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Updated: June 25, 2025
The water was conveyed away from the broad moats, where the weeping willows with bowed heads and uncovered roots stood in the warm sunshine. A number of work-people were busily employed in clearing the moats of mud, which was wheeled in barrows on both sides. They soon reached the principal court-yard. The barns and the out-buildings lay on the opposite side.
There are miles of ancient moats around the city, filled with lotus, the great pink-and-white blossoms giving joy to the eye as its roots gave food for the body. Slowly these stretches of loveliness were being turned into dreary levels of sand for the roadbed of a trolley. Even now the quiet of the city was broken by the clang of the street-car gong. I was taking my first ride that day.
We anticipated seeing a City differing widely from anything ever seen before; some anomaly of nature displayed in its site, itself guarded by imposing and impregnable fortifications, with powerful forts and heavy guns, perhaps even walls, castles, postern gates, moats and ditches, and all the other panoply of defensive warfare, with which romantic history had made us familiar.
The writer, on examining these sunken lands, found that the subsidences had occurred where the old moats or abandoned channels of the great river had been filled in with a mixture of decaying timber and river silt. The same process of settling plentifully goes on wherever the rocks are still in an uncemented state. The result is often the production of changes which lead to the expulsion of gases.
The Armagnacs had brought up in carts great bundles of faggots and wattled hurdles to fill up the moats, and above six hundred scaling-ladders for storming the ramparts. The Maid Jeanne, who was nowise as the Burgundians believed, but lived a pious life and guarded her chastity, set foot to ground, and was the first down into a dry moat, which for that cause was easy to cross.
A fine hall with kitchens occupied the centre of the fortress; a large number of chambers were added. The stronghold itself consisted of a large square or oblong like that at Donnington, Berkshire, and the approach was carefully guarded by strong gateways, advanced works, walled galleries, and barbicans. Deep moats filled with water increased their strength and improved their beauty.
He had reckoned on their resembling in some respect the prison in Glasgow, and at the sight of these formidable fortresses with their lofty walls and flanking towers, their moats and vigilant sentries, his hopes fell to zero.
When complaint was made against Masazumi, the Tokugawa leader simulated astonishment, expressed much regret, and said that he would condemn Masazumi to commit suicide were it permissible to mar this happy occasion by any capital sentence. "Peace," declared the astute old statesman, "has now been fortunately concluded. Let us not talk any more about the castle's moats or parapets."
Of every little town hereabout he had heard stories during the long winter evenings; now he saw the castle, with its double moats, its trees and bushes, its ramparts overgrown with bracken. But the most beautiful sight was the lofty linden trees, that filled the air with so sweet a perfume.
The moats which surrounded them were wide and deep, and any attempt at storming by ladders was therefore extremely difficult; and these buildings were consequently more often captured by famine than by other means.
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