a. [f. TRACK sb. + -LESS.] Without a track or path; pathless; not marked by a track; untrodden.
1656. Cowley, Pind. Odes, Muse, ii. Where Bird … did ne’re Row through the trackless Ocean of the Air.
1708. Brit. Apollo, No. 53. 3/2. A trackless Labyrinth of woe.
1801. Strutt, Sports & Past., Introd. § 44. The recesses of a trackless wilderness.
1878. Lecky, Eng. in 18th C., II. v. 66. The soldiers were easily … bewildered in the trackless mountains.
b. Leaving no track or trace.
1695. Blackmore, Pr. Arth., V. 638. Then thro’ the Heavn’s their trackless Flight they take.
1864. [implied in TRACKLESSLY].
1890. ‘R. Boldrewood,’ Col. Reformer (1891), 426. His yacht … could sweep out unchallenged and trackless as the falcon.
1907. C. C. Brown, China in Leg. & Story, ii. 33. Its gray slabs worn by trackless feet, as the centuries went on.
C. Not running on a track or line of rails, while propelled by electric power from overhead conductors.
1909. Westm. Gaz., 22 Sept., 8/1. Leeds is now assured of a system of trackless trams. Ibid. A splendid system of tramways, both trackless and otherwise.
Hence Tracklessly adv., Tracklessness.
1847. Webster, Tracklessly, Tracklessness.
1864. Lowell, Fireside Trav., 269. The cloud-shadows melted tracklessly toward the hills.
1868. Geo. Eliot, Sp. Gipsy, I. 83. Shall then pass away Like wind upon the waters, tracklessly.
1891. E. Braislin, in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 30 March, 1/8. Tracklessness makes a wilderness. The great desert of Sahara is a trackless waste, a wilderness to the chance traveler.
