"Basalt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... under the apex of the pyramid, was empty. In another, which had an arched roof, constructed in the most careful and elaborate way, was found the sarcophagus of the king, Men-kau-ra, to whom tradition assigned the building, formed of a single mass of blue-black basalt, exquisitely polished and beautifully carved, externally eight feet long, three feet high, and three feet broad, internally six feet by two. In the sarcophagus was the wooden coffin of the monarch, and on the lid of the coffin was his ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... precipices, in many-colored rocks-white and grey, sulphurous yellow, blood-red and ominous black. He recalled the sacred lake of Muth in Thebes, round which sat a hundred statues of the lion-headed Goddess in black basalt, each on a pedestal; and the rocky peaks, which surrounded the valley at his feet, seemed to put on a semblance of life and to move and open their yawning jaws; through the wild rush of blood in his ears he fancied he heard them roar, and the load beyond his strength which he carried gave him a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... centre of the hall rose, massive and splendid, the sarcophagus, cut out of a solid block of black basalt and closed by a cover of the same material, carved in the shape of an arch. The four sides of the funeral monolith were covered with figures and hieroglyphs as carefully engraved as the intaglio of a gem, although the Egyptians did not know the use of iron, and the grain ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... to murder you," advised Saxham, facing the passionate emotion of the younger man as a basalt cliff might oppose a breaking wave, "you ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... sharp and slimy, Salt and basalt, wild and tame: Tree and lichen, ape, sea-lion, Bird, and reptile, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the Arno stream there towers above the pines and giant beeches of the hills a great basalt rock, Alvernia, which looks over Italy, east and west, to the two seas. That rock is accessible by but a single foot-track, and it is gashed and riven by grim chasms, yet withal great oaks and beech-trees flourish atop among the boulders, and there are drifts of fragrant wild flowers, ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... matters as he sped on over the Great Indian Peninsula Railway. The western Ghauts were now far behind him and their dark basalt crags. Bombay, Hyderabad, Berar, the Central Provinces, Central India, and the southern prong of Oude was reached. He was, however, no whit the wiser when he reached the Ganges and hastily sought the telegraph station at ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... fish, as well as vast numbers of crayfish. One of the girls with us carried fishing-tackle, and in a few minutes some rods were cut, the hooks baited with small crayfish, and several fine fish landed. These were at once cooked, the fires being kindled on some large, flat basalt stones, which were lying scattered about on the bank. On inquiring how these stones came to be there, I was told by "Lizzie" that they were the remains of an old wall that once enclosed one of the ancient villages. Afterwards we came across many ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... baselines) Exclusive economic zone: 200 nm Territorial sea: 12 nm Disputes: none Climate: temperate; warm, dry, summer; precipitation very erratic Terrain: steep, rugged, rocky, volcanic Natural resources: salt, basalt rock, pozzolana, limestone, kaolin, fish Land use: arable land 9%; permanent crops NEGL%; meadows and pastures 6%; forest and woodland NEGL%; other 85%; includes irrigated 1% Environment: subject to prolonged droughts; harmattan ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... two by rocky hills which are perfectly precipitous, both towards the main and the peninsula; but a natural terrace runs along under the cliff in the direction of Camden Sound, which I believe would form a good road to that harbour. The tract thus enclosed appears to be very fertile. Porphyry and basalt are the common rocks. The soil is rich vegetable mould, mixed with gravel and covered with the most luxuriant grass. The trees were in general small. We only found three springs here; these however were sufficient to prove that it was well supplied in this respect. ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... not only always possible to obtain continuities of this kind: it is, in drawing large forests or mountain forms, essential to truth. The towers of Ehrenbreitstein might or might not in reality fall into such a curve, but assuredly the basalt rock on which they stand did; for all mountain forms not cloven into absolute precipice, nor covered by straight slopes of shales, are more or less governed by these great curves, it being one of the aims of Nature in all her work to produce them. The reader must already know this, if he has ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... of a hard dark and heavy species of basalt, the chief component of the mountains of Java. The stone is usually hewn in square blocks of various sizes, as is the case with the Boro Budur. The respective surfaces of the stones which lie on each other in the building have grooves and projections which key into each other as in ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... bronze and basalt let us raise The bust of CAESAR; he has done Great things for Rome; but here is one Above the rest, o'ertopping praise. The elephants and kings are gone, But still the roaring tumult sways— Much for the Conqueror of the East, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... well, where the priest threw the ashes of the sacrifices. We saw in the Museum at Portici some lovely arabesque paintings, cut from the walls of the cloister. The foliage which ran round the whole sweep of the cloister itself is in the finest taste. A tablet of basalt with Egyptian hieroglyphics was transported from thence to Portici, together with the following inscription, taken from the front ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... broken arrowhead of obsidian. A deep channel cut by a water-course gives us our first idea of the depth of the soil; for these plateaus were once nothing but deep hollows among the mountains, which rain and melted snow, bringing down fragments of porphyry and basalt—partly in their original state and partly decomposed—have filled up and formed into plains. Signs of volcanic action are abundant. To say nothing of the two great mountains we have just left behind, there is a hill of red volcanic tufa just beyond ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... room, hung in black and opening on the transformed garden with its ash-powdered walks, its little pool now bordered with basalt and filled with ink, its clumps of cypresses and pines, the dinner had been served on a table draped in black, adorned with baskets of violets and scabiouses, lit by candelabra from which green flames blazed, and by chandeliers from which ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... well-marked lines of wall occur at the foot of the hill, on the flat bottom land, but the slopes of the hill are covered with bowlders and show no well-defined lines. Scattered about on the surface of the ground are some fragments of metates of coarse black basalt and some potsherds, but ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... Tom got there, he found that the isle stood all on pillars, and that its roots were full of caves. There were pillars of black basalt, like Staffa; and pillars of green and crimson serpentine, like Kynance; and pillars ribboned with red and white and yellow sandstone, like Livermead; and there were blue grottoes like Capri, and white grottoes like Adelsberg; all curtained and draped with seaweeds, ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... meteor or a block of volcanic basalt," judged the Master. "It seems sprinkled with small crystals, with rhombs of tile-red feldspath on a dark background like velvet or charcoal, except for one reddish protuberance of an unknown substance. ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... Montezuma is also exhibited, with many arms, jewels, and picture writings, these last relating to historic matters, both Toltec and Aztec. The great sacrificial stone of the aborigines, placed on the ground floor of the museum, is, in all its detail, a study to occupy one for days. It is of basalt, elaborately chiseled, measuring nine feet in diameter and three feet in height. On this stone the lives of thousands of human beings, we are told, were offered up annually. The municipal palace is on the south side of the plaza, nearly opposite to which is a block of buildings ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... combine the calm of death with the consciousness of sepulchral magnificence. He pleads, as for dear life, with those who are to inherit his wealth, and who may at their pleasure fulfil his last wishes or disregard them: that he may have jasper for his tomb—basalt (black antique) for its slab—the rosiest marble for its columns—the richest design for its bronze frieze! A certain ball of lapis-lazuli (such as never yet was seen) is to "poise" between his knees; and he gasps forth the secret of how he ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... seas of the New World. In short, we are still very little advanced towards the theory of the earth as it now exists." Guettard was the first to discover the volcanoes of Auvergne, but he was "hopelessly wrong" in regard to the origin of basalt, forestalling Werner in his mistakes as to its aqueous origin. He was thus the first Neptunist, while, as Geikie states, his "observations in Auvergne practically started the ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... and their astrological reveries. I have given in this work a description of the teocalli, or Mexican pyramids, and have compared their structure with that of the temple of Belus. I have described the arabesques which cover the ruins of Mitla, the idols in basalt ornamented with the calantica of the heads of Isis; and also a considerable number of symbolical paintings, representing the serpent-woman (the Mexican Eve), the deluge of Coxcox, and the first migrations of the natives of the Aztec race. I have endeavoured to prove the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... by whalemen, "Devil's Thumb," was now open; it appears to be a huge mass of granite or basalt, which rears itself on a cliff of some 600 or 800 feet elevation, and is known as the southern boundary of Melville Bay, round whose dreary circuit, year after year, the fishermen work their way to reach the large ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... was carved from blocks of rough pink basalt, the entry guarded by two great caryatids enwrapped in chains of carved metal, set somehow into the surface of the basalt. The gilt had long ago worn away from the chains so that it alternately gleamed gold or smudged base ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... those two different species of rock-stone may be distinguished. A perfect granite has not in its composition necessarily any argillaceous earth, farther than may be in the natural constitution of its distinct parts; whereas, a perfect basalt may have abundance of this substance, without any quartz or any siliceous body. A perfect granite, is, therefore, an extremely hard stone, having quartz and feldspar for its basis; but a perfect whin or basaltes may be extremely soft, ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... position from that assigned to it by Prof. Petrie. The "Great Temenos" of Prof. Petrie has now been shown to be non-existent. Mr. Hogarth has also pointed out that an old Egyptian town existed at Nau-kratis long before the Greeks came there. This town is mentioned on a very interesting stele of black basalt (discovered at Tell Gaif, the site of Naukratis, and now in the Cairo Museum), under the name of "Permerti, which is called Nukrate." The first is the old Egyptian name, the second the Greek name adapted to Egyptian hieroglyphs. The stele was erected by Tekhtnebf, the last native king ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... island has an undulating surface, and is covered either with an open forest or with high ferns. In general the soil is extremely fertile, and where it is naturally drained a rich vegetation of fern and flax occurs. On the north-west are several conical hills of basalt, which are surrounded by oases of fertile soil. On the south-western side is Petre Bay, on which, at the mouth of the river Mantagu, is Waitangi, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... sent out to ascertain the resources of the island; and, among many other valuable products, coal, iron, clay of exceptionally fine quality for the manufacture of bricks and tiles, marble, granite, basalt, limestone, pine, satinwood, teak, and sandalwood in exceedingly large quantities had been found. A brick and tile yard had been established over on the north-west side of the island, and large quantities of splendid bricks and ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... had failed to move the brutal egoism of his brother, beating upon it like the lightest of sea-foam on a rock of basalt, he was made to fall back upon the alternative of heavy denunciation. And it was significant that this commonplace tirade drew more applause than all the pretty wit that had gone before it. Seldom have I been so profoundly impressed with the difficulties ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... easels set up in uncertain equilibrium on the undulating floor. It is not easy to catch the real complexion of St. Mark's, and these laudable attempts at portraiture are apt to look either lurid or livid. But if you cannot paint the old loose-looking marble slabs, the great panels of basalt and jasper, the crucifixes of which the lonely anguish looks deeper in the vertical light, the tabernacles whose open doors disclose a dark Byzantine image spotted with dull, crooked gems—if you cannot paint these things you can at least grow fond of them. You grow fond even of the old ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... would last a long time. I do not remember that any other tribe of Plains Indians made such stone bowls or mortars, though, of course, they were commonly made, and in singular perfection, by the Pacific Coast tribes; and I have known of rare cases in which basalt mortars and small soapstone ollas have been found on the central plateau of the continent in southern Wyoming. These articles, however, had no doubt been obtained by trade ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... sounding-lines we found that the water was deep, right up to the very rocks, and that no shelving shores prevented us coasting along them. There was not a shadow of doubt as to the rock being of purely volcanic origin, up- heaved by some mighty subterranean convulsion. It is formed of blocks of basalt, arranged in perfect order, of which the regular prisms give the whole mass the effect of being one gigantic crystal; and the remarkable transparency of the sea enabled us plainly to observe the curious shafts of the prismatic columns ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... river canon is built up in stories of basalt rock, each story defined by a horizontal fissure, out of which these mysterious waters gush, white and cold, taking glorious colors in the sunlight from the rich under-painting of the rock. There is an awfulness about it, too, as if that sheer front ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... Gothic porch you have read of in "Lectures on Architecture and Painting," and you are surprised to find a stucco classic portico in the corner, painted and grained, and heaped around with lucky horseshoes, brightly blackleaded, and mysterious rows of large blocks of slate and basalt and trap—a complete museum of local geology, if only you knew it—very unlike an ideal entrance; still more unlike an ordinary one. While you wait you can see through the glass door a roomy hall, ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... which our preceding Arctic expeditions yielded new additions of such importance through the fossil herbaria from luxuriant ancient forests which they brought to light from the ice-covered cliffs of Spitzbergen and from the basalt-covered sandstones and schists of the Noui-soak Peninsula ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... tumuli of volcanic slag here and there rose to the height of several hundred feet, and in the far distance resembled the Pyramids of Lower Egypt—doubtless they were the models for that ancient and everlasting architecture; hills of black basalt jutted out from the barren base of sand, and the molten air quivered on the overheated surface of the fearful desert. 114 degrees Fahr. in the shade under the water-skins; 137 degrees in the sun. Noiselessly ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... rocky tongue rising suddenly like an island from the low levels, and trending north-west to south-east. The site is perfectly healthy; the ground is gravel, not clay, and the stone is basalt. The upper heights are forested and full of game; the lower are cleared and await the colonist. With the pure and keen Atlantic breeze ever blowing over it, the Mount is a ready-made sanatorium. Its youth has been disreputable. Here Captain Canot, [Footnote: Wanderings in West ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... down a rocky declivity, and fell into a circular basin a few yards in diameter. Overflowing this basin, it found its way into the lake by another descent of a few feet. Around the basin, and on both sides of the waterfall, were several curious columns of basalt, and irregular picturesque piles of basaltic rock. The plash of the water, falling into the rocky basin, was the only sound that broke the Sabbath-like silence that pervaded the valley. There was, or seemed to be, something unreal and dream-like about ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... located in the northeastern portion of the province of Batangas. It is situated on a small island in the center of the Bombon laguna, and has an altitude of 550 feet above sea level. Its form is conical, and the rock is composed of basalt feldspar with a small quantity of augite. The crater is supposed to be 232 feet deep. Its sides are almost vertical, and there are two ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... hours on what type to use, till Mel dragged out his rock book. Most, automatically, had wanted basalt. However, the moon's density being low, heavier rocks are probably scarce—one good reason not to expect radioactive ores there. We finally settled for rhyolite ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins
... job, three months ago, it'll be something to see," he promised. "These volcanoes have been dormant for, oh, maybe as long as a thousand years; there ought to be a pretty good head of gas down there. And the magma'll be thick, viscous stuff, like basalt on Terra. Of course, this won't be anything like basalt in composition—it'll be intensely compressed metallic fluorides, with a very high metal-content. The volcanoes we shot three months ago yielded a fine flow of lava with all sorts of metals—nickel, beryllium, ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... bronze is one of the most precious portraits of antiquity, not merely because it confirms the testimony of the green basalt bust in the Capitol, but also because it supplies an even more emphatic and impressive illustration ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... crust is in some places broken, and exposes to the view enormous caverns, which the Indians call 'the mouths of hell.' In the district about the town of San Pablo, which is situated on the mountain, are found great numbers of little circular lakes and immense heaps of rotten stones, basalt, and different descriptions of lava, which show that all these lakes are nothing else than the craters of old volcanoes. Altogether the soil to the southward, in the province of Albai, is completely volcanic, and the frequent eruptions of the volcano bearing that name may, as ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... them in wild bounds across impassable chasms, their laboring lungs checked them in the ascent. The joyous inebriation was wearing off. Winslow met his companion's eyes sheepishly as they stopped where a sheer cliff of basalt above caught and held the warmth of the sun's rays. Behind them it rose a straight hundred feet, and before stretched a vast panorama. The sun was mounting now in the sky. It brought into strong relief the welter ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... them, and gaze upward to their lofty, vaulted arches, to drink in the impression of architectual sublimity, which I can neither analyze nor express. Cathedrals do not seem to me to have been built. They seem, rather, stupendous growths of nature, like crystals, or cliffs of basalt. There is little ornament here. That roof looks plain and bare; yet I feel that the air is dense with sublimity. Onward I sped, crossing a bridge by the Hotel Dieu, and, leaving the river, plunged into narrow streets. Explored a quadrangular market; surveyed ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Minar is an immense shaft tapering gradually toward the top. It is built in stages, with a gallery round each. Each stage is different. In one it is fluted with round columns like a huge mass of basalt. In another the columns are angular; and in the next, round and angular alternately. The highest stage is plain. The height is very great, and the solidity of execution and the strength of the edifice are as striking as its height ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... united to, he knew not what expression of sensibility and fineness, not theirs, and for the like of which one must pass onward to the Antonines. Popular hatred had been careful to destroy its semblance wherever it was to be found; but one bust, in dark bronze-like basalt of a wonderful perfection of finish, preserved in the museum of the Capitol, may have seemed to some visitors there perhaps the finest extant relic of Roman art. Had the very seal of empire upon those sombre brows, reflected ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... marks a year.[202] Hensel makes the emphatic claim, and produces numerous proofs of the correctness of his views, that the mineral of our mountains contain an inexhaustible supply of the best fertilizing stuffs. Granite, porphyry, basalt, broken and ground up, spread upon the fields or vineyards and furnished with a sufficiency of water, furnished a fertilizer that excelled all others, even animal and human refuse.[203] These minerals, he claims, contain ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... out his hands toward her shoulders in turn, but his arms were shorter than hers, and his hands rested on the sensitive warmth of her upper arms. He peered at those dear gray-blue eyes of hers, but he could not calm himself enough to tell whether they were china-blue or basalt-black. ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... largest is that of Borger, which contains forty-five blocks, of which ten are cap-stones. Several Huenenbetter have been excavated. In them are found pottery vases, flint celts, axes and hammers of grey granite, basalt, ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... coast of Northumberland, "over against" an obscure town of the same name. It stands upon a basalt rock, of a triangular shape, high, rugged, and abrupt on the land side; flanked by the German Ocean, and strong natural rampires of sand, matted together with sea rushes on the east; and only accessible to an enemy on the south-east, which is guarded by a deep, dry ditch, and a series of towers in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... Nevada. A narrow gorge, standing fairly on end, led down from the Pass. Without hesitation, like a sluggishly moving, viscid brown fluid, the sheep flowed over the edge. The dogs, their flanking duties relieved by the walls of dark basalt on either hand, fell to the rear with their masters. The mountain-bred horses dropped calmly down the rough ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... the Western continent has more than once attracted the attention of Parliament. The Manufactures are large and comprehensive, and include the most famous distilleries in the world. The Minerals are most abundant, and among these may be reckoned quartz, porphyry, felspar, malachite, manganese, and basalt. ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... he saw hills and a small mountain, but all the country in that direction seemed to be extremely arid and repellent. The bare basalt of volcanic origin showed everywhere, and, even at the distance, he could see many deep quarries in the stone, where races older, doubtless, than Aztecs and Toltecs, had obtained material for building. It was always Ned's feeling when in Mexico that he was in an old, ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... them they were like two mighty mountains of wood burning far into heaven, and each was lofty as the pyre that blazes over men slain in some red war, and each pile roared and flared above a steep crag of smooth black basalt, and between the burning mounds of fire lay the flame-flecked water ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... in all these sculptured remains through the silence of the centuries. Some fresh thought came to me as I waited to look at first one statue and then another. I sought for those which represented women. There is a small statue in green basalt of Isis holding a figure of Osiris Un-nefer, her son.[236] The goddess is represented as much larger than the young god, who stands at her feet. The marriage of Isis with her brother Osiris did not blot out her independent position, her importance as a deity remained to the end greater than his. ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... deep in hell they had forged a terrible temptation. They knew the walls of the citadel of morality, built alone on natural virtue and unaided by divine grace, would soon crumble before their powerful machinations. In moments of sober reflection our resolutions are like prisms of basalt, that will not be riven by the lightning, but which in the hour of real trial prove to be ice-crystals that a sunbeam can dissolve. The powers that wage war with frail humanity have hung on the portals of the infernal kingdom, as trophies of ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... and bales. Camels also we saw introduced from the not far off coast of Africa, patient as ever, bearing heavy weights balanced on their hump backs. Madeira was hot, but we were much hotter now, as the basalt-paved streets and the white glittering buildings sent back the burning rays of the almost vertical sun. Thus fired and scorched, we could not help gazing with a somewhat envious glance into some of the Moorish-looking ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Tyope had continued to weed his corn, not with any pretence of activity or haste, but in the slow, persistent way peculiar to the sedentary Indian, which makes of him a steady though not a very profitable worker. Tyope's only implement was a piece of basalt resembling a knife, and he weeded on without interruption until the shadows of the plants extended from row to row. Then he straightened himself and scanned quietly the whole valley as far as visible, like one who is tired and is taking a last survey of the ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... the older tertiary formations, with their abundant shells, and their relics of vegetable life buried under great sheets of basalt, led him to consider carefully the question of climate during these earlier periods. In opposition to prevalent views on this subject, Darwin points out that his observations are opposed to the conclusion that a higher temperature prevailed universally over the globe during early geological periods. ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... to the entrance of the channel. The 'Stancomb Wills' pushed off at 11 a.m. and quickly passed out of sight around the island. Then Hurley and I walked along the beach towards the west, climbing through a gap between the cliff and a great detached pillar of basalt. The narrow strip of beach was cumbered with masses of rock that had fallen from the cliffs. We struggled along for two miles or more in the search for a place where we could get the boats ashore and make a permanent camp in the event of Wild's search ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... Mahaber [Footnote: From Ain to Mahaber (direction E. by N.) about twenty miles.] the road is most picturesque; always following the winding of the small river Ain, here and there compressed to only a few yards by perpendicular walls of trachyte, or basalt; further on expanding into miniature green plateaus, bordered by conical hills, covered to the very summit by mimosas and huge cactuses, alive with large hordes of antelopes (the agazin), which, bounding from rock to rock, scared by ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... the canoes at the distance of four miles, and is invisible from the opposite side of the sound, otherwise a short traverse might have saved us some days. The few eminences that are on this side were mistaken for islands when seen from the opposite shore; they are for the most part cliffs of basalt, and are not above one hundred feet high; the subjacent strata are of white sand-stone. The rocks are mostly confined to the capes and shores, the soil inland being flat, clayey, and barren. Most of the headlands ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... snakes in their hands, and Siva has a large one round his loins as a waistband. There are several demons in human shape lying prostrate under the belly of the bull, and the whole are well cut out of one large slab of hard basalt from a dyke in the marble rock beneath. They call the whole group 'Gauri Sankar', and I found in the fair, exposed for sale, a brass model of a similar one from Jeypore (Jaipur), but not so well shaped and proportioned. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... nearly W. N. W., and consisting of black ferruginous sandstone. It was broad and of peculiar structure, so that it might well have been considered a dividing feature. Parallel to it on the south, a line of pointed hills of trap or basalt, extended so as to give birth, in the valley intervening, to the watercourse by which we were encamped. On one of these Mr. Kennedy afterwards found the Bottle tree, represented at page 154. I at length reached the gap in this range, and in ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... A heavy basalt sarcophagus had been prepared which was to be the outer coffin of the mummy. This sarcophagus had also the form and features of the dead pharaoh. It was covered with inscriptions, and pictures of people praying, of sacred ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... think the place worth all we have undergone. The crags are wonderful, chalk at the bottom, basalt above, and of course all round to the Giant's Causeway it is finer still. Well may we, as the Bishop is always doing, give thanks that we were taken, by the Divine Hand guiding tide and current, to this milder and less ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... as he grasped the scene around them. "Look here, Drew! Look at the earth bared to its very bones. Volcanic. Look at the tufa. That's basalt there, and look where the great blocks of coral are lying. Why, they must have been swept in by ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... carrion with, God curse the same! Yet still my niche is not so cramped, but thence One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side, And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats, And up into the aery dome where live The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk: And I shall fill my slab of basalt there, And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest, With those nine columns round me, two and two, The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands: Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse. —Old Gandolf with his ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... sawed into discs and smashed into petal-shaped wedges for the Opus Alexandrinum. I don't think we saw one natural looking stone upon that beach; everything seemed vaguely, precious and outlandish, basalt, porphyry, agate, Rossoantique, and serpentine still bearing its original polish; also fine white marble, Mme. B. possessing a beautiful piece of salty Parian found there, and shaped delicately, curved and ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... "Norag," running on iron plates and drawn by bulls or cows over the corn. Generally, however, Moslems prefer the old classical {Greek letters}, the Tribulum of Virgil and Varro, a slipper-shaped sled of wood garnished on the sole with large-headed iron nails, or sharp fragments of flint or basalt. Thus is made the "Tibn" or straw, the universal hay of the East, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... in the heart of a wild, mountainous country, difficult of access, and barren of vegetation, except of the most hardy character, such as the manzanita and Californian oak. Molten mercury, pure and rich, is found in the crevices of the rocks. Quartz and basalt are freely met with, and on ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... prolific only in prickly undergrowth and noxious weeds, while foetid exhalations from swamp and fen cling close to the humid, spongy ground. All around breathes desolation; on the face of nature is stamped a perpetual frown. The shipwrecked sailor, crawling painfully to the summit of basalt cliffs, or the ironed convict, dragging his tree trunk to the edge of some beetling plateau, looks down upon a sea of fog, through which rise mountain-tops like islands; or sees through the biting sleet a desert of scrub and crag rolling to the feet of Mount Heemskirk and ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... in the general stye, the walls of a great municipal building, from which lofty destinies were to be guided and controlled in the path to greatness, began to rise, with strength of stone masonry, and arches of well-hewn basalt, and divisions within for halls and stairways, and many offices. But the beams of the first story were never laid across the lower walls. There was no more money, and what had been built was a palace for the pigs. Laviano had spent its little all, and gone into debt, to ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... it dominated the entire land. Perched on a peak of basalt, it overhung an abyss in which Asphalitis, the Bitter Sea, lay, a stretch of sapphire to the sun. In the distance were the heights of Abraham, the crests of Gilead. Before it was the infinite, behind it the desert. At its base a hamlet crouched, and a path hewn ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... as black as the basalt tablets in the museum, were seated on the floor of the white marble court. Some were eating their frugal meal; some were lying on their backs resting; while others were lost in prayer. Here and there a tall sheikh or a professor was standing talking to a group ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... basalt, can be cut into slices of about 3/32 inch thick. A very loose rock is best boiled in Canada balsam, hard enough to set, before it ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... home from Sunrise Land the better. There were many such monuments of divinities in the north. They are met with all about the lakes and in the wooded wilderness, the most striking one being the magnificent spire of basalt in the Black Hills region of Wyoming. It is known as Devil's Tower, or Mateo's Tepee, and by the red men is held to be the wigwam of a were-animal that can become man at pleasure. This singular rock towers above the Belle Fourche River to a ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... no answer, save the incessant angry murmur of the Nile as it raced round a basalt-walled bend and foamed across a rock-ridge half a mile upstream. It was as though the brown weight of the river would drive the white men back to their own country. The indescribable scent of Nile mud in the air told that the stream was falling and the next few miles would be no light ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... meadow. A broad river-bed, containing several rivulets of water, ran through the thirsty fields, conveying the vivifying element which in this part of Usagara was so scarce and precious. Down to the river-bed sloped the Mpwapwa, roughened in some places by great boulders of basalt, or by rock masses, which had parted from a precipitous scarp, where clung the kolquall with a sure hold, drawing nourishment where every other green thing failed; clad in others by the hardy mimosa, which rose like a sloping bank of green verdure almost to the summit. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... a good deal on sea, and a trifle on as uncomfortable a section of basalt as ever served two unhappy buccaniers for bed, table, and sofa. The chilliness is not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... one chooses to give the thing, can look at its product with a certain degree of complacency and satisfaction. For it has your curved lines: it starts off into noticeable angles; it is jagged like corals; it darts forward like crystals; it agglomerates like basalt; nay, there is no conceivable line that does not hop, skip, and jump about our bodies. We, coz, are the spoilt, the cockered children of the formation: and this is why the common rabble of nature are so malicious ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... of finding the great hall of the palace—the vastest hall in the world—dim and dull and dusty and delightful, with nothing in it except at one end Donatello's colossal marble-headed wooden horse of Troy, stared at from the other end by the two dog-faced Egyptian women in basalt placed ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... started for a walk, and passing by the old church, came shortly to the spot where the boy martyr was killed. From here we descended, over a long slope of gray tufa, to a pretty stream flowing through black basalt. The rock is hard and shiny with cells or air-bubbles scattered through its mass. Close by the water's edge we were shown some curious impressions, on the nearly level surface of the rock, which were said to be the imprints of the knees of the Holy Virgin ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... who found the witch's habitat, but got only an indistinct view of her face. On a second trial he was successful.[2] One may add that treasure-seekers among the Huille-che 'look earnestly' for what they want to find 'into a smooth slab of black stone, which I suppose to be basalt.'[3] ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... quartz, olivine, hypersthene, magnetite, ilmenite, and hornblende. Their structure is ophitic in the finer varieties, and to some extent in the coarser kinds as well. They are holocrystalline in form and true glassy bases are rare, rendering the term diabase more appropriate than basalt. ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... the first object, but not as to the second. In two places, unfortunately outside of the entrances to the caves in question, where atmospheric and perhaps other influences had been destructively at work, there were found conically pointed basalt prisms, which exhibited unmistakable traces of hieroglyphic writing. These inscriptions were no longer legible; and though our Egyptologists, as well as those of London and Paris, agreed in thinking that the inscription on one stone distinctly referred to the goddess Hathor, ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... they came to an immense barren plain, without a sign of vegetation. The air was dry and the sky unclouded blue. At this elevation rain is unknown, and vapors only condense into snow or hail. Here and there peaks of porphyry or basalt pierced through the white winding-sheet like the bones of a skeleton; and at intervals fragments of quartz or gneiss, loosened by the action of the air, fell down with a faint, dull sound, which in a denser atmosphere would have ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... which were faced with planks of cedar-wood, marvellously worked, at regular intervals stood tall statues of black basalt in the constrained attitudes of Egyptian art, each sustaining in its hand a bronze torch into which a splinter of ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... of so many little black pebbles that they were cleared away by shoveling (La Sci. Pour Tous, 5-264); great number of small black stones that fell at Birmingham, England, August, 1858—violent storm—said to be similar to some basalt a few leagues from Birmingham (Rept. Brit. Assoc., 1864-37); pebbles described as "common water-worn pebbles" that fell at Palestine, Texas, July 6, 1888—"of a formation not found near Palestine" (W.H. Perry, Sergeant, Signal Corps, Monthly Weather ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... whence these ejections were thrown, two rivers plunged in cataracts; but the water only increased the violence of the eruption. It was thrown into steam with explosive force, and great quantities of mud and balls of basalt were ejected. On the surface of the swollen mound there were formed thousands of small cones, from six to ten feet in height, and sending forth steam to heights varying from twenty to ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... Hermaphrodite without which no large Continental gallery is complete. But more worthy of attention is the torso of a faun on the left, on a revolving pedestal which (unlike those in the Bargello, as we shall discover) really does revolve and enables you to admire the perfect back. There is also a torso in basalt or porphyry which one should study from all points, and on the walls some wonderful portions of a frieze from the Ara Pacis, erected in Rome, B.C. 139, with wonderful figures of men, women, and children on it. Among the heads is a colossal ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... hot springs and the fashionable baths of Amatha. On the north-east side, the remains of the extensive necropolis of Gadara are still to be seen. Innumerable sepulchral chambers are excavated in the limestone cliffs, and many of them still contain sarcophaguses of basalt; while not a few are converted into dwellings by the inhabitants of the present village of Um Keis. The distance of Gadara from the south-eastern shore of the Lake of Tiberias is less than seven miles. The nearest of the other cities ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... called screenings, is essential to the construction of the water-bound type of surface. Rocks vary considerably in the cementing properties of the dust, but usually the rocks classed as "trap," such as andesite, gabbro and rhyolite, and schist and basalt possess good cementing properties. Limestones usually possess good cementing properties, but some of the dolomitic limestones are of low cementing value. Quartz, sandstone and the granites ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... a mountain, tembo was a black block of breathing basalt. Tembo roared and snorted and rolled ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... the extravagancies of what was known at that day as 'Vulcanism' or 'Plutonism,' in contradistinction to the 'Neptunism' of Werner. Hutton, while rejecting the Wernerian notion of "the aqueous precipitation of basalt," maintained the equally fanciful idea that the consolidation of all strata—clays, sandstones, conglomerates, limestones and even rock-salt—must be ascribed to the action of heat, and that even the formation of chalk-flints and the silicification of fossil wood were due to the injection ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... Myvatn, or such as the similar boiling mud-pits of the Yellowstone Park country, called from their brilliant colours the "Paint-pots." It is, at any rate, from circular clay basins, inclosed within a harder rock (basalt, black shale, and quartzite) that the stones are obtained. Some of the mines are worked even to a depth of 1200 feet by shafts and subterranean galleries. Some are open, and these, particularly that called the Wesselton Mine, are an interesting ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... of the one deity traces are visible on the heights of Fruska Gora in the fossil sea-shells strewn around, and in Veterani's cave with its petrified relics of saurian monsters of the deep; of the other god, the basalt of Piatra Detonata bears witness. While the man of the iron hand is revealed by long galleries hewn in the rock, a vaulted road, the ruined piers of an immense bridge, the tablets sculptured in bas-relief on the face of the cliff, and by a channel ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... Rochet and the Pointe de Sguinau, or Croche-Mort, which latter name preserves the legend of an insurgent slave, a man of color, shot dead upon the cliff. These promontories form the semicircular bay of Grande Anse. All this Grande Anse, or "Great Creek," valley is an immense basin of basalt; and narrow as it is, no less than five streams water it, including the Riviere ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... hills begin with the basalt buttresses of Antrim and the granite ribs of Down, and pass through northern Ulster and Connacht to the headlands of Mayo and Galway. Their rear is held by the Donegal ranges, keeping guard against the blackness of ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... Nor, again, must I pause to speculate whether the dark-stained lustrous flint implements discovered by Mr. Henry Balfour at a high level below the Victoria Falls, and possibly deposited there by the river Zambezi before it had carved the present gorge in the solid basalt, prove that likewise in South Africa man was alive and busy untold thousands of years ago. Also, I shall here confine myself to the stone-age, because my object is chiefly to illustrate the long pedigree of the species from ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... pointing out to me the extreme care and attention with which he finished his buildings. He inserted small fragments of basalt into the mortar of the external joints of the stones, at close and regular distances, in order to protect the mortar from the adverse action of the weather. And to this day they give proof of their efficiency. ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... the hottest sun-bibbers of the Rheingau, glistened in the roll of Gottlieb's possessions; corn-acres below Cologne; basalt-quarries about Linz; mineral-springs in Nassau, a legacy of the Romans to the genius and enterprise of the first of German traders. He could have bought up every hawking crag, owner and all, from Hatto's Tower to Rheineck. Lore-ley, combing her yellow locks against the night-cloud, beheld ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... away, the songs say, along the Mysian shore, and past the mouth of Rhindacus, till they found a pleasant bay, sheltered by the long ridges of Arganthus, and by high walls of basalt rock. And there they ran the ship ashore upon the yellow sand, and furled the sail, and took the mast down, and lashed it in its crutch. And next they let down the ladder, and went ashore to sport ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... in the City of Mexico, was erected at the charges of Don Antonio Escandon, to whose public spirit and enterprise the building of the Vera Cruz & Mexico Railway was due. The monument is the work of the French sculptor Cordier. The base is a large platform of basalt, surrounded by a balustrade of iron, above which are five lanterns. From this base rises a square mass of red marble, ornamented with four basso-relievos; the arms of Columbus, surrounded with garlands of laurels; the rebuilding of the monastery of Santa Maria ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... this is covered with a cupola surmounted by the monogram of Christ; and over the gate are curtains drawn up on each side, See Raoul-Rochette-Tableau des Catacombs, p. 332. The font is an ancient urn of basalt the paintings above it, between the second order of columns, representing, the life of S. John Baptist, are by ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... of the river here was due north and south. Perhaps a mile from the bank of the river to the west, rose a high tableland which terminated in precipitous and generally insurmountable bluffs of black basalt, extending above the general level of the valley about twelve hundred feet. Projecting eastward from the side of these lofty cliffs was a singular rocky plateau, the outer lines of which roughly formed a half circle. This elevation was bordered on the south by a deep and broken canon, ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... stooped to drink of the water of the river, and as soon as the water touched my lips, lo! the river vanished, and the flat country with its poppies and lilies, and I dreamed that I was in a boat by myself again, floating in an almost land-locked bay of the northern sea, under a cliff of dark basalt. I was lying on my back in the boat, looking up at the intensely blue sky, and a long low swell from the outer sea lifted the boat up and let it fall again and carried it gradually nearer and nearer towards the dark cliff; and as ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... of rivers far antedating the gravels of the Somme. It is therefore not a little interesting to learn from Prof. Whitney that he finds many proofs of the existence of man in the gravels of the Pliocene Age in California. Under the solid basalt of Table Mountain have been found many works of men's hands, as well ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... Mlanje, in the extreme south-eastern corner of the protectorate. This remarkable and picturesque mass is an isolated "chunk" of the Archean plateau, through which at a later date there has been a volcanic outburst of basalt. The summit and sides of this mass exhibit several craters. The highest peak of Mlanje reaches an altitude of 9683 ft. (In German territory, near the north end of Lake Nyasa, and close to the British frontier, is Mount Rungwe, the altitude of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... On one of my trips to the Gilbert, when passing Dalrymple, Billy Marks, the store and hotel-keeper, presented me with a well-bred cattle pup and a gin case to put him in. This I placed on top of the load. We had six miles to go over very rough basalt country to our camp. That day I had yoked a steer for the first time, and I intended to hobble him at night. When we reached camp I told Billy to bring up a quiet bullock called Darling, and this I coupled to the steer, instructing ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... out in the patent toughened glass. Also we initiated mild experiments about an imitation of volcanic forces in melting pounded stone into moulds,—as recently done by Mr. Lindsay Bucknall with slag:—but unluckily we found that the manufacture of basalt was beyond our small furnace power: I fancied that apparently carved pinnacles and gurgoyles might be cast in stone; and though beyond Dr. Kerrison and myself, perhaps it may still be done by the hot-blast melting up ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... just below the water-line, are heavily mossed with seaweed. The polygonal masses composing these shapes are called by the fishermen 'tortoise-shell stones.' There is a legend that once Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami, to try his strength, came here, and, lifting up one of these masses of basalt, flung it across the sea to the mountain of Sanbeyama. At the foot of Sanbe the mighty rock thus thrown by the Great Deity of Kitzuki may still be seen, it is ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... easily and followed it down, crossing a deep ravine and stony ridge, and recrossed at two and three-quarter miles on a bearing north of east, and crossed the river back again, very steep on the side we crossed from but good getting out, and came over ridgy, and latterly, basalt country, on bearing of about east-south-east, and camped on the opposite side of the river at three miles on last bearing, where there was a suitable place in the bed of the river for killing one of our horses which was completely knocked up. This camp is about two miles up ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... the blue cushions in the Louvre are as illusive as any one of Mr. Whistler's "Nocturnes". The beautiful "Andromeda", head and throat leaned back almost out of nature, wild eyes and mass of heavy hair, long white arms uplifted, chained to the basalt,—how rare the simplifications, those arms, that body, the straight flanks and slender leg advancing,—are made of lines simple and beautiful as those which in the Venus of Milo realise the architectural beauty of woman. We shrink ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... must be satisfied with mentioning the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, before the palace; the Captive Kings, in the court; the columna rostrata; and within, the colossal statue of Pyrrhus; the tomb of Severus; the Centaurs, of basalt; the beautiful alabaster pillars; the masterpiece in mosaic, which once belonged to cardinal Furietti, representing three doves on the edge of a vessel filled with water, which is described by Pliny. The fountains ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... plateau moved forward. The texture of the heavens above them changed. The sun—the one thing in their new universe that seemed unchanged in size and aspect—shone down on them. The plateau came jarringly to rest. Great cliffs of what seemed black basalt gleamed ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst |
