The sun has risen a handsbreadth above the horizon, crowning the eastern hills, sheaves of light slanting through the stunted trees.
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The hand is a traditional unit in the UK. It was standardised at four inches by a statute of King Henry VIII in 1540,32 Hen. VIII c. 13: An Acte for Bryde of Horses. but some confusion between the various types of hand measurement, and particularly between the hand and the handsbreadth, appears to have persisted.
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English units of length The English palm, handbreadth, or handsbreadth is three inches (7.62cm) or, equivalently, four digits. The measurement was, however, not always well distinguished from the hand or handful, which became equal to four inches by a 1541 statute of Henry VIII. The palm was excluded from the British Weights and Measures Act of 1824 that established the imperial system and is not a standard US customary unit.
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The palm is an obsolete anthropic unit of length, originally based on the width of the human palm and then variously standardized. The same name is also used for a second, rather larger unit based on the length of the human hand.. The width of the palm was a traditional unit in Ancient Egypt, Israel, Greece, and Rome and in medieval England, where it was also known as the hand,. handbreadth, or handsbreadth.. The only commonly discussed "palm" in modern English is the biblical palm of ancient Israel. The length of the hand—originally the Roman "greater palm"—formed the palm of medieval Italy and France.
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Phillips's dictionary of 1706 gives four inches for the length of the handful or hand, and three inches for the handsbreadth; Mortimer gives the same, three inches for the Hand's-breadth, and four for the "Handful, or simply, Hand", but adds "The hand among horse- dealers, &c.; is four-fingers' breadth, being the fist clenched, whereby the height of a horse is measured", thus equating "hand" with both the palm and the fist. Similarly, Wright's 1831 translation of Buffon mentions "A hand breadth (palmus), the breadth of the four fingers of the hand, or three inches", but the Encyclopædia Perthensis of 1816 gives under Palm (4): "A hand, or measure of lengths comprising three inches".
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The second exception was that in 1854, the government of Carlos Antonio López established a colony of French immigrants on the right bank of the River Paraguay at Nueva Burdeos; when it failed, it was renamed Villa Occidental. After 1852, and more especially after the State of Buenos Aires rejoined the Argentine Confederation, Argentina's claim to the Chaco hardened; it claimed territory all the way up to the border with Bolivia. By Article XVI of the Treaty of the Triple Alliance Argentina was to receive this territory in full. However, the Brazilian government disliked what its representative in Buenos Aires had negotiated in this respect, and resolved that Argentina should not receive "a handsbreadth of territory" above the Pilcomayo River.
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