"Fissure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... end came for Maurice, when, upon rounding an abrupt steep, his four animals reared in terror, then seemed to crouch back upon their haunches. The rude log bridge they should have dashed across was gone—in its place gaped a huge fissure, its throat choked with wreckage ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... bed of some far inland creek, the water rises in the sand in shallow pools, during the dark hours of night, to vanish once more beneath the sun. And in low caverns in the limestone hills, down some deep fissure, can be seen the waters of a stream, whose rise and course no man has ever traced. Again a solitary lagoon is found whereon no lily grows, and wherein no fish swims. Where the belated bushman camping for the night, finds the next morning ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... game, is it?" mumbled Ta-Vwots. "I know a way out of this that you don't know." With a few puffs of his breath and a few kicks of his legs he reached a great fissure that led into the rock behind him, and along this passage he scrambled until he came to the edge of it in a niche, from which he could watch his enemies digging. When they had made the hole quite large he shouted, "Be buried ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... instant, the frightened woman's strength suddenly gave way; her knees received the fall of the limp body. For a second she seemed huddled in a posture of prayer, then toppled over, slipped easily forward through a fissure in the wall and plunged headforemost into the chugging ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... manner, more than half way along the stick, without encountering anything but the edges of the rocks. An inch or two further on, however, my patience was rewarded. In a narrow little fissure, just within reach of my forefinger, I felt the chain. Attempting, next, to follow it, by touch, in the direction of the quicksand, I found my progress stopped by a thick growth of seaweed—which had fastened itself into the fissure, no doubt, in the time that had elapsed ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... slowly recovered, a real booming disassociated itself from the noises in his head; and he eagerly raised his head. His eyes swept over a far and wide expanse of snow, a dish-like plateau among the hills. His heart leaped; for through the centre of the plateau ran a black fissure, like a crack in the dish; and off to the left a fleecy cloud rose lazily from the gorge, blushing pinkly in the light of the setting sun. This must mark the falls; the Death ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... the fairies. To prevent its falling into the hands of the enemy, when Roland was attacked in the valley of Roncesvall[^e]s, he smote a rock with it, and it made in the solid rock a fissure some 300 feet in depth, called to this day La ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... since if these sharp flakes broke straight across the masses of mountain, when once the fissure took place, all hold would be lost between flake and flake, it is ordered (and herein is the most notable thing in the whole matter) that they shall not break straight, but in curves, round the body of the ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... supports the joint surface of the mould entirely. This is, at first sight, an ideal method of drawing patterns, and it has for years been the only method practiced on machines. It has two disadvantages. The patterns are separated from the stripping plate by the necessary joint fissure between the two. Fine sand continually falls into this and, adhering to the joint surfaces more or less, grinds the fissure wider. This leads to a gradual reduction of size of patterns on vertical surfaces ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... with the utmost confidence and civility, shewing us every part of their habitations, which were commodious and neat. The island or rock on which this town is situated, is divided from the main by a breach or fissure so narrow, that a man might almost leap from one to the other: The sides of it are every where so steep as to render the artificial fortification of these people almost unnecessary: There was, however, one slight pallisade, and one small fighting-stage, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... come hither, Jack with the Bear's Ear, and why dost thou thus waste my property?" Whereupon she began to lick with her tongue about the post, and no sooner did her tongue arrive at the fissure than Jack snatched the wedge from out of the post, and having entrapped her tongue he leaped up from the perch, and scourged her with the iron rods until she begged that he would let her go, promising that he should be ...
— The Story of Yvashka with the Bear's Ear • Anonymous
... 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 willow had taken root in a few inches of soil in a fissure of the rock, and its drooping branches fell into the stream, which drifted them along without ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... sprinkled with innocuous juice "Of better herbs; with the inverted wand "Our heads are touch'd; the charms, already spoke, "Strong charms of import opposite destroy. "The more she sings her incantations, we "Rise more from earth erect; the bristles fall; "And the wide fissure leaves our cloven feet; "Our shoulders form again; and arms beneath "Are shap'd. Him, weeping too, weeping we clasp, "And round our leader's neck embracing hang. "No words at first to utter have we power, "But such as testify our ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... sun sets down the valley between the hills; when snow comes, it goes down behind the Cumberland and streams through a great fissure that people call the Gap. Then the last light drenches the parson's cottage under Imboden Hill, and leaves an after-glow of glory on a majestic heap that lies against the east. Sometimes it spans the Gap with ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... Leyden. He attempted to establish a permanent system of medicine based on the newly discovered theory of the circulation and the new chemistry, but his name is remembered by medical men because of the fissure in the brain (fissure of Sylvius) that bears it. He laid great stress on the cause of fevers and other diseases as originating in the disturbances of the process of fermentation in the stomach. The doctrines of Sylvius spread widely over the continent, but ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... gave permission to all to think of him exactly what they pleased. Those pockets were characteristic of the whole costume; their very name is unfamiliar to the twentieth century. They divide the garment by a fissure whose sides are kept together by many buttons, and a defection on the part of even a few buttons is apt to be inconvenient. James Ollerenshaw was one of the last persons in Bursley to defy fashion in the matter of pockets. His suit was of a strange ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... Coast from Vancouver northward. A single egg is laid in crevices among the rocks or in burrows in the ground. It is similar both in size and shape to that of the Puffins, but is often quite heavily blotched with brown. Size 2.70 x 1.80. Data.—Unak Is., Alaska, June 30, 1900. Egg laid in a fissure of the rocks; no ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... recorded in his diary, "This will be a great day in our history; the date of a new revolution." Far away in France, Victor Hugo declared, "The eyes of Europe are fixed on America. The hanging of John Brown will open a latent fissure that will finally split the union asunder.... You preserve your shame, but you kill ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... were bared and dissected) with the vent by a column or cone (see my elegant drawing) of lava [Figure 4]. I do not doubt that the dikes are thus indirectly connected with eruptive vents. E. de B. seems to have observed many of his T; now without he supposes the whole line of fissure or dike to have poured out lava (which implies, as above remarked, craters of an elliptic or almost linear shape) on both sides, how extraordinarily improbable it is, that there should have been in a single line of ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... were so placed as to penetrate small holes made in little sticks, one of which was cut into the shape here exactly copied (Fig. 55). The short end of the stick beyond the hole was purposely split, but not the opposite [page 75] end. As the wood was highly elastic, the split or fissure closed immediately after being made. After six days the stick and bean were dug out of the damp sand, and the radicle was found to be much enlarged above and beneath the hole. The fissure which was at first quite closed, was now open to a width of 4 mm.; as soon as the radicle was extracted, ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... straight up, like a flag. And Clotilde kept her unconscious smile, seeing him so healthy, so rosy, and so plump, thriving so well on the nourishment he drew from her. During the first few weeks she had suffered from a fissure, and even now her breast was sensitive; but she smiled, notwithstanding, with that peaceful look which mothers wear, happy in giving their milk as they ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... it was built up unless I had examined it. It is much narrower on this side than on the other—not more than twenty-five feet, I should say. There seem to be some irregularly-shaped holes in what looks like a fissure in the middle. I suppose they are to light the rooms on this side of the house, but they are certainly too small to be noticed ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... depth, in the manner of the famous Mexican barrancas. In some places might be traced a sort of correspondence on the opposite sides; a recess on one side into which a projection on the other would have nearly fitted, could some Antaeus have closed the fissure. This, however, was only here and there; generally speaking, the rocky brink was worn by the action of time and water, and the rock composing it sloped slightly downwards. The chasm was of various width, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... this time (October) laying their eggs. The female, where the soil is sandy, deposits them together, and covers them up with sand; but where the ground is rocky she drops them indiscriminately in any hole: Mr. Bynoe found seven placed in a fissure. The egg is white and spherical; one which I measured was seven inches and three-eighths in circumference, and therefore larger than a hen's egg. The young tortoises, as soon as they are hatched, fall a prey in great numbers to the carrion-feeding ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... produces the varied vocalization of the bird realm. But the music is not the product of vocal cords, as is the case in the human larynx, for at the upper end of the avian larynx there is a slit or fissure, somewhat elliptical in form, and set in the fork of the hyoid bone, which constitutes the bifurcated root of the tongue. This fissure is called the glottis. At the bird's fiat, it can be opened and closed and made to assume a great variety ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... from which Bath gets its fame are believed to owe their origin to the surface drainage of the E. Mendips, which percolates through some vertical fissure, perhaps at Downhead, to the heart of the hills, and are conducted by some natural culvert beneath the intervening coal measures, washing out as they go the soluble mineral salts, and whilst still retaining their heat emerge again at the first opportunity at Bath. The ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... saw how slight was the probability of discovering water. There might be some trifling rivulet formed by the melting snow, but hitherto not a trace of moisture had been seen on the hard dry rock. They were climbing the rocks when, having passed a deep fissure, they saw before them a vast array of strange-looking birds perched on the ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... granite feet, Heave their broad spines, expand each breathing lobe, And with their massy members rib the globe, Her cauldron'd floods of fire their blast prepare; Her wallowing womb of subterranean war Waits but the fissure that my wave shall find, To force the foldings of the rocky rind, Crash your curst continent, and whirl on high The vast avulsion vaulting thro the sky, Fling far the bursting fragments, scattering wide Rocks, mountains, nations o'er the swallowing tide. Plunging ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... and at length the travellers found themselves at the mouth of a narrow rocky boulder- strewn gorge bounded on either side by titanic masses of volcanic rock, rugged and moss-grown, with little patches of herbage here and there, or an occasional stunted pine growing out of an almost imperceptible fissure. The only signs of life in this wild spot consisted of a diminutive musk-ox here and there cropping the scanty herbage half-way up the apparently inaccessible height in spots from which it appeared equally impossible for the creature to ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... reticulations or curves, laterally compressed; sometimes distinct and crowded, always sessile. Peridium double; the outer thick, calcareous, fragile, snow-white; the inner delicate, the dehiscence by more or less regular longitudinal fissure. Capillitium strongly developed with abundant white, calcareous granules. Spores smooth, dull violet, 8-9 mu. Plasmodium pale gray, ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... companions,—it is the mighty tale of Roland. The mountain is full of Roland. His hands, his feet, his horse, his sword, his voice, have left their puissant mark on almost every crest, in almost every glen. Above Gavarnie, amidst the eternal snow, gapes the slashed fissure hewn by Durandal, his sword; ten miles off in a gorge you see the indents of the hoofs of Bayard on a rock which served as his half-way touching-point when he sprang in two flying bounds from the Breach to the Peak of the Chevalier near St. Sauveur. At the Pass of Roland, ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... hard, the escape of air through the fissured bone will reveal the presence of the fracture (f. 88a). In the treatment of such fissures he directs that the scalp wound be enlarged, the cranium perforated very cautiously with a trepan (trepano) at each extremity of the fissure and the two openings then connected by a chisel (spata?), in order to enable the surgeon to remove the discharges by a delicate bit of silk or linen introduced with a feather. If a portion of the cranium is depressed ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... transverse poles. Then he endeavoured to throw the lead-weight beyond one of the poles. He succeeded only after the seventh or eighth attempt, and was well pleased when the weight running over it swung down to our feet, as the position of the poles and the slope of the floor of the fissure did not allow it to rest in the cavern. 'Pull the cord,' shouted Armand. 'What for?' 'You will soon see. Pull'—and speedily the string drew after it one of our stout ropes. 'Now do you understand?' asked Armand. 'I have fastened my ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... noted in the appearance of the tiny stream at the enormous depth, but neither friend nor stranger was in sight. They did not expect to see any one, and began moving along the side of the stupendous fissure in their search for the place where Hank had entered it. From what he said it could not be far off, but they were disappointed before reaching the right point. A gradual descent of the sides was notable, and continued until the depth of the canyon was decreased one-half, ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... was probably a hundred feet high, and was washed at its base by a deep but sluggish creek, on the other side of which lay a densely wooded swamp. Through the top of the bluff, however, was a sort of fissure or ravine washed by the flow of water during the rainy season, and where it terminated the height of its mouth above the stream was not more than forty or fifty feet. Down this gully Sam rode furiously, so that his horse might ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... sublime of nature's works, . . . is on the ascent of a hill, which seems to have been cloven through its length by some great convulsion. The fissure, just at the bridge, is, by some admeasurements, 270 feet deep, by others only 205. It is about 45 feet wide at the bottom, and 90 feet at the top; this of course determines the length of the bridge, and its height from the water. Its breadth in the middle, is about 60 feet, but more ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... and some conception of its dimensions may be gathered from the fact that from nose to tail it measures about two miles, while the center of its back is as high as the Woolworth Building in New York. Moreover, there is not a fissure in it; monoliths a thousand feet long have been quarried from it; it is as solid as the ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... above us to find an ascent on the other side. He was soon out of sight, although I followed as fast as I could. I heard him shout something, but could not make out his words. I know now he was warning me of a dangerous place. Then I came to a sharp-cut fissure which lay across my path—a gash in the rock, as if one of the Cyclops had struck it with his axe. It sloped very steeply for some twelve feet below, opening on the face of the precipice above the glacier, and was filled to ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... well hidden to have escaped observation so long," Tom decided. "And it must be a natural shaft, or hole, for we are boring into native rock, and it isn't likely that these Indians ever tried to make a tunnel here. There must be some natural fissure communicating with the outside of the mountain, in a place where no one would ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... very grave and the very graveyard where he was laid to rest have been forgotten, desecrated, and buried under populous towns,—even in this extreme let an antiquary fall across a sheet of manuscript, and the name will be recalled, the old infamy will pop out into daylight like a toad out of a fissure in the rock, and the shadow of the shade of what was once a man will be heartily pilloried by his descendants. A little while ago and Villon was almost totally forgotten; then he was revived for the sake of his verses; and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to stagger, and almost throwing him from his feet! Before he could recover himself, the surface again heaved up, and a loud report was heard, like the explosion of some terrible engine. Then another upheaval—another report—the ground opened into a long fissure—the staging of palms, and the half-burned cinders, and the charred monkey, were flung in all directions, and Guapo himself went sprawling ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... travel. Many a night, after the death of his beloved Alix, he had gone up there to mourn alone, to be nearer to the heaven which she had entered, to be closer to her. He knew well of the narrow fissure at the top,—six feet deep and the length of a grave! Filled only with the leaves of long ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... difficulty would not occur again they pushed on, but had not gone far when another, and still more impassable, fissure presented itself. ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... only very great acreage of coal measures, which have been producing coal for commercial purposes for local and foreign trade for thirty years and are scarcely scratched as yet, but also fissure veins of the precious metals—gold, silver, lead, [Page 63] copper, antimony, arsenic, and also iron, asbestos, fire clays, kaolin, granite, sandstones, lime ledges, ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... to ask it. So they lived together a few short weeks after marriage, on outward terms of courtesy and cordiality, but with this little rift of dissatisfaction gradually yet surely widening into a fissure that should rend each of these ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... island of any more inviting appearance when finally they reached it. What of it was not barren boulders was covered with black lichens, the only hint of green being an occasional patch of moss nestling in some rocky fissure. To heighten the effect, icy gales blew continually, accompanied by ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... way to England; a few more days and the wily Louis Philippe was taking the oath to a new constitution, and our friend, Panpan, lay carefully packed, brass button and all, in the Hotel-Dieu. The brass button was difficult to find, and when found the ugly fissure it had made grew gangrened, and would not heal; and thus it happened that many a bed became vacant, and got filled, and was vacant again, as their occupants either walked out, or were borne out, of the hospital gates, before Panpan was declared convalescent, and finally dismissed from the Hotel-Dieu ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... knees tremble, my heart break, must note the rumbling, heed only the shuddering down in the fissure beneath the rock of the ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... that the cliff might cave in. Indeed, the cliffs all around were cracked off, and in some places leaning over, apparently ready to fall; and even at the spot where the spectators stood looking into the crater, there was a fissure running along parallel to the cliff, some feet behind them. At first Mr. George was afraid to ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott
... the bottom of a rock-walled fissure, about six feet wide by twenty feet in length. There was no way to climb out of this natural prison, for its granite sides, fifteen feet in height, were without crack, projection, or other foothold; indeed, in the light of the afternoon sun, one facade shone smooth as glass. ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... of chestnuts, defective (incompatible?) unions can generally be spotted the first year. They develop with a transverse fissure into which the bark ingrows. Good unions show new tissue entirely around the closing wound; the final scar as healing approaches completion being vertical, i. e. longitudinal with the stock. This result can be obtained ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... this geological position, by two men named Doyle and Hanley. It is stated to have been twenty-two feet wide by one hundred feet in length, and weighed many tons. It was of the kind of formation called sheet mineral, which occupies what appears to have once been an open fissure. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... the Brontosaurus herd trumpeted madly and barged for the higher ground of safety. Too late did instinct warn it of the widening fissure underfoot. Before it could stop the pressure of the herd drove ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... against his head. The inflammation is thus increased, and the tip of the ear becomes exceedingly sore. This causes him to shake his head still more violently, and the ulcer spreads and is indisposed to heal, and at length a fissure or crack appears on the tip of the cartilage, and extends to a greater or less ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... don't look good to me. The formation runs too regular. What you need for a big mineral deposit is some fissure veins, where the country has been busted ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... fissure, breach, rent, split, rift, crack, slit, incision. dissection anatomy; decomposition &c. 49; cutting instrument &c (sharpness) 253; buzzsaw, circular saw, rip saw. separatist. V. be disjoined &c.; come off, fall off, come to pieces, fall to pieces; peel off; get loose. disjoin, disconnect, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... smaller of the two terminal branches of the digital, is situated inside the basilar process of the os pedis. It turns round this to gain the fissure between the basilar and retrossal processes, and becomes lodged in the preplantar fissure. Here it terminates in several divisions which bury themselves in the os pedis. Before leaving the inner aspect of the pedal wing it supplies a deep branch to the heel and the villous tissue. ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... himself in a place which seemed like a fissure rent in a mountain side, by some extraordinary convulsion of nature. All around rose black, precipitous cliffs. On the side nearest was the precipice by whose base he had passed; while over opposite was a gigantic wall of dark ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... the table's. However, it is not a bad illustration, Dora. When beds of rock are only interrupted by a fissure, but remain at the same level, like the two halves of the table, it is not called a fault, but only a fissure; but if one half of the table be either tilted higher than the other, or pushed to the side, so that the two parts will not fit, it is a fault. You ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... compressed, more or less elongated and flexuous, attached by the lower margin to the substratum, and, at maturity, regularly dehiscent along the upper margin by a longitudinal fissure; the wall a firm membrane, with the granules of lime forming a reticulate layer on the inner surface. Capillitium a loose, irregular net-work of tubules, extending from side to side, and containing large, irregular nodules of lime. Spores ...
— The Myxomycetes of the Miami Valley, Ohio • A. P. Morgan
... Magua raised a shout of triumph, and, leaping a wide fissure, made for the summit of the mountain. A single bound would carry him to the brow of the precipice and assure his safety. Before taking the leap he shook his hand defiantly at Hawk-eye, who waited with ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... tall and somber, Sobbed through all its robes of darkness, Rattled like a shore with pebbles, Answered wailing, answered weeping, "Take my balm, O Hiawatha!" And he took the tears of balsam, Took the resin of the Fir Tree, Smeared therewith each seam and fissure, Made each crevice safe from water. "Give me of your quills, O Hedgehog! I will make a necklace of them, Make a girdle for my beauty, And two stars to deck her bosom!" From a hollow tree the Hedgehog, With his sleepy eyes looked at him, Shot his shining quills, like arrows, Saying, with a drowsy ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... plenty. Out of the over-hanging banks it oozes at every fissure, and into some of the bituminous tar-wells we can poke a twenty foot pole and find no resistance. These tar-sands lithologically may be described as a soft sandstone, the cementing material of which is a bitumen or petroleum. They are estimated ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... than King Rene's tower at Tarascon. From below, the winking light of the guides going up, looked like a glow-worm on the march. He was forced to follow, however, for the snow beneath his feet was not solid, and gurgling sounds of circulating water heard round a fissure told of more than could be seen at the foot of that wall of ice, of depths that were sending upward the ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... Fear in thee no fraud from the blind, no lie from the mute!" Such my cry as, rapid, I ran over Parnes' ridge; Gully and gap I clambered and cleared till, sudden, a bar Jutted, a stoppage of stone against me, blocking the way. Right! for I minded the hollow to traverse, the fissure across: "Where I could enter, there I depart by! Night in the fosse? Athens to aid? Tho' the dive were thro' Erebos, thus I obey— Out of the day dive, into the day as bravely arise! No bridge Better!"—when—ha! what was it I came on, ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... call the little bay a "fiord,"—a word which geographers of every nation have adopted into their respective languages. Though a certain resemblance exists among all these fiords, each has its own characteristics. The sea has everywhere forced its way as through a breach, yet the rocks about each fissure are diversely rent, and their tumultuous precipices defy the rules of geometric law. Here the scarp is dentelled like a saw; there the narrow ledges barely allow the snow to lodge or the noble crests of the Northern pines to spread themselves; farther on, some convulsion ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... followed leisurely. The big fellow worked with painful care for more than an hour before he became sure of himself; then his speed quickened, following a dry nullah at last, for several miles. The dark was creeping in before they came to a deep fissure among the rocks where the empty waterway sunk into a pool which was not yet dry. Skag and the Dane drank deep; then the man filled his canteen, with ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... the fugitive removed to the Island of Wia, where he was received by Ranald Macdonald; thence he visited places called Rossinish and Aikersideallich, and at the latter had to sleep in a fissure in the rocks. Returning once more to South Uist, Charles (accompanied by O'Neal and Mackechan) found a hiding-place up in the hills, as the militia appeared to be dangerously near, and at night tramped towards Benbecula, ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... with fright, rushing up Market Street. I crouched beside a swaying building. As they came nearer they disappeared, seeming to drop into the earth. When the last had gone I went nearer and found they had indeed been precipitated into the earth, a wide fissure having swallowed them. I worked my way around them and ran out to the ferry. I was crazy with fear and ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... not so difficult as it is dangerous. There is no trail and no guide, and many a step had to be retraced to get across or around some bottomless fissure. For some distance the ground seemed quite solid. Soon it was discovered that there was but a thin covering of dirt on the solid ice below; but anon in striking the ground with the end of an alpine ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... it—acquainted with every line and hue of the deep sea—chiseling his waves with unhesitating knowledge of every curve of their anatomy, and every moment of their motion—building his mountains rock by rock, with wind in every fissure, and weight in every stone—and modeling the masses of his sky with the strength of tempest in their every fold." It is curious—yet a searcher after nature's truths ought to know, as he is here told, that waves may be anatomized, and must be chiseled, and that mountains are and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... there seems no object in following the stream any further, when quite suddenly the green slope on the right stands out from a scarred wall of rock beyond, and when we are abreast of the opening we find ourselves before a vast fissure that leads right into the heart of the fell. The great split is S-shaped in plan, so that when we advance into its yawning mouth we are surrounded by limestone cliffs more than 300 feet high. If one visits Gordale Scar for the first time alone on a gloomy evening, as I have ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... or ranch. She began to be thirsty, and was glad, presently, when her quick, rustic ear caught the tinkling of water. Yet it was not so easy to discover, and she was getting footsore and tired again before she found it, some distance away, in a gully coming from a fissure in a dislocated piece of outcrop. It was beautifully clear, cold, and sparkling, with a slightly sweetish taste, yet unlike the brackish "alkali" of the plains. It refreshed and soothed her greatly, so much that, reclining against a tree, but where she would be quite visible from the trail, her ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... small, and deeply set; the zygomae are normal. The nose is large and very thin. There is arrested development of upper jaw. The ears are excessively developed and malformed. The face is very much lined, the nasolabial fissure is deeply cut, and there are well-marked horizontal wrinkles on the forehead, so that he looks at least ten years older than his actual age. The upper jaw is of partial V-shape, the lower well developed. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... ground-plan of the house and the inclosures round it. It frightened him to see how the huge masses of rock and old forest-growths hung over the home below. As he descended a little and drew near the ledge of evil name, he was struck with the appearance of a long narrow fissure that ran parallel with it and above it for many rods, not seemingly of very old standing,—for there were many fibres of roots which had evidently been snapped asunder when the rent took place, and some of which were still succulent in both ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... heard the clattering hoofs of the stampeders for some new gulch, starting in the utmost secrecy to gain the first right for themselves and friends. A trifling hint induces these stampedes. A wink from one old miner to another, and hundreds mounted their horses to seek some inaccessible mountain fissure. The more remote the diggings, so much the greater the excitement. Half the people of Helena lately hurried, in the depth of winter, to diggings on Sun River, (where many and many a brave fellow perished ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... information, but gave Dietrich the magic sword Nagelring, which alone could pierce the giants' skin. Then he led both heroes to the cave, where Grim and Hilde were gloating over a magic helmet they had made and called Hildegrim. Peering through a fissure of the rock, Hildebrand was the first to gaze upon them, and in his eagerness to get at them he braced his shoulder against the huge mass of stone, forced it apart, and thus made a passage for himself and for his ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... the eastern ridge, just below the extreme summit, hot sulphurous gases and vapor escape with a hissing, bubbling noise from a fissure in the lava. Some of the many small vents cast up a spray of clear hot water, which falls back repeatedly until wasted in vapor. The steam and spray seem to be produced simply by melting snow coming in the way of the escaping gases, while the gases are evidently derived from the heated interior ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... through a mere fissure in the rocks upon the opposite side and at a point where I had assured myself that there could be no passage. The little river gurgled at my feet, and in front of me I saw a candle flickering in the recesses of a cave, so elfinlike that I could distinguish it only by shielding ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... hatched at the beginning of July. The emergence takes place without any violent effraction, without any ragged rents. A clean, circular fissure appears at some distance from the top; and the cephalic end is detached all of a piece, as a loose lid might be. It is as though the recluse had only to raise a cover by butting it with her head, so exact is the line ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... of feet ceased and silence fell; yet for some reason Pete did not act. Instead he stood waiting; his red-rimmed eyes travelling from man to man, the fissure between them deepening, the heavy lids narrowing, moment by moment. A long half minute he waited, gloating on their misery, prolonging their suspense; then came the interruption. A step sounded on the walk without, a step that was all but noiseless. A hand tried the knob ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... opposite the aperture and between the giant cliffs that rose on either side of the narrow entrance a sight was revealed that filled their hearts with renewed hope and rejoicing, for a tiny cove was seen to lie beyond the fissure—a cove with a long, wide, sandy beach up which the waves, broken at the entrance to the little haven, rolled ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to the suggestions of Sir J. W. Dawson, in his Egypt and Syria, and in The Expositor for May 1886, in which he shows that great beds of bituminous limestone extend below the Jordan valley and much of the Dead Sea, and that the escape of inflammable gag from these through the opening of a fissure along a great 'line of fault,' is capable of producing all the effects described. The 'brimstone' of the Authorised Version is probably rather some form of bituminous matter which would be carried into the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... away in solution. But beds of limestone rock are noted for containing great fissures through which subterranean waters penetrate far into the ground. We can readily see how this percolating water would dissolve and wear away the surface of the rocks along such a fissure, and in process of time we would have the phenomenon of a stream of water ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... to a distance, but for the most part the shivered crowns and broken bulks had been served otherwise; the force of the blast had disintegrated them, but had not scattered them; the greater part of this newly-rent stone had toppled into the fissure in the ground, and lay there mixed with earth, almost filling the hole. It was impossible to determine just where and how the blast had been set off; the rocks hid the facts. But Cleggett judged that the force must have come from below the bowlders; mightily smitten from ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... lead to the suspicion of twins, such as being unusually large, and the fact that the increase in size has been more than ordinarily rapid. Sometimes also the abdomen is divided into two distinct portions by a perpendicular fissure. In other cases the movements of a child can be felt on each side at the same time. And in twin pregnancies the morning sickness is apt to be more distressing, and all the other discomforts incident to ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... around, and the scene was well calculated to affect a nervous mind. It was a fit scene for the painter of the supernatural. The small apartment in which they were, was formed in great part from the natural rock; where a fissure presented itself, a huge pine-tree, overthrown so as to fill the vacuity, completed what nature had left undone; and, bating the one or two rude cavities left here and there in the sides—themselves so covered as to lie hidden from all without—there was all ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... not long ago, a thoughtful man studying Nature's secrets far and wide found up in a valley where a stream had worn a deep fissure, a queer little rock. When he looked at it, he saw running over it a strange design, as though some fairy with its magic pencil had drawn the outline of a fern with every vein distinct, showing in every line the life of the long-lost plant. It was the fern ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... leaped forward to save the camera which was toppling to one side, there came a great fissure in the side of the volcano, and a stream of molten rock, glowing white with heat, gushed out. It was a veritable river of melted stone, and it was coming straight ...
— Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera - or, Thrilling Adventures while taking Moving Pictures • Victor Appleton
... brought me to a point where the ledge which I had been traversing terminated abruptly. In the face of the cliff on my left, at the point where it cut across and blocked the narrow ledge where I was standing, there was an irregularly-shaped hole or fissure about two feet wide by perhaps five feet high which looked very much like the mouth of a cave, and I determined to explore it; but upon attempting to reach it I found it impossible of access, the rocky face of the cliff was so absolutely smooth, so completely devoid of ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... continued in nearly a north and south line, parallel with the river, and a little more than midway between it and the Connecticut and Massachusetts lines, as far as they extended. Into and through the strip of land the Quaker stream flowed, like a liquid injected into a fissure in the rocks. Each Quaker home as it settled became a resting place for those who followed, for it was a cardinal principle of Quaker hospitality to keep open house for all ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... King's son stepped into their fighting place, and fierce was the combat that arose between them, as when two roaring surges of the sea dash against each other in a fissure of the rocks, and the spray-cloud bursts from them high into the air. Long they fought, and many red wounds did each of them give and receive, till at last Oscar beat the Greek prince to the earth and smote off his head. Then one host ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... the small craters still smoked, one quite at the base of the cone, which is a good deal changed—it is lower, the small northern cone has disappeared, and part of the walls of the crater have fallen in, and there is a fissure in them through which smoke ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... along after Barbee, yearning to shoot to kill and yet not daring to shoot at all. Blenham and Terry struggling upon the iron side of the mountain, Terry striking and striking at him frantically, Blenham with his arms about her, dragging her back toward a wide fissure in the rocks, ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... thousand feet above the villages. This shelf or valley appears to have suffered at some remote period from a terrible inundation. Landslips of great size and innumerable deep gorges and ravines furrow the bottom of the basin, until at length a principal fissure carries away the united streams ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... space held a bed and a rustic chair. Above her the peeled poles of the roof descended to within a few feet of her head. She had to lean over the rail of the porch to look up. The green and red rock wall sheered ponderously near. The waterfall showed first at the notch of a fissure, where the cliff split; and down over smooth places the water gleamed, to narrow in a crack with little drops, and suddenly to leap into ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... Belfort (the modern Kulat-esh-Shukif), the river suddenly makes a turn at right angles, altering its course from nearly due south to nearly due west, and cuts through the remaining roots of Lebanon, still at the bottom of a tremendous fissure, and still raging and chafing for a distance of fifteen miles, until at length it debouches on the coast plain, and meanders slowly through meadows to the sea,[147] which it enters about five miles to the north of Tyre. The course of the ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... of concrete poured into shafts in order to support the building could be seen. The gap, which the stone slab removed by Guillaume had covered, was by the very side of the pillar; it was either some natural surface flaw, or a deep fissure caused by some subsidence or settling of the soil. The heads of other pillars could be descried around, and these the cleft seemed to be reaching, for little slits branched out in all directions. Then, on seeing his brother leaning forward, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... riven down the stem, in a very surprising manner, and the stem lay in two blighted shafts: one resting against the house, and one against a portion of the old red garden-wall in which its fall had made a gap. The fissure went down the tree to a little above the earth, and there stopped. There was great curiosity to see the tree, and, with most of his former fears revived, he sat in his arbour—grown quite an old man—watching the people who ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... was glad of this, for it told me how safe my hiding-place was, and showed that the opening was so curiously hidden that a stranger might pass it a hundred times and not see it. So I helped her to climb up the cliff until I got to a small platform, and afterward passed along the fissure between the rocks and drew her after me, and then, when she had followed me a few steps, she saw how cunningly Nature had concealed the place, and fearful as she was, she uttered a low exclamation of pleased surprise. For from this place we could see without being seen, even ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... Rock was a most famous case of that. It had a large cavern inside and a very small hole through the rock at the ceiling of the cavern. Then there was a cleft or fissure through the rock right down to this little hole. You can see for yourself that when the tide started to come in, it closed the sea entrance to the cavern, imprisoning a lot of air. Then, as the tide rose steadily, the pressure of the water drove the air out of ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... The fissure down the front of the Pink Lady's Slipper is not so wide but that a bee must use some force to push against its elastic sloping sides and enter the large banquet chamber where he finds generous entertainment secreted among the fine white hairs in the upper ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... through this vale, sufficiently large to turn any number of mills. As the bank of the sea-shore is considerably above the level of the rivulet, it sinks into the earth; and, after passing under the bank, it forces a passage for itself through a fissure of the rock, on Stony Beach and Turtle Bay, between high and low water marks, where it boils up with great force, and is excellent water. As the whole of this water is not carried off by the passage just mentioned, ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... includes the spinal cord, passing upward through the vertebrae of the spinal column and the brain. The brain consists of three parts: The cerebrum, or great brain, consisting of two hemispheres, which, though connected, are divided in great part by a longitudinal fissure; the cerebellum, or little brain; and the medulla oblongata, or bulb. The spinal nerves consist of thirty-one pairs, which branch out from the spinal cord. Each pair of nerves contains a right and left member, ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... reached another territory, which they named Crown Prince Rudolf Land, the habitation of millions of sea-birds, and thousands of bears, seals, and foxes. A great glacier was crossed, but as it was quitted an immense fissure engulfed the sleigh with the stores, while the others only narrowly escaped by cutting the traces. Lieutenant Payer hurried back for assistance, and at length dogs, men, and sleigh were pulled up, safe and nearly ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... vehicle that ever man made could have passed up this new track. It was difficult for ridden horses, and our loaded beasts had to be given time. We seemed to be entering by a fissure into the womb of the savage hills that tossed themselves in ever-increasing grandeur up toward the mist-draped heights of Kara Dagh. Oftener than not our track was obviously watercourse, although now and then we breasted higher levels from which we could see, through gaps between ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... from one of the mountains by the earthquake which produced this mighty fissure, have so fallen as to balance each other and form a natural arch, to which access is obtained by a path along the precipice. In the centre of this bridge there is an opening through which the traveller ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... south of Skaill Bay. On passing the place where the vessel struck, now calm and peaceful after the storm, he shortened sail and rowed inshore. A little distance up the face of the red cliff, above the high-water mark, and hidden by a projecting rock, there was a "scurro," or fissure, which opened into a large cavern. He had discovered this cavern when he was a boy, on some bird-nesting expedition; and now, scarcely knowing why he did so—except, perhaps, for the passing thought that some of the wreckage had been washed into it by the high waves—he climbed up from his boat ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... was one the interior (of which was exposed) to the wind, which entered through (the fissure) of the door; and was perfectly empty and bare; and the weather being, at this time, that of December, and the night too very long, the northerly wind, with its biting gusts, was sufficient to penetrate the flesh and to cleave the bones, so that the whole ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... erect, was being marched to the edge of a smoking fissure by two of the savages. No others of the red men were ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... gutters of the street and every crack and fissure in the stones ran with scorching spirit, which being dammed up by busy hands overflowed the road and pavement, and formed a great pool into which the people dropped down dead by dozens. They lay in heaps all round this fearful pond, husbands and wives, ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... superstition of the Indians which so unaccountably yet so obviously had been aroused, and also to the wholesome dread that they must have of us upon finding that every one of their companions had been slain. The bodies of our poor Otomis we placed in a deep fissure in the rock, and there heaped stones upon them, while Fray Antonio said over them the briefer office; but the body of Dennis we carried with us, that we might give him a more tender and reverent burial in gratitude for his brave struggle to save our lives when he knew ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... gate to the Castle was wider than the opening into many an Edinburgh wynd; but Bobby stopped, uncertain as to where this narrow roadway, that curved upward to the right, might lead. It was not a dark fissure in a cliff of houses, but was bounded on the outer side by a loopholed wall, and on the inner by a rocky ledge of ascending levels. Wherever the shelf was of sufficient breadth a battery of cannon ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... and recruit our own exhausted strength with food and rest, was our first necessary resource. In tracing the rocky course of the current for a convenient watering place, Antonio discovered that it issued from a cavern, which, though a mere fissure exteriorly, was, within, of cathedral dimensions and solemnity; we all entered it and drank eagerly from a foaming basin, which it immediately presented to our fevered lips. Our first sensations were those of freedom and independence, ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... stages the earth was slowly cooling, its contraction gave rise in its crust to disruptions, distortions, fissures, and chasms. The passage through which we were moving was such a fissure, through which at one time granite poured out in a molten state. Its thousands of windings formed an inextricable labyrinth through ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... my turning too long, my bloodthirsty antagonists came so near that they threw their white foam over my coat as they sprang to seize me, and their teeth clashed together like the spring of a fox-trap. Had my skates failed for one instant, had I tripped on a stick, or had my foot been caught in a fissure, the story I am now telling ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... finger down the aperture, and at last managed to make a slight further fissure in the piping. The light that came up from beyond was very faint, and apparently indirect; it seemed to fall from some hole or window higher up. As he was screwing his eye to peer at this grey and greasy twilight he was astonished to see another human ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... for a voice among them cried out, and the whole pack gave tongue shrilly and surged on again. But that instant of check had given the stranger his chance. He was up the ladder, and, gripping the parapet, found rest for his feet in a fissure. Then he bent down, drew up the ladder, handed it to McGuffog, and with a mighty heave pulled himself over ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... equally to be recommended is the study of the Causses by M. Onesime Reclus in his work 'La France.' [Footnote: 'L'orage aux larges gouttes, la pluie fine, les ruisseaux de neige fendue, les sources joyeuses ne sont pas pour le Causse, qui est fissure, crible, casse, qui ne retient point les eaux, tout ce que lui verse la nue, entre dans la rocaille. Et c'est bien, bien bas que l'onde engloutie se decide a reparaitre, elle sort d'une grotte, au fond ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... morning to that very hut for milk. Charles was by this time accustomed to the feeling that he was carrying his life in his hands. At daybreak he had to leave the hut to make room for his pursuers, all day he had to lie in an unsheltered fissure of a rock, where the rain—the heavy, relentless rain of the West Highlands—poured down on him; if it did clear at all, then that other plague of the Highlands, swarms of midges, nearly drove him distracted. On Friday the militiamen moved off, and the way being clear, Lady Clanranald, ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... kept the inn had a son who offered to walk with me as far as some chapel in the gorge of the Chavannon. We were not long in reaching the gorge, the view of which from the edge of the plateau was superbly savage. Descending a very rugged path through the forest that covered the sides of the deep fissure, save where the stark rock refused to be clothed, we came to a small chapel, centuries old, under a natural wall of gneiss, but deep in the shade of overhanging boughs. It was dedicated to St. John the Baptist, and on St. John's Day mass was said in it, and the spot was the scene of a pilgrimage. ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... red and bare appearance, owing to the alternate action of summer sun and winter frost. As the slopes approach the valley they become clothed with a garb of wild vegetation, which bursts forth from every fissure, and finds a foothold on every projecting rock: the base of the mountain is hidden in a tangled mass of glowing green, which the moist yet sunny Spring calls forth in abundance whenever the slopes are not too steep to retain a shallow layer of nourishing ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... mouth, they are apt to become fissured and superficially ulcerated, and the discharge then becomes abundant and may crust on the surface, forming yellow scabs. At the angle of the mouth the condylomatous patches may spread to the cheek, and when they ulcerate may leave fissure-like scars radiating from the mouth—an appearance best seen ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... came so near, that they threw the white foam over my dress as they sprang to seize me, and their teeth clashed together, like the spring of a fox-trap. Had my skates failed for one instant, had I tripped on a stick, or caught my foot in a fissure in the ice, the story I am now telling would never have been told. I thought all the chances over; I knew where they would first take hold of me if I fell; I thought how long it would be before I died, and then there would ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... as Herr Wilner called it, seemed too heavy to be a hollow casting, and yet, when shaken, something within rattled faintly, as though when the molten metal was cooling a fissure formed inside, into which a few loose fragments of bronze ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... than half an hour, and emerge into a more open portion of the canon, where high hills and ledges of rock intervene between the river and the distant walls. Just at the head of this open place the river runs across a dike; that is, a fissure in the rocks, open to depths below, has been filled with eruptive matter, and this, on cooling, was harder than the rocks through which the crevice was made, and, when these were washed away, the harder volcanic matter remained as a wall, ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... earthquake in Calabria or Peru. "There was," he said, in the course of a speech at Slough, "a rumbling murmur, a groan, a shriek, a sound of distant thunder. No one knew whether it came from the top or bottom of the House. There was a rent, a fissure in the ground, and then a village disappeared, then a tall tower toppled down, and the whole of the Opposition benches became one great dissolving ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... generally because they do not know the portion of the locality, say, for instance, a certain township, in which the minerals occur. And if they do succeed in finding this, it is seldom that the portion in which the mineral occurs, which is generally some small inconspicuous vein or fissure, is found; and even in this it is generally difficult to recognize and isolate the mineral from the extraneous matter holding it. As an instance of this I might cite thus: Dana, in his text book on mineralogy, will mention the locality for a certain species, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... so;" replied the man in the derby in a high voice. "Your vein is a fissure vein all right enough, and you've got a good wide lead. If it holds up in quality, I don't know but ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... than in Southey's verses, though it is worthy of better poetry than that. After all, I do not know that the cascade is anything more than a beautiful fringe to the grandeur of the scene; for it is very grand,—this fissure through the cliff,—with a steep, lofty precipice on the right hand, sheer up and down, and on the other hand, too, another lofty precipice, with a slope of its own ruin on which trees and shrubbery have grown. The right-hand precipice, however, has shelves affording sufficient ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... its ascensional force, approached the ground; the anchors ran along until, at last, one of them caught in the fissure of a rock, and the balloon ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... caravan going from St. Louis to Astoria. On the Green River they had been attacked by a war-party of the Black-feet, who had killed all except them, thanks to the Irishman's presence of mind, who pushed his fat companion into a deep fissure of the earth, and jumped after him. Thus they saved their bacon, and had soon the consolation of hearing the savages carrying away the goods, leading the mules towards the north. For three days they had wandered south, in the hope of meeting with some trappers, and this very morning they had ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... Landless caught at the stem of a cedar projecting from a fissure in the rock, and swung himself up to the cleft. The Indian followed, and with silence and caution they commenced their dangerous journey. Landless was no novice at such work. When a boy, he had often rounded ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... destructive earthquake of April 2, the ground south of Hilo burst open with a crash and roar which at once answered all questions concerning the volcano. The molten river, after travelling underground for twenty miles, emerged through a fissure two miles in length with a tremendous force and volume. It was in a pleasant pastoral region, supposed to be at rest for ever, at the top of a grass-covered plateau sprinkled with native and foreign ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... cottage, when the sunbeam slants on them and goes. The old road out towards the common, and the hoary dikes that might have been built in the reign of Alfred, have not been forgotten by the generous adorning season; for every fissure has its mossy cushion, and the old blocks themselves are washed by the loveliest gray-green lichens in the world, and the large loose stones lying on the ground have gathered to themselves the peacefulest mossy coverings. Some of these have not been disturbed ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... maps. This merits a brief description. It was hollow. That is, from a general view it appeared like an attempt to inclose a small portion of the sea within high, fir-covered walls. It resembled a horseshoe with the points drawn close. Neptune beat Jove, however, leaving a narrow fissure connecting the inclosed water and the outer ocean, and through this the tides flowed fiercely; but so protected was the inner harbor that never a ripple disturbed its surface. It was this harbor that gave the ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... far from a favorite among the men; they teased, and played practical jokes upon him. Sunday was his only day of rest and relaxation. Then, with one of Dr. Rivals' books, Jack sought a quiet nook on the bank of the river. He had found a deep fissure in the rocks, where he sat quite concealed from view, his book open on his knee, the rush, the magic, and the extent of the water before him. The distant church-bells rang out praises to the Lord, and all was rest and peace. Occasionally a vessel ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... the problem how to get the wagons down that yawning fissure; the alternative being to retrace our ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... Calyptriform or hood-like pitchers, formed by the complete union of the margins, and falling off by a transverse fissure (as ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... towards one of the dens formerly occupied by the wild beasts, and disclosed to us a set of beings scarcely less savage. The sombre walls of the gloomy abode were illumined by a fire the smoke from which escaped through a deep fissure in the mossy roof; whilst the flickering flames threw a blood-red glare on the bronzed features of a group of children, of two men, and a decrepit old hag, who appeared busily engaged in ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... a mile to cut off into what must have been the second wall. We were far west of Clarke's trail now, and faced a point above where Kanab Canyon, a red gorge a mile deep, met the great canyon. As I ran along the rim, looking for a fissure or break, my gaze seemed impellingly drawn by the immensity of this thing I could not name, and for which I had as ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... making his way slightly upward all the time, to where the narrow mesa was not over four hundred feet wide, the lad was astounded to suddenly discover a deep and narrow fissure or chasm. It was dark, with sides as abrupt as the cliffs of the mesa, and too wide to jump across. A cold air was already rising from the opening into the ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... rapid, I ran over Parnes' ridge; Gully and gap I clambered and cleared till, sudden, a bar Jutted, a stoppage of stone against me, blocking the way. Right! for I minded the hollow to traverse, the fissure across: 60 "Where I could enter, there I depart by! Night in the fosse? Athens to aid? Though the dive were through Erebos, thus I obey— Out of the day dive, into the day as bravely arise! No bridge Better!"—when—ha! what was it I came on, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... grand. Looking at it in its ascent, where its two stupendous sides raise their gigantic masses in rocky precipices, upwards of two thousand feet high; which seem to frown upon the bold traveller who ventures within their cavernous precincts; one cannot contemplate the vast fissure other than as the work of a beneficent providence, as a gateway ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... a long traverse of at least twenty-five miles, my largest dog, Jack, went through a crack in the ice up to his collar. These ice cracks are dangerous things. The ice, which may be several feet thick, often bursts open with a loud report, making a fissure which may be from a few inches to several feet wide. Up this fissure the water rushes until it is level with the top. Of course, as the cold is so intense, it soon freezes over, but it is very dangerous for travellers ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... the same time to a small stream which trickled down a fissure in the rock, and formed a little well of clear water beneath. I bowed deeply, and murmuring something, I know not what, took the pitcher from her hand, and scaling the rocky cliff, mounted to the clear source above, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... fine gold, and pure silver are his arms and breast; then he is of brass far as to the fork. From there downward he is all of chosen iron, save that his right foot is of baked clay, and he stands erect on that more than on the other.[1] Every part except the gold is cleft with a fissure that trickles tears, which collected perforate that cavern. Their course falls from rock to rock into this valley; they form Acheron, Styx, and Phlegethon; then it goes down through this narrow channel far as where there is no more descending. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... as it was sometimes, by a curious perversion, called, the "rock-in-spring," was a spring running out of a cave-like fissure in a high limestone cliff. Here the old man sheltered himself on that dreary Christmas evening, until Bud brought his roan colt to the top of the cliff above, and he and Ralph helped the old man up the cliff and into the saddle. ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... the shore, westward, is a kind of subterraneous house. There has been a natural fissure, or separation of the rock, running towards the sea, which has been roofed over with long stones, and above them turf has been laid. In that place the inhabitants used to keep their oars. There are a number of trees near the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... unua. Firstly unue. Firtree pinarbo. Fisc fisko. Fiscal fiska. Fish fisxo. Fish fisxkapti. Fisher fisxkaptisto. Fishery fisxkaptado, fisxkaptejo. Fish-hook fisxhoko. Fishing fisxkaptado. Fishing-line hokfadeno. Fish-market fisxvendejo. Fishmonger fisxvendisto. Fissure fendeto. Fist pugno. Fit (illness) atako. Fit for, to be tauxgi. Fitly alkonvena. Five kvin. Fix fiksi. Fixed fiksa. Fixity fikseco. Flabby mola. Flag standardo. Flag (navy) flago. Flagon botelego. Flagstone sxtonplato. Flagrant flagranta. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... as has been said before, it first appears. The effect is not dreary as might be imagined, and parties are generally photographed here because one side of the room is white and greatly assists the flash. This is a smooth, perpendicular wall marking the line of the fissure and showing the strata of the rock in horizontal position whitened with a thin coating of carbonate of lime. All visitors are cordially invited to please themselves in leaving cards, letters or papers in this chamber, which is reserved for that purpose, and to ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... receptacle, is not long in increasing, preserving its rounded form up to the development of the asci. At this period, under the influence of the rapid growth of these organs, it soon produces at its summit a fissure of the external membrane, which becomes a more marked depression in the marginate species. The receptacle thus formed increases rapidly, becomes plane, more convex, or more or less undulated at the margin, if at all of large size. Fixed ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... longer reply to the diabolical host with lead, they believed their last hour had come, when the ground on which they were making their last stand shook, there was a rending of rocks and a rush of imprisoned steam that drowned even the dragons' roar, and they were separated from them by a long fissure and a wall of smoke and vapour. Struggling back from the edge of the chasm, they fell upon the ground, and then for the first time fully realized that the earthquake had saved them, for the dragons could not come across the opening, and would ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... day forth they wrote to one another regularly every evening. Emma placed her letter at the end of the garden, by the river, in a fissure of the wall. Rodolphe came to fetch it, and put another there, that she always found fault with ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... to the men to leave their horses and "take cover," and he himself sought the only cover near him—a wide fissure in the wall of the long slope below the point where the attackers ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... is shap'd, pure silver are the breast And arms; thence to the middle is of brass. And downward all beneath well-temper'd steel, Save the right foot of potter's clay, on which Than on the other more erect he stands, Each part except the gold, is rent throughout; And from the fissure tears distil, which join'd Penetrate to that cave. They in their course Thus far precipitated down the rock Form Acheron, and Styx, and Phlegethon; Then by this straiten'd channel passing hence Beneath, e'en ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... frame to dilate, as when, in my more boyish days, I used to brave, in my gallant skiff, the mingled fury of the warring elements of sea and storm. Suddenly, while my mind was intent only on the dangers I used then to hold in such light estimation, I found my further progress intercepted by a fissure in the crag. It was not the width of this opening that disconcerted me, for it exceeded not ten feet; but I came upon it so unadvisedly, that, in attempting to check my forward motion, I had nearly lost my equipoise, and fallen into the abyss that ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... bladder, fissure of the anus, local uncleanliness, and pruritis of the genital organs, will produce the habit in both males and females in the manner described. Sleeping on feather beds increases the local congestion, and thus favors the exciting influences of any of ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... made nothing in vain," he whispered; "I must go foremost, but do as I do." He then raised up the long heath, and entered a low, narrow fissure in the rocks, Reilly following him closely. The entrance was indeed so narrow that it was capable of admitting but one man at a time, and even that by his working himself in upon his knees and elbows. ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... the left hemisphere of the brain showing localised centres, of which the functions are known. It will be observed that the centres for the special senses, tactile, muscular, hearing, and vision, are all situated behind the central fissure. The tactile-motor kinaesthetic sense occupies the whole of the post-central convolution; the centre for hearing (and in the left hemisphere memory of words) is shown at the end of the first temporal convolution, but the portion shaded by no means indicates the whole of the grey cortex ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... huge masses hanging on minor ones as if about to roll themselves down from their doubtful-looking situations, into the depths of the sea beneath. Bays without end, sprinkled with rocky islands of all shapes and sizes, where in every fissure a Guillemot, a Cormorant, or some other wild bird retreats to secure its egg, and raise its young, or save itself from the hunter's pursuit. The peculiar cast of the sky, which never seems to be certain, butterflies flitting over snowbanks, probing beautiful dwarf flowerets of ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... chaotic rock heaps, or rounded deep fissures that cut the plateau like spider webs. Muscular and in good form as was the trio, frequent rests were necessary. They had one mishap. Na-che, lagging behind, slipped into a fissure. Enoch and Diana blanched at her sudden scream and ran back as she disappeared. Mercifully a great rock had tumbled into the crevice some time before and Na-che landed squarely on this, six feet below the surface. When Diana and Enoch peered over, she was sitting calmly ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... turned towards me then, and, as I laid one hand across her arm, I felt her relax to a relieved trembling. Before us the night crowded down over the countryside, masking its ugliness like a film, through which our lights cut a white fissure towards town. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of the Iguanodon was gradually built up by later discoveries, and in 1877 an extraordinary find in a coal mine at Bernissart in Belgium brought to light no less than seventeen skeletons more or less complete. These were found in an ancient fissure filled with rocks of Comanchic age, traversing the Carboniferous strata in which the coal seam lay, and with them were skeletons of other extinct reptiles of smaller size. The open fissure had evidently served as a trap into which these ancient ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... from the gorge through which the path ran on to this plateau I saw, on the further side of this tableland, the yellow robe of the mendicant. He was walking straight for the face of the precipice, and straight for the spot at which, from a fissure in the rock, a little stream leapt out, to fall sheerly ten or fifteen feet into a winding channel, along which it bubbled away westward, doubtless to form a ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer |
