost by the pestilence five thousand daily, while half the inhabitants of Alexandria were swept away. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... here that I met with one of the volunteers, who on hearing the English were in the Chesapeake had taken his rifle from the rack and joined in the defence. He came from lower Kent, but told me of the devastation all through the county of Cecil, wherever the enemy had laid its ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson

... subjected to the annoying presence of a Custom House official, as the high seas had prevented his visit. When I reached land I learned that the awful storm had extended along the whole eastern coast and had carried death and devastation in its track. The children and I were driven to my mother's late residence, 57 West Thirty-sixth Street, but she was no longer there to greet me, as she had passed into the Great Beyond the year before my return; but my sister Charlotte ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... of the inhabitants: the said Warren Hastings having found every place abandoned at his approach, even by the officers of the very government which he established, and seeing nothing but traces of devastation in every village, the provinces in effect without a government, the administration misconducted, the people oppressed, trade discouraged, and the revenue in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... vineyards. I see riches, pomp; I see vast armies moving against each other; there is the smell of powder and fire; devastation. I do not see you, young man, among those who tramp with guns on their shoulders. You ride; there is gold on your arms. You will become great; but I do not understand. I do not understand," closing her eyes for ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath

... deem it proper to say that the first service assigned to the forces hereby called forth will probably be to repossess the forts, places, and property which have been seized from the Union; and in every event the utmost care will be observed, consistently with the objects aforesaid, to avoid any devastation, any destruction of, or interference with property, or any disturbance of peaceful citizens of any part of the country; and I hereby command the persons composing the combinations aforesaid, to disperse and retire peaceably to their respective abodes, ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various

... of the means of resistance, but profitable in the utmost degree to the exchequer. He centralized, in a manner hitherto unknown in the West, the whole judicial and political administration. No office was henceforth to be filled by popular election, under penalty of the devastation of the offending district and of the enslavement of its inhabitants. The taxes, based on a comprehensive assessment, and distributed in accordance with Mohammedan usages, were collected by those cruel and vexatious methods without ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... The flood had subsided by now, and only a trickle of water passed through the gully. In this, and upon the sloping banks and the wreckage which had been Ebon Berry's garage, the scouts climbed about and explored the scene of devastation. ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... it all over Spain, it was clear there were none; that it was a most extraordinary war, in which the Carlists had the superiority in the field, but possessed no fortified and even no open town; and that, notwithstanding all the plunder and devastation incidental to such a state of things, all the farmers in the disturbed ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... the reading of this letter, which fell like the blows of a pickaxe on the edifice of his hopes, his illusions, and his love, the vessel which bore him from France was beyond the Azores. In the midst of this utter devastation a cold and impotent ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac

... law, and, in consequence, without most grievous mortal sin, worthy of terrible and eternal punishment. I therefore esteemed it right to furnish Your Highness with this very brief summary of a very long history that could and ought to be composed, of the massacres and devastation that have taken place. 8. I supplicate Your Highness to receive and read it with the clemency, and royal benignity he usually shows to his creatures, and servants, who desire to serve solely for the public good ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... shop was empty; and the street in front of the shop was as deserted as it ordinarily is at midnight. After some time, the chief of police came up; he was followed by a crowd of curious people, who stood around and gaped at the scene of devastation. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... foundation (but not of those founded by subjects) on the death of the abbot or prior[a]. Another reason may also be given, why the policy of the law hath vested this custody in the king; because, as the successor is not known, the lands and possessions of the see would be liable to spoil and devastation, if no one had a property therein. Therefore the law has given the king, not the temporalties themselves, but the custody of the temporalties, till such time as a successor is appointed; with power of taking to himself ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... passed, Andrea gained money, experience, and strength. He never went to Goeschenen, but once a year he went to the "sacred wood" to contemplate the devastation, as ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg

... her eyes, but McGuire and Blake, and the crowding men about them, stared in awe and utter astonishment at the devastation that was sweeping this world. An army annihilated before their eyes! Scores of thousands, there ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various

... In this march of devastation and destruction the prince overran all the southern part of France. One of his attendants in this campaign, a knight who served in the prince's household, in a letter which he wrote back to England from Bordeaux, ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... business fascinates me like a tune or a passion; yet all the while I thrill with a strong distaste. The horror of the thing, objective and subjective, is always present to my mind; the horror of creeping things, a superstitious horror of the void and the powers about me, the horror of my own devastation and continual murders. The life of the plants comes through my finger- tips, their struggles go to my heart like supplications. I feel myself blood-boltered; then I look back on my cleared grass, and count myself an ally ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... Sulayman went on to Mt. Matutun where conditions were even worse. As he stood on the heights viewing the great devastation there was a noise in the forest and a movement in the trees. With a loud yell, forth leaped Tarabusaw. For a moment they looked at each other, neither showing any fear. Then Tarabusaw threatened to devour the man, and Sulayman declared that he would kill ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole

... an afternoon was devoted to a discussion led by Dr. Rosalie Slaughter Morton (N. Y.), delegated representative of Prince Morrow and the American Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis. In an eloquent address she described the terrible devastation, especially among women and children, from diseases which until lately had been concealed and never mentioned. She attributed these conditions partly to the fact that boys and girls were left in ignorance and this was often because the mothers were ignorant. The chief cause of the wide ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... question by reminding Cochise of the reprisals which he had launched against the Chiracahua Apaches. They had killed fourteen of his men and stolen much of his property; but he and his men had killed several times fourteen of Cochise's warriors and had wrought devastation in proportion. Did ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt

... from that part of the beleaguered district in which the women and children were congregated, drew all eyes in that direction where the whole line of tents and dwellings were in a bright conflagration. The emissaries had done their work ably and well, and the devastation was complete; while the women and children, driven from their various sheltering-places, ran shrieking in every direction. Nor did Munro, at this time, forget his division of the labor: the opportunity was in his grasp, and it was not suffered to ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... smoke hovering over the southern part of the city. Then like a blow in the face came the realization that all fire fighting facilities were nil owing to the lack of water. One short hour previous, San Francisco was sleeping peacefully in its prosperity, and now the sight was appalling. Devastation, far as the eye could see, was spelling death ...
— The Spirit of 1906 • George W. Brooks

... seigneur of Mount Murray, one of the two seigniories into which Malbaie was divided, was sent out on these ravaging expeditions. Years after, some of Fraser's neighbours of French origin rallied him on his capacity for devastation as shown at this time. See Fraser's Journal, Appendix A, p. 253, and the Memoires of Philippe Aubert de Gaspe, 1866, ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong

... (which always secures the question of inclination) to protect a people who can be so advantageous to them. So that those shortsighted politicians, who conclude that this step will involve us in slaughter and devastation, may plainly perceive that no measure in our power will so naturally and effectually work our deliverance. The motion of a finger of the Grand Monarch would produce as gentle a temper in the omnipotent British minister as ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams

... like, neither should be any more after it: the land was a garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness: Yea, and nothing should escape them.' All things were going to wrack; the country was overrun by foreign invaders; bankruptcy, devastation, massacre, and captivity were for perhaps 100 years the normal state of Gaul, and of most other countries besides. I have little doubt that Salvian was a prudent man, when he thought fit to bring no more human beings into the world. That is an ugly thought—I ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... look not from thy skies, lamented shade, Nor view that land to misery betray'd: If ignorance can cloud immortal sight, Be Sweden's fortunes wrapp'd in tenfold night! Thou saw'st not Devastation sweep her shore, Her forests smoke, her rivers roll in gore; Thou saw'st not half her woes. Her senate low, Thou thought'st her people would revenge the blow; And hope shone kindling in thy dying eye, That some new sun would ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker

... occurred in the celebrated case of Murdison and Millar, in 1773. These persons, a sheep-farmer and his shepherd, settled in the vale of Tweed, commenced and carried on for some time an extensive system of devastation on the flocks of their neighbours. A dog belonging to Millar was so well trained, that he had only to show him during the day the parcel of sheep which he desired to have; and when dismissed at night for the purpose, Yarrow ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... as barren as Sahara by reason of the devastation that Sheridan had inflicted upon it with the deliberate and merciless strategic purpose of rendering it uninhabitable and in that way making of it a no-thoroughfare for Confederate armies on march toward the ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... Nereus hush'd the gales, That he might sing their future destinies. A curse to your ancestral home you take With her, whom Greece, with many a soldier bold Shall seek again, in concert sworn to break Your nuptial ties and Priam's kingdom old. Alas! what sweat from man and horse must flow, What devastation to the Trojan realm You carry, even now doth Pallas show Her wrath, preparing buckler, car, and helm. In vain, secure in Aphrodite's care, You comb your locks, and on the girlish lyre Select the strains most pleasant to the fair; In vain, on couch reclining, you desire ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... fleet cannot travel some light-years through space to make a mere threat. And the Wealdian fleet was furnished with the material for total devastation. It could drop bombs from hundreds, or thousands, or even tens of thousands of miles away. It could cover the world of Dara with mushroom clouds springing up and spreading to make a continuous pall of atomic-fusion products. And they could settle down and ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster

... Mohammedan war, when the Chinese captured the city through the treachery of its commander and turned the streets to rivers of blood. The Mohammedans were almost exterminated, and the ruined stone walls testify to the completeness of the Chinese devastation. ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews

... table, which Mirandolina had decorated with a number of wax candles stuck in the cut-glass bottles of the Count's dressing-case. Here they were speedily joined by the actress's monkey and parrot, who had soon spread devastation among the dishes. While Miranda was restoring order by boxing the monkey's ears and feeding the shrieking bird from her lips, the door opened to admit the prima amorosa, a lady whose mature charms and mellifluous manner suggested a fine fruit preserved in syrup. The newcomer was clearly engrossed ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... This devastation of the Rhine Valley caused an extensive emigration by way of London to New York. In the winter of 1708 Pastor Kocherthal arrived with the first company of Palatine exiles. In succeeding years many others followed, most of them settling ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner

... accumulated hardship, and enormous cruelty.—Yet when we take them from Africa, we deprive them of a country which God hath given them for their own; as free as we are, and as capable of enjoying that blessing. Like pirates we go to commit devastation on the coast of an innocent country, and among a people who never did ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... over Corydon—Cory-don, the meek and long-suffering, who now was turned to granite, and immovable as the everlasting hills. As for Thyrsis, all kinds of madness had come from him, and were expected from him. But even he was appalled at the devastation which this thunderbolt caused. ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... cannot bear away, they spoil; and the wicked mob burn harmless houses; walls cannot secure their masters, and the fields are squalid with devastation." —Ovid, Trist., iii. 10, 35; Claudianus, In ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... with this stone pillar is, that it was raised in order to prevent the devastation which a winged serpent or dragon (a Wiber) was committing in the surrounding country. The stone was draped with scarlet cloth, to allure and excite the creature to a furor, scarlet being a colour most intolerably hateful and ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... 'The work of devastation was begun by setting fire to the houses of the small tenants in extensive districts—Farr, Rogart, Golspie, and the whole parish of Kildonan. I was an eye-witness of the scene. The calamity came on the people quite unexpectedly. Strong parties for each district, furnished with faggots and other ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... the spade were everywhere visible, but the fields were for the most part not sown; the young peasants were under arms, the gardens and meadows were trodden down by soldiers, the houses and cottages plundered and destroyed, or burnt. Everything bore the trace of the devastation of the war, only the oak and cedar forests lorded it proudly over the mountain-slopes, planes and locust-trees grew in groves, and the gorges and rifts of the thinly-wooded limestone hills, which bordered the fertile low-land, were filled ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... account I have invariably received from sufferers throughout the whole Theatre of war—that the conduct of the Russians and French was widely different; the former generally behaving as well as could possibly be expected, and pillaging only from necessity; the latter seem to have made havoc and devastation their delight. They might perhaps act on principle, conceiving that it was better for the treasure and good things of the land to fall into their ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... the catastrophe confined to Antioch. The earthquake was one of a series which carried destruction and devastation through the greater part of the East. In the Roman province of Asia, four cities were completely destroyed—Eleia, Myrina, Pitane, and Cyme. In Greece two towns were reduced to ruins, namely, Opus in ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson

... transportation from one place to another, or of imprisonment in a fortress where, living in security and indolence, they only become weaker and more depraved; or the worse than uselessness and injustice, the positive insanity and barbarity of preparations for war and of wars, causing devastation and ruin, and having no kind of justification. Yet these forms of violence continue and are supported by the very people who see their uselessness, injustice, and cruelty, and suffer from them. If fifty years ago ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... of Man, even the Son of God made manifest. Now can it be doubted by the attentive and unprejudiced reader of St. Matthew, c. xxiv, that the Son of Man, in fact, came in the utter destruction and devastation of the Jewish Temple and State, during the period from Vespasian to Hadrian, both included; and is it a sufficient reason for our rejecting the teaching of Christ himself, of Christ glorified and in his kingly character, that ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... According to the Chinese annuals, about 4,000,000 of people perished by famine in the neighbourhood of Kiang in 1337; and deluges, swarms of locusts, and an earthquake which lasted six days, caused incredible devastation. In the same year, the first swarms of locusts appeared in Franconia, which were succeeded in the following year by myriads of these insects. In 1338 Kingsai was visited by an earthquake of ten days' duration; at the same time ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker

... read the other day in the Nan Hua Ching. 'The ingenious toil, the wise are full of care; the good-for-nothing seek for nothing, they feed on vegetables, and roam where they list; they wander purposeless like a boat not made fast!' 'The mountain trees,' the text goes on to say, 'lead to their own devastation; the spring (conduces) to its own plunder; and so on." And the more he therefore indulged in reflection, the more depressed he felt. "Now there are only these few girls," he proceeded to ponder minutely, "and yet, I'm unable to treat them in such a way as to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... the ice, they day after day followed down the lonely and silent stream, whose banks war had desolated. They passed the smouldering sites of many former villages, where only melancholy scenes of devastation met the eye. They reached Crevecoeur about the 1st of February. It would seem that La Salle, on his previous visit, had repaired the ruins there, so as to provide a temporary home for his party upon its arrival. He found all things as he had ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott

... are a magnificent instrument of ruin and devastation. Yet it will be by means of you that I shall crush all those who have been an obstacle in my pathway; I take you, not for my wife, but for my slave, and ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac

... rode With furious speed, and placed his seal Upon the devastation broad,— Exulting ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... running along the bottom of a narrow valley. Hitherto, in passing up the lower part of the vale, we had looked in vain for any traces of the inundation; but now we suddenly found ourselves in the midst of ruin and devastation. Holmfirth is only two miles and a half from the reservoir, and being at a contracted part of the valley, the water came upon it in great depth and with great force. We found a bridge deprived of its parapets, the boundary-walls of factories broken down, and court-yards filled ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various

... into the Bay of Bengal. During the latter part of its course this noble river expands into a large estuary containing many islands, the principal of which is that of Dakshin Shahbazpur. The islands on the sea-front are exposed to devastation by cyclonic storm-waves. The Arial Khan, a branch of the Ganges, enters the district from the north, and flows generally in a south-easterly direction till it falls into the estuary of the Meghna. The main channel of the Arial Khan is about 1700 yds. in width in the dry season, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... descend 80 Or charioteer fight there; strait are the bounds, And incommodious, and his death were sure. If Jove, high-thundering Ruler of the skies, Will succor Ilium, and nought less intend Than utter devastation of the Greeks, 85 I am content; now perish all their host Inglorious, from their country far remote. But should they turn, and should ourselves be driven Back from the fleet impeded and perplex'd In this deep foss, I judge that not a man, 90 'Scaping the rallied Grecians, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... thanks to the timely and resolute intervention of Mr. Wallingford, stood far away from the crashing wrecks, when the storm swept down in fearful devastation. It raged around, but did not touch him; for he was safely sheltered, and ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur

... took a very subordinate place, and Henry turned his attention to the cultivation of his own garden instead of seeking to annex his neighbour's. It is possible that he was (p. 150) better employed in wasting his people's blood and treasure in the futile devastation of France, than in placing his heel on the Church and sending Fisher and More to the scaffold; but his attempts to reduce Ireland to order, and to unite England and Scotland, violent though his methods may have been, were at least more ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... deserts, and have deluged the empire of France with multitudes equally daring and rapacious, who would have descended upon a fruitful country like vultures on their prey, and have laid those provinces in ruin which now smile at the devastation of neighbouring countries, secure in the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson

... tribune to deny this calumny categorically, for, if the Jewish population in the theatre of war is suffering, that is an inevitable evil, since the inhabitants of regions where hostilities are proceeding are always severely tried. Moreover, eyewitnesses are unanimous in stating that the greatest devastation in Poland is the work of the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... with the arrival of Bugeaud, the war in Africa was changed; hitherto it had been a mere war of occupation,—a holding of the ground already French against the attacking Arabs; now it was to be a duel, a war of devastation; thus only could France hope to tame the indefatigable Abd-el-Kader, and permanently hold her own. The trouble was not so much to fight him as to get near enough to fight him; for he pursued a truly Fabian policy, and being lighter armed, was consequently ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... transmitted as the great inheritance of mankind from one generation to another: surely, no man can, without the utmost arrogance, imagine that he brings any superiority of understanding to the perusal of these books which have been preserved in the devastation of cities, and snatched up from the wreck of nations; which those who fled before barbarians have been careful to carry off in the hurry of migration, and of which barbarians have repented the destruction. If in books ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... sell; he is compelled to support his troop. But when these rights are discharged he errs if, through pride or greed, he takes more than his due.—As to the vagabonds, the wretched, who, in the universal disorder and devastation, seek refuge under his guardianship, their condition is harder. The soil belongs to the lord because without him it would be uninhabitable. If he assigns them a plot of ground, if he permits them merely to encamp on it, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... illness, while he had any power to master its disabilities, should make him recede from his duty. The image of his mother, too, so near the threatened spot, rushed on his soul. In quick march he led on his troops. Devastation met them over the face of the country. Scared and houseless villagers were flying in every direction; old men stood amongst the ashes of their homes, wailing to the pitying heavens, since man had none. Children ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... been gouged in the pavement by a German shell, and the hole uncovers a hidden passage to the Cathedral of which no one in this generation knew. In the hovering twilight we walked about, gazing in a sadness that the broken splendour of the place cast upon us, at the details of the devastation. The roof, of course, is but a film of wood and iron rent with big holes. The walls are intact, but cracked and broken and tottering. The Gothic spires and gargoyles and ornaments are shattered beyond ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White

... car, seized the reins in her hands and whipped up the horses, and before and behind her tore the savage, bloodthirsty mob with torches and pitchforks. There she stood in the midst of them with dishevelled, storm-tossed tresses like the Genius of War and Devastation rapt along on frantic steeds, with coiling snakes for hair, a terrible escort of evil beasts and semi-bestial men, and ruin and malediction before and ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... accession of Mary, been remarkably zealous to promoting the reformed doctrines, and exploding the errors of popish idolatry, was summoned, among others, before the persecuting bishop of Winchester, and other commissioners set apart for the abominable work of devastation and massacre. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... backs upon the wind, the men had swung around a corner to the sheltered side of the hotel. It was the function of the little house to preserve here, amid this great devastation of snow, an irregular V-shape of heavily incrusted grass, which crackled beneath the feet. One could imagine the great drifts piled against the windward side. When the party reached the comparative peace of this spot it was found that the Swede ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane

... soon convinced of his danger, for he had a private intimation that the king's vizirs were consulting together on the expedience of securing his person, under the apprehension that Zohak would be invading the country, and consigning it to devastation and ruin, if his retreat was discovered. He therefore took ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... recorded history was the capacity of man to modify nature and exploit society more publicly tested out than in the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the purposeful devastation of jungle life and village life in large parts of Vietnam and Cambodia. Reported in the public press and pictured, live, over radio and television, these latest developments in the ugly record of man's exploitation of ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... which is overcome with the barbarity of sinking old hulks in a channel through which privateers were wont to escape our blockade furnished effective engravings "by our own artist" of the scene. Wholesale plunder and devastation of the chief city of the revolt followed. The rebellion was put down, and put down, we may say, without any unnecessary tenderness, any womanish weakness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... appearance of the saplings which were growing from the stumps of some of the trees which had been broken, this terrific storm appeared to have taken place about two years ago. Not a tree had been left standing in the part where we crossed, nor could we tell how far the devastation had extended to the south-west; but the ground to the north and east being swampy, and covered only with small Melaleucas and Banksias, the wind had not taken much effect. Many of the trees in the middle of the fallen timber ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray

... tolerable state of preservation; but the provisions seemed to have been ransacked by foxes and bears, the recent traces of which were easily distinguished. Men, too, had had something to do with the devastation, for a few remains of Esquimaux huts remained upon the shores of the Bay. The six graves inclosing the remains of the six sailors of the Enterprise and the Investigator were recognisable by a slight swelling of the ground; they had been respected both by men ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... had not proceeded far when their ears were assailed by the most discordant yells from the Pequodees. They had reached the scene of devastation; and, when they beheld the ruined fort, and the ground strewn with hundreds of mangled corpses and expiring friends, their fury knew no bounds. They stamped and howled with rage and grief, and madly tore their hair; while they gave vent ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb

... to suppress the Bible—particularly versions in the language of the common people, Gaussen says: "The decree of Toulouse, 1229," which established the "tribunal of the Inquisition against all the readers of the Bible in the vulgar tongue, ... was an edict of fire, bloodshed, and devastation. In its 3d, 4th, 5th, and 6th chapters, it ordained the entire destruction of the houses, the humblest places of concealment, and even the subterranean retreats of men convicted of possessing the Scriptures; that they should be pursued to the forests and caves of the earth; ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... sisters elect to meet in thunder, lightning, or rain. To them "fair is foul, and foul is fair," as they "hover through the fog and filthy air." The whole of the earlier part of the third scene of the first act is one blast of tempest with its attendant devastation. They can loose and bind the winds,[1] cause vessels to be tempest-tossed at sea, and mutilate wrecked bodies.[2] They describe themselves as "posters of the sea and land;"[3] the heath they meet upon is blasted;[4] and they vanish "as breath into the wind."[5] Macbeth conjures ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding

... strange delusion! To think of honoring the memory of the meek and lowly Jesus by utterly disregarding his peaceful precepts and his loving and gentle example, and going forth in thousands to the work of murder, rapine, and devastation, in order to get possession of ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... increased, both by the dispatch of fresh levies to Cuba and by the addition to the horrors of the strife of a new and inhuman phase happily unprecedented in the modern history of civilized Christian peoples. The policy of devastation and concentration, inaugurated by the Captain-General's bando of October 21, 1896, in the Province of Pinar del Rio was thence extended to embrace all of the island to which the power of the Spanish ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley

... of slavery, is the source from which most of our miseries proceed, I shall begin with that curse to nations; which has spread terror and devastation through so many nations of antiquity, and which is raging to such a pitch at the present day in Spain and in Portugal. It had one tug in England, in France, and in the United States of America; yet the inhabitants thereof, do not learn wisdom, and erase it entirely from their dwellings and from ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet

... nothing could be more unfounded. Independent of the destruction of the plantations which tropical hurricanes so often occasion, an insect of the locust kind, more particularly in the East Indies, produces such fearful devastation as to realize the scene described by the prophet Joel—"A fire devoureth before them, and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them[T]." ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various

... progress of the Gothic arms. As soon as Constantine had declared himself in favor of the weaker party, the haughty Araric, king of the Goths, instead of expecting the attack of the legions, boldly passed the Danube, and spread terror and devastation through the province of Maesia. To oppose the inroad of this destroying host, the aged emperor took the field in person; but on this occasion either his conduct or his fortune betrayed the glory which ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... prince. But it is evident that the Northumbrians looked on without any response, and saw in the expedition but one of the many raids which they were always so ready to return on their side when occasion offered. The pretender, on whose behalf all this was done, shrank, it would appear, from the devastation, and with something like the generous compunction of a prince protested that he would rather lose the crown than gain it so—a protest which James must have thought a piece of affectation, for he replied with a jeer that his companion ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant



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