"Excavation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Any fresh excavation of cellar or cistern, or cut for road or railway, will show the characteristics of the humus layer. It may form only a gray film on the surface, or we may find it a layer a foot or more thick, dark, or even black, above, and growing gradually lighter in color as it passes by insensible ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... heard in the distance. The Mongol carefully examined his construction; he seemed nervous. A man with the appearance of a peasant standing near him on the edge of the excavation and close beside the capstan watched all his movements. It was Elias, well disguised by his salakot ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... its northern shore, and have probably cut up the whole tract of rock over the space now filled by that wonderful sheet of fresh water in such a way as to destroy its continuity, to produce depressions, and gradually create the excavation which now forms the basin of the lake. How far the same causes have been effectual in producing the other large lakes I am unable to say, never having had the opportunity of studying their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... Desague was begun in 1607, when the Marquis of Salinas was viceroy of Mexico; and the operations were commenced with great pomp, the viceroy assisting in person, mass being said on a portable altar, and fifteen hundred workmen assembled, while the marquis himself began the excavation by giving the first stroke with a spade. From 1607 to 1830, eight millions of dollars were expended, and yet this great work was not brought to a conclusion. However, the limits of the two lakes of Zumpango and San Cristobal, to the north of the valley, were thus greatly reduced, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... and dirt caused by the work of excavation, shut the back windows to keep out the dust and returned to the front room—his study, library and reception-room in one. With the addition of the bath off the bedroom in the rear, and a large hall-closet opening from the study, these two rooms comprised ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... or Caddo brother. The body is then taken and placed in a saddle upon a pony, in a sitting posture; a squaw usually riding behind, though sometimes one on either side of the horse, holds the body in position until the place of burial is reached, when the corpse is literally tumbled into the excavation selected for the purpose. The deceased is only accompanied by two or three squaws, or enough to perform the little labor bestowed upon the burial. The body is taken due west of the lodge or village of the bereaved, and usually one of the deep washes or heads of canons in which the Comanche ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... badger goes down, as many of the furry people as are not caught napping come up by the back doors, and the hawks make short work of them. I suspect that the crows get nothing but the gratification of curiosity and the pickings of some secret store of seeds unearthed by the badger. Once the excavation begins they walk about expectantly, but the little gray hawks beat slow circles about the doors of exit, and are wiser in their generation, though they do not ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... who threw out some hints on this part of the subject, and further added his opinion, that the lake came to be there in consequence of the wearing away of the rocks at the junction of the stratified with the primitive formation, thus creating an excavation in the surface, which in time became filled with water and formed the lake. This cause he also assigned for the existence of a remarkable "chain of lakes" that extends almost from the Arctic Sea to the frontiers of Canada. The most noted of ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... superstition of Devonshire, are a race of beings invisibly small, and harmless or friendly to man. At a small distance from a village in that county, half-way up a wood-covered hill, is an excavation called the Pixies' Parlour. The roots of old trees form its ceiling; and on its sides are innumerable cyphers, among which the author discovered his own cypher and those of his brothers, cut by the hand of their childhood. At the foot ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... rooms of a horse-shoe shape brought to light in excavation have a depth of 14, and a breadth of 11, Greek feet; the width of the entrances is not specified. Whether these dimensions and the proportions of the corridor suffice for our recognizing them as elephants' stalls, remains to be settled by a more accurate investigation. The partition-walls, which ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... his money. Now, excluding for the time being the circumstantial evidence against Ronald—though without losing sight of it—the next point that arises is was he murdered by somebody in the inn or by somebody from outside—say, for example, one of the villagers employed on his excavation works. The waiter's story of the missing knife suggests the former theory, but I do not regard that evidence as incontrovertible. The knife might have been stolen from the kitchen by a man who had been ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... to the grotto, and I will follow her," said Adolphe. On this therefore they agreed. Now the grotto was a natural excavation in a high rock, which stood precipitously upright over the establishment of the baths. A steep zigzag path with almost never- ending steps had been made along the face of the rock from a little flower ...
— La Mere Bauche from Tales of All Countries • Anthony Trollope
... further corner of the dungeon. The ladies stumbled among the loose stones in the semi-darkness, Anna, who was more robust and the taller of the two, folding her arms around Mrs. Carleton to support her, and both of them feeling their way lest they should fall into any other well or excavation. Arrived at the corner they saw a gleam of light, which came in a slanting direction through a large hole in the wall. They still heard the little voice and determined to follow it. The hole would only admit of their crawling ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... additional aisle. Moreover, they had dug an immense pit in the churchyard, long and broad, and fifteen feet deep, two thirds of which profundity were discolored by human decay, and mixed up with crumbly bones. What this excavation was intended for I could nowise imagine, unless it were the very pit in which Longfellow bids the "Dead Past bury its Dead," and Whitnash, of all places in the world, were going to avail itself of our poet's suggestion. If so, it must needs be confessed that ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... watered the horses and sheep, I sent the boy out to tend them at grass, whilst I commenced digging two large holes to water the pack-horses, that there might be no delay when the overseer came up with them. I had nothing but a shell to dig with, and, as a very large excavation was required to enable a bucket to be dipped, my occupation was neither a light nor a short one. Having completed my work, I killed a sheep, well knowing the party would be fatigued and hungry, when they came up. About three they made ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... at a run for the future temple. Arrived at the excavation and the already completed sacred fount, he got down into the water, chanted in a loud voice hymns to Asclepius and Apollo, and invited the God to come, a welcome guest, to the city. He next demanded a bowl, and when this was handed to him, had ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... shadowed forth, although feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of an immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and without interruption or device. Certain accessory points of the design served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... the Mauritius, the reef would present the aspect of a terrace, its seaward face, 100 feet or more high, blooming with the animal flowers of the coral, while its surface would be hollowed out into a shallow and irregular moat-like excavation. ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... concavity, depression, dip; hollow, hollowness; indentation, intaglio, cavity, dent, dint, dimple, follicle, pit, sinus, alveolus^, lacuna; excavation, strip mine; trough &c (furrow) 259; honeycomb. cup, basin, crater, punch bowl; cell &c (receptacle) 191; socket. valley, vale, dale, dell, dingle, combe^, bottom, slade^, strath^, glade, grove, glen, cave, cavern, cove; grot^, grotto; alcove, cul-de- ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... his excavation in the interior of the pyramidal ruin occupying a part of the platform which now surmounts the mound of Nimroud. From two sides trenches were cut to the centre; neither of them encountered a void of any kind (Nineveh and its Remains, vol. ii. p. 107). At a later period ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... he goes to the site and observes the progress of the work and how it is being done. Special conditions may arise where the contractor or his foreman call hurriedly for the architect, such as uncovering a large boulder at one corner of the excavation for the cellar. There may be a fine point to be decided regarding the location of piping or some detailed instruction concerning the installation of the interior woodwork. On these occasions it saves time for everybody if the architect or one of his associates is readily available. ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... occupied by the city of Noviomagus. In a field at Keston, near Bromley Common in Kent, Mr. Croker had learned that the remains of a Roman building were apparent above the grass, and it was to ascertain this fact that the excursion was undertaken. An excavation was made, and a few fragments of Roman pottery and a stone coffin were discovered. From this circumstance the club was called the Noviomagian Society. Mr. Croker was elected its president, and although most of the original members had died off, he continued in that office ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... fault," he snapped back; "then I suppose it was mine! I suppose I fell down the elevator shaft just to please mother, eh? Maybe you think I dropped into the excavation just to pass the time away? Have you an idea that I dove down into the earth because I wanted to get back to the mines? Wasn't your fault, indeed! Maybe you think I fell in the well simply because I wanted to give an imitation of the old ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... a walk of some distance on a sandy road through the thick shrubs, we arrived at some huts built of a frame-work of poles thatched with the radiated leaves of the dwarf palmetto, which had a very picturesque appearance. Here we found a circular hollow in the earth, the place of an old excavation, now shaded with red-cedars, and the palmetto-royal bristling with long pointed leaves, which bent over and embowered it, and at the bottom was a spring within a square curb of stone, where we refreshed ourselves ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... things were highly valued. But what clearer evidence can be desired than the discovery made in our own day in the year 1554 of a bronze figure representing the Chimaera of Bellerophon, during the excavation of the fortifications and walls of Arezzo. This figure exhibits the perfection of the art attained by the Tuscans. Some small letters carved on a paw are presumed, in the absence of a knowledge of the Etruscan language, to give the master's name, ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... when the Falkners went out with the architect to consider the lot, and spent an afternoon trying to decide how to secure the most sun. Falkner, weary of the whole matter, listened to the glib young architect. Another windy day in April they returned to the lot to look at the excavation. The contracts were not yet signed. Lumber had gone soaring, and there was a strike in the brick business, the kind of brick they had chosen being unobtainable, while hardware seemed unaccountably precious. Already ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... to percolate into the hole, and ere we had gone much deeper, it flooded it so that we found it impossible to continue the excavation. Then we resorted to our sounding rod again for a last ray of hope, and almost immediately it struck something hard! Our ...
— Money Island • Andrew Jackson Howell, Jr.
... palm-tree, and here, on account of its majestic height, the royal palm-tree. After having thrown down the trunk, which diminishes but little towards the top, they make just below the point whence the leaves (fronds) and spathes issue, an excavation in the ligneous part, eighteen inches long, eight broad, and six in depth. They work in the hollow of the tree, as though they were making a canoe; and three days afterwards this cavity is found filled with a yellowish-white juice, very ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... which I will briefly describe. It consisted of a large circle of stout stakes, driven into the ground perpendicularly, close together. There was one opening, at the entrance of which a strong tree trunk was placed about a foot from the ground, and at the inner side an excavation was made sufficiently deep to prevent the buffalo from leaping back when once in the pound. From this entrance, on either side, gradually widening, extended two rows of bushy posts, stuck into the ground about fifty feet apart. The extreme distance between the outer end of ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... pleasant parties we organised thence, with Isabella Colonna, Teresa Sclafani, and that exquisite creature Lauretta Acton, who afterwards became Madame Minghetti, and many another! Now it would be a night ascent of Vesuvius, in eruption, and then again a moonlight excavation at Pompeii. Show me the man who would not have fallen in love in such company, beneath that exquisite sky, environed and intoxicated by the indefinable enchantments in which the landscape and the very air you breathed were ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... visitors by letting down a light, till it nearly reaches the bottom, at about 20 feet. The diameter at the top may be 7 feet, and after a descent of 7 or 8 feet, it gradually widens to 18 or 20 feet diameter, cut out of the solid rock. There is no appearance of any similar excavation at the north-east corner. The Castle, when surrendered, was abundantly supplied with provisions, and it contained the Cardinal's money and furniture, to the value, it is said, of L100,000; and also the property of other ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... that a hedgehog had taken up his winter-quarters in a cavity of a ledge of rocks, about twelve miles from Ontonagon, Lake Superior, in the neighborhood of the Minnesota Copper Mine. In order to capture their game, they procured a pick and shovel, and commenced an excavation by removing the vegetable mould and rubbish that had accumulated about the mouth of what proved to be a small cavern in the rock. At the depth of a few feet they discovered numerous stone hammers or mauls; and they saw that the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... have counted twenty before he tightened his clasp once more, and heaved with so good an effect that he drew Saxe right out of the icy mould, which had pretty well shaped itself to the lower part of his figure, and then carried him out of the excavation and laid him down barefooted upon ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... these trees showed like a black fringe. They alone attracted the eye; the slope, of a dusty, dirty grey, stretched out bare and devastated, dotted by a few bushes, among which peeped fragments of ancient walls. All was instinct with the ravaged, leprous sadness of a spot handed over to excavation, and where only men ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Egyptians never advanced. Neither effective military occupation nor effective administration of Syria by an Egyptian military or civil staff was so much as thought of. Traces of the cultural influence of Egypt on the Syrian civilization of the time (so far as excavation has revealed its remains) are few and far between; and we must conclude that the number of genuine Egyptians who resided in, or even passed through, the Asiatic province was very small. Unadventurous by nature, and disinclined to embark ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... other mineral product, and have been worked with a great expenditure of labour and for a very long period; for the caves are so many and so large that, even with modern appliances, it would have needed thousands of men for many decades to excavate them in the hard agglomerate of sand and pebbles. The excavation had been made, however, not with powder and dynamite, but with chisel and pickaxe; the caves must therefore have been the work of thousands of years. There was only one people who could here have expended upon such a work sufficient strength for a sufficient ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... Laocoon for the Vatican, after Michael Angelo had declared it was the greatest work of art in the world, and Signor de Fredis received a pension for life. The excavation and cleaning of the statue took a considerable time. But when at last it was ready, it was decorated with flowers, and carried in procession though the streets of Rome, while all the church-bells rang for ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... Chipping-Bird," as it is known among the farmers, is the finest architect of any of the ground-builders known to me. The site of its nest is usually some low bank by the roadside near a wood. In a slight excavation, with a partially concealed entrance, the exquisite structure is placed. Horse-hair and cow-hair are plentifully used, imparting to the interior of the nest great symmetry and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... westward, skirting the rocky Mount Coressus, on the western side of which was the great theatre, then in process of excavation by Mr. Wood, who has since published an elaborate account of his discoveries. Far toward the west stretched the ruins where had been the markets, the stadium and the ports, with crumbling walls and towers of all stages of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... plentiful. It grew in small clumps on the top of sandy ridges, and would not grow on the richer soil beneath. This convinced him that it never grew in any other country than Australia. The plant was cooked by being placed in an excavation in which a fire had been burning. It then became light and ready for transport. As to its use in the form of snuff, it was an excellent remedy for headaches, and chewed it stopped all craving for food. It had been used with success ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... point we can take it all in, geologically and historically—lies in a deep hollow, to the original level of which excavation has now at last reached. This hollow was formed by a stream which came down between the Esquiline and the Quirinal beyond it, and made its exit towards the river on the other side by way of the Velabrum. As the city extended itself, amalgamating with another ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... Herodotus, "omits taking accurate note of extraordinary and striking events." Everything was written down. Scribes are seen everywhere on the monuments, taking accounts of the products of the farms, even to every single egg and chicken. "In spite of the ravages of time, and though systematic excavation has scarcely yet commenced," says Bunsen, "we possess chronological records of a date anterior to any period of which manuscripts are preserved, or the art of writing existed in any other quarter." Because they were thus fond of recording everything, both in pictures and in three different ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... giving only the more lucid fragments. It bears all the earmarks of a disordered mind, and various experiences are repeated over and over, while much is so vague and incoherent as to defy comprehension. Nevertheless, from reading it myself, I venture to predict that if an excavation is made in the main basement, somewhere in the vicinity of the foundation of the great chimney, a collection of bones will be found which should very closely resemble those which James Crayden once clothed in ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... dressed in the usual costume, were "tending the still;" and a negro woman, as stout and strong as the men, and clad in a short, loose, linsey gown, from beneath which peeped out a pair of coarse leggins, was adjusting a long wooden trough, which conveyed the liquid rosin from the "still" to a deep excavation in the earth, at a short distance. In the pit was a quantity of rosin sufficient to fill a ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... reign of Augustus. The original foundation of the temple must date back to a remote time: the work of some of the early builders is in fact referred to in the inscriptions on the present structure. Petrie's excavation of the cemetery behind the temple enclosures revealed burials dating from the fourth dynasty onwards, the most important being mastables of the period from the sixth to the eleventh dynasties; many of these exhibited ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... and any slight exaggeration will be pardoned in view of the fact that old prejudices have to be violently overturned, and the stigma of melancholy and ponderous sobriety torn from the national name. It would be a matter of little surprise to some good persons if the products of excavation in the Nile Valley consisted largely of antique ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... mound was used, at least in part, for burial purposes. Nearly fifty years ago, when the writer of this note explored this remarkable artificial elevation of eighty feet in height, he found in the excavation numerous beads of shell or bone, or both, ornaments of the dead buried ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... with broken stone. Thence there extended a long, straight passage cut in the solid rock. I am no geologist, but the lining of this corridor was certainly of some harder material than limestone, for there were points where I could actually see the tool-marks which the old miners had left in their excavation, as fresh as if they had been done yesterday. Down this strange, old-world corridor I stumbled, my feeble flame throwing a dim circle of light around me, which made the shadows beyond the more threatening and obscure. Finally, I came to a spot where the ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... as there are no rocks like the stone which makes up most of this gravel anywhere in the modern valley, it is puzzling to know where it came from. I went to see the digging of the foundations of the new South Kensington Museum, and the great excavation, which was like the ditch of a fortress, and the stuff thrown out, which was like the rampart, was all dug in, or made of, river gravel. In this the men had found, lying higgledy-piggledy, with no two bones "belonging," quantities of bones of the beasts which used to graze on what I suppose ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... dashing along the "cut-off" in the same direction, a full mile in advance. Arriving at Indian Spring, he left his horse at a Mexican posada on the confines of the settlement, and from the piled debris of a tunnel excavation awaited the slow arrival of the coach. On mature reflection he could give no reason why he had not boldly awaited it at the express office, except a certain bashful consciousness of his own folly, and a belief that it might be glaringly apparent to the bystanders. When the coach arrived ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... hills west of Calais; and by M. de la Beche, between the strata of the coast of Dorset and Devon, and those of Normandy, it may be inferred that the English Channel is a submarine valley, which owes its origin in a great measure to diluvial excavation, the opposite sides having as much correspondence as those of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... A shallow excavation had been made, sufficient to admit with ease the body of a full-grown man; and on its margin they softly laid their burden down. Every object shone in the clear moonlight, and stranger scene never moon shone upon. A dreary waste stretched away in the distance, and ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... mossy rock of which we have spoken as being close to the sycamore walk, at the foot of a wall against which it flowed, forming a rather deep excavation, the current had found a vein of soft, brittle stone which, by its incessant force, it had ended in wearing away. It was a natural grotto formed by water, but which earth, in its turn, had undertaken to embellish. An enormous ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... nothing more than was already known about the dead man, and much patient excavation here and there about the premises by thoughtful and thrifty neighbors went unrewarded. The administrator locked up the house against the time when the property, real and personal, should be sold by law with a view to defraying, partly, ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... 'ole!" remarks Mr. Thomas Atkins casually, at sight of an excavation in the earth ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... "Fortress Matilda" and "Castle Mary," and one had, though unintentionally, a literary flavor to it, "Blair's Grave," which was not popularly considered as reflecting unpleasantly on Nat Blair, who had assisted in making the excavation. ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... drew rein at the summit of the Moengal Pass. Never, not in the Rockies, nor the Himalayas, nor the Alps, have I seen anything more sublime. At our feet yawned a vast valley, or rather a depression, like an excavation for some titanic building, hemmed in by perpendicular cliffs a thousand feet in height. Wafted by the morning breeze a mighty river of clouds poured slowly down the valley, filling it with gray-white fleece from brim to brim. Slowly the clouds dissolved before the mounting sun until there lay ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... hidden beauty of which city and plain were but the sumptuous drapery. It is hardly too much to say that to the trained eyes of the day the visible Naples hardly existed, so absorbed were they in the perusal of her buried past. The fever of excavation was on every one. No social or political problem could find a hearing while the subject of the last coin or bas-relief from Pompeii or Herculanaeum remained undecided. Odo, at first an amused spectator, gradually found himself engrossed in the fierce quarrels raging over ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... the singer for the occasion began to play a prelude on the musical bow, which the Coras always glue to the gourd, uniting the two parts to form one instrument. The gourd was placed over a small excavation in the ground to increase its resonance. The singer invoked the Morning Star to come with his brothers, the other stars, to bring with them their pipes and plumes, and arrive dancing with the rain-clouds that emanate ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... gold lockets. Of course it might have been stolen and hidden—but that's far-fetched. It's much more likely that this was the very tomb where Delcasse was working at the time of his death. For one thing, the place showed signs of previous excavation up to the inner corridor, and there I'll swear no modern got ahead of me. And for another thing, it's a perfect specimen of the limestone carving of the Tomb of Thi which Delcasse wrote his book about—looks very much as if it might be by the same artist. There's a ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... house stands is a comparatively level one—or rather, was, before the house was built—it is generally easy to secure a slope from the house on all sides, by filling in about the building with the soil thrown up from the cellar or in making excavation for the walls. If no excavation of any kind has been made—and quite often, nowadays, foundation walls are built on the ground instead of starting a foot or two below the surface,—a method never to be advised because of the risk of injury to the building from the action of ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... was now nothing more than a gaping excavation choked with ashes and charred timbers; and though still rumours of police interest in the origin of the fire persisted, nothing in the papers linked the name of Michael Lanyard with their activities. His disappearance and Lucy Shannon's seemed to be accepted as due to death in ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... known by the name of Tripitaka[602] or Three Baskets. When an excavation was made in ancient India it was the custom to pass up the earth in baskets along a line of workmen[603] and the metaphorical use of the word seems to be taken from this practice and ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... that this excavation practically occupies the whole of that part of Back Cup island which appears above water. As to the length of the submarine tunnel by which communication is obtained with the outside, and through which the tug passed, I estimate that it ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... been unearthed at Abu-Habba (Sippara) and Jokha (Isin) by Dr. Scheil, working for the Turkish government. But the most important finds have been at Niffer, the ancient Nippur, in Northern Babylonia, where the American expedition has brought to a close its long work of systematic excavation. Here Mr. Haynes has dug down to the very foundations of the great temple of El-lil, and the chief historical results of his labours have been published by Professor Hilprecht (in The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, vol. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... his pulses throbbed, and he could feel his blood tingling, he fell to work systematically, groping about the excavation the dead man had made where the snowslide had rent apart the forest and scored out the rock for him. Here and there he smashed a fragment of it with the back of the axe, or picked up a discoloured stone of unusual gravity and compared ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... which were close to our camping ground. I descended by a steep path some six hundred or seven hundred feet to the bottom. It is an immense amphitheatre at the base of thickly wooded hills. It is larger in extent than the vast open excavation formed by the "Kimberley" Mine at Kimberley. The salt and soda brine is perpetually oosing from the bottom, and is continually being scraped up with a sort of wooden scraper into heaps, where, after a ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young
... disturb one straw or spear of grass, or thread of moss! You cannot approach it and put your hand into it without violating the place more or less, and yet the little architect has wrought day after day and left no marks. There has been an excavation, and yet no grain of earth appears to have been moved. If the nest had slowly and silently grown like the grass and the moss, it could not have been more nicely adjusted to its place and surroundings. There is absolutely nothing ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... management of his spirited horses he nearly brought us to grief. After some narrow escapes of being capsized over the heaps of stones scattered along the new road, now in the course of construction, we came to a dead lock in an excavation; and one of the horses, though mettlesome enough, hung in the collar, refusing to draw. It was said to be an Irish horse, but how or when it got to Sardinia was as much a myth as the immigration of some of the various races by which the island is said to have been peopled in ancient times. ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... and America. It is nobody's fault, least of all is it the architect's fault. For see what you expect of an architect. He must know about digging deep holes; and about sheath-piling, that he may retain the loose soil and keep it from smothering the workmen at the bottom of his excavation; and he must know the best machines to use for drilling rock and the best method for removing it; he must know about all the stones in the country and the best way of making concrete; he must be familiar with ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... in the school-house at Wallsend, the old parish church being at the time in so dilapidated a condition from the "creeping" or subsidence of the ground, consequent upon the excavation of the coal, that it was considered dangerous to enter it. On this occasion, Robert Gray and Anne Henderson, who had officiated as bridesman and bridesmaid at the wedding, came over again to Willington, and stood godfather and godmother ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... earthen excavation under the depot platform when I arrived, measuring and calculating with his plumb-bob and level, and when I looked in on him hopefully he looked up ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... us; but although it was perfectly evident that the speakers were powerfully excited, we were too far distant from them to distinguish what was said; and presently work was resumed for about ten minutes, at the expiration of which several men leaped down into the excavation, and a minute or two later we saw a not very bulky object lifted out of the hole and laid on the surface of the ground, amid the frantic ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... The principal excavation was begun at the point where the bed was deepest, and which consequently the older miners must have had most trouble in reaching. Here were set up two Letestu pumps that were actuated ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... so soon as search revealed an opening into a narrow passageway beyond, I pressed forward amid dense gloom, feeling my way, fearful lest I meet some pitfall. It was a low, contracted gallery, so extremely irregular in excavation that I sometimes stood erect, unable to reach the roof with extended fingers, yet a moment later was compelled to creep on hands and knees in order to progress at all. Had it led through solid rock I should have accepted ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... me from the edge of the pit above, and I handed the belt plate and buttons to the men and climbed the side of the excavation. ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... shovelling away the debris. The low temperature, however, made the work very exhausting; and by lunch time they had only succeeded in excavating a hole some twenty-five feet long—or the distance between the two masts—by six feet wide and four feet deep. They had widened this excavation by a couple of feet and sunk it some four feet deeper by six o'clock that evening; and then they knocked off work for the day, returning to the Flying Fish stiff, and exhausted with their unwonted exertions, but with more voracious appetites than ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... engineers had made a survey for a carriage road into this country, and had prepared a profile of it with estimates of the amount and cost of the necessary excavation and other work. ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... of the crew who had acted as quartermaster on board the yacht, "take three men and mount guard over any trench or other excavation you may find in the valley between those mounds. Let no Arab even approach the place. Use force if necessary, but try and avoid any shooting. I shall join ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... (where they always hold high change), making such an iron hum and buzz, that they confuse me horribly. In addition, there is a bellman announcing something—not the readings, I beg to say—and there is an excavation being made in the centre of the open place, for a statue, or a pump, or a lamp-post, or something or other, round which all the Wolverhampton boys are yelling ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... said nothing. He advanced towards the prostrate body. He saw the neck was puffed and purple, and the hands and ankles swollen. "Pah!" he said, and suddenly turned away and went towards the excavation. He gave a cry of surprise. He shouted to Evans, who was following ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... hill, in a field opposite the house, my warder's station, and, lying at full length on the ground, wrapt in my cloak, I trusted to escape notice. The day passed: no visitor appeared. The next morning I went from my own rooms, through the subterranean passage into the castle cave, as the excavation I have before described was generally termed. On the shore I saw Gerald by one of the small fishing-boats usually kept there. I passed him with a sneer at his amusements, which were always those of ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... served in the form of pie at dinner, they should be distributed at a side-table, not handed round from guest to guest. The Countess having shuddered at it and resumed her biscuit, it was left to me to make the opening excavation. The difficulty was to know where each quail began and ended; the job really wanted a professional quail-finder, who might have indicated the point on the surface of the crust at which it would be most ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... of a cavern is complete or is to be deemed satisfactory unless a depth is reached where the geological deposits are undeniably of such age as to antedate the possible appearance of man upon the scene. This is not assured until the excavation has reached the original floor, which may be either the bed-rock or the clay left by the eroding stream when its volume had become so diminished from any cause that it was no longer able to keep its channel cleared out. Unless ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... gravel: hence the depressions must have been formed anteriorly to, or contemporaneously with, the spreading out of the gravel. I was informed that one small salina occurs in an alluvial plain within the valley of the Rio Negro, and therefore its origin must be subsequent to the excavation of that valley. When I visited the salina, fifteen miles above the town, the salt was beginning to crystallise, and on the muddy bottom there were lying many crystals, generally placed crossways of sulphate of soda (as ascertained by Mr. Reeks), and embedded in the ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... walls of Cliff Palace show some of the finest prehistoric masonry in America. All are subterranean, which in a few instances necessitated excavation in floors of solid rock. The roofs were supported by pedestals rising from mural banquettes, usually six pedestals to a kiva; the kiva supposed to have belonged to the chiefs clan had eight pedestals, ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... from door," murmured Jimmie Dale. He was kneeling on the floor now. "Yes, here it was!" His flashlight was boring down into a little excavation beneath the piece of flooring he had removed. He stared into this for a moment, his lips twitching grimly; then, with a whimsical shrug of his shoulders, he replaced the board, and stood up. He had found the hiding place without any trouble—but he ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... wait to finish breakfast before rushing out to descend the flights of iron steps that lead to the bottom of the vast excavation. And presently they were standing on the ground below and looking up at the vine covered cliffs that shut out all ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... interesting traditions and vestiges of antiquity, viz., Julian's Bower; Brougham and Penrith Castles; Penrith Beacon, and the curious remains in Penrith Churchyard; Arthur's Round Table, and, close by, Maybrough; the excavation, called the Giant's Cave, on the banks of the Emont; Long Meg and her daughters, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... necessary to place them in a really deep trench, firstly to keep them safe, and secondly to prevent their waving or signalling to the enemy. The existence of this ravine, therefore, saved much digging, as it only required some hollowing out at the bottom and a little excavation to ...
— The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Ernest Dunlop Swinton
... for a length of time that the wild dog was of recent introduction to Australia: this is not so."—Vide Aborigines of Victoria, by R. Brough Smyth, London, 1878, Vol. 1. p. 149. The bones of the wild dog have recently been discovered in Australia, at a depth of excavation, and in circumstances, which prove that his existence there antedates the introduction of any species of the dog by Europeans. The Australians appear, therefore, to be no exception to the universal companionship of ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... word conveys the idea of being "hidden underground," because the house is exposed by excavation.] ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... Bethlehem; there was but one place in which to seek the Child. Thither went the seeker after facts. The inn is a plain structure of the usual stone-work of the hillside towns, and the stable, extending backward from the house proper, is largely an excavation in the rock. There is a narrow entrance at the side as well as one through the house. About the gates of the inn stood a number of people, the look upon their faces indicating that they were aware of the great news to their race, but all silent in their ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... continues to enlarge for a week or ten days, when it softens and breaks open at various points discharging shreds of dead tissue and pus. The skin over the whole top of the carbuncle dies and sloughs away, leaving an angry-looking excavation or crater-like ulcer. This slowly heals from the edges and bottom, so that the whole period of healing occupies from a week to two, or even six months. The danger depends largely upon blood poisoning, and also upon pain, continuous fever, and exhaustion which follow it. Sweating and ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... score or more of others of our countrymen, then or since distinguished, in art and letters at home and abroad. We remained some days in Naples, and during the time went to Pompeii to witness a special excavation among the ruins of the buried city, which search was instituted on account of our visit. A number of ancient household articles were dug up, and one, a terra cotta lamp bearing upon its crown in bas-relief the legend of "Leda and the Swan," ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... side of the Tiber. A little distance beyond the gate we came to the entrance of a vineyard, with a wheel-track through the midst of it; and, following this, we soon came to a hillside, in which an excavation had been made with the purpose of building a grotto for keeping and storing wine. They had dug down into what seemed to be an ancient bathroom, or some structure of that kind, the excavation being square and cellar-like, and built round with ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... staggered; he knew the character of many streams in the West; that often their waters run under the ground at a short distance from the surface, and in a moment he was on his knees digging vigorously in the soft sand. Soon the coveted fluid began to filter upwards into the little excavation he had made. He stooped to drink, and in the next second a dozen arrows from an ambushed band of Comanches entered his body. He did not die at once, however; it is related by the Indians themselves that he killed two of their number before death ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... heard," says Sir William Hamilton, "of the process of tunnelling through a sandbank. In this operation it is impossible to succeed unless every foot, nay, almost every inch of our progress be secured by an arch of masonry before we attempted the excavation of another. Now language is to the mind precisely what the arch is to the tunnel. The power of thinking and the power of excavation are not dependent on the words in the one case or on the mason-work ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... Minnesota, some eighty miles distant from Pembina. Clearing away the snow in a copse, they scooped a shallow trench in the frozen soil with their hatchets, and kindling a fire so as to cover the length and breadth of the excavation, they prepared their frugal repast of hunters' fare. Then removing the fire to the foot of the trench and piling logs upon it, they lay down side by side on the warmed soil, and wrapping their blankets around them slept soundly through the still cold night, until ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... A deeper excavation of the clay beds brought to light a much finer class of clays, which proved so excellent for the purposes of manufacturing general pottery, terra cotta ware, drain tiles and sewer pipe, that in connection with the brick works, a factory for making that kind of material was at once put ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... unaware of the process employed by the traders to conceal their cargo, their arms, and even their provisions. It is nothing more than a large excavation In the earth, in the shape of a jar, in which the objects are stored; the bottom of the cachette having been first covered with wood and canvas, so as to prevent anything being spoiled by the damp. The important science of cachaye (Canadian expression) consists in leaving ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... very unlikely supposition that the distribution of the sexes might vary in different parts of the colony, I make a second excavation, at a few yards' distance from the other. It supplies me with another collection both of perfect insects and of pupae ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... even his brain functioning strangely, the danger of his helpless condition its only incentive to action. He endeavoured to rise, rolling partially over in the effort which failed, but the movement, slight as it was, left one hand dangling over an excavation at his right. His fingers explored the edge of this opening cautiously, revealing a cellar-way, leading down into the basement. The opening was black, silent, mysterious, yet it was a hiding place. If he could manage to roll down those ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... and generally understood to mean "a subterraneous work or excavation for obtaining metals, metallic ores or mineral substances;" but this definition does not apply to our placer mines, which are places where gold is taken from diluvial or alluvial deposits. Most of the work is not subterraneous; ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell
... being thus removed, and the town enriched by the precious objects found, the persons to whom the direction of the excavation was confided, instead of vigorously pursuing the task, were content with what they had already discovered, and once more closed up the grave in which so many treasures of antiquity were still interred—using many of the ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... strong. I'se woan open it jes' yet, feared de missus or de colored boys 'spec' someting. Ki! I isn't a-gwine ter be tied up, an' hab dat box whip out in me. I'll tink how I kin hide an' spen' de money kine of slowcution like." With this he restored the prize to its shallow excavation and covered it with leaves that no trace of fresh ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... operations in earlier years. The metal is spread over a wide area in Pinar del Rio, and venturous spirits have spent many good Spanish pesos and still better American dollars in efforts to locate deposits big enough to pay for its excavation. Some of that class are at it even now, and one concern is reported as doing ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... they are full as lousy and filthy in their houses. Their method of building is as follows: They dig in the ground an oblong square pit, the length of which seldom exceeds fifty feet, and the breadth twenty; but in general the dimensions are smaller. Over this excavation they form the roof of wood which the sea throws ashore. This roof is covered first with grass, and then with earth, so that the outward appearance is like a dunghill. In the middle of the roof, toward each end, is left a square opening, by which the light ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... cases, and under these the sailors and some of the scientists, with the two invalids, Rickenson and Blackborrow, found head-cover at least. Shelter from the weather and warmth to dry their clothes was imperative, so Wild hastened the excavation of the ice-cave in the slope which had been started ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... conference ensued and, as if I had not had good luck enough already, it was decided that we two should go through the "cut" itself. It was like offering us a salary to view all the Great Work in detail, for virtually all the excavation of any importance on the Zone lay within ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck |
