"Subterraneous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... goddess! Why I chang'd my land, "Why to Ortygia, through the wide waves borne, "I came, a more appropriate hour will ask; "When you, from care reliev'd, can grant your ear "With brow unclouded. Through the opening earth "I flow; and borne through subterraneous depths, "Here lift again my head, again behold "The long-lost stars. Hence was my lot to see, "As pass'd my stream close by the Stygian gulph, "Your Proserpine;—sad still her face appear'd, "Nor fear had wholly left it. Yet she reigns "A queen; ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... rich proprietors of cafes, and others who made soft eyes at her. The lover was backed up in his suit by the guardian of Constance, Monsieur Claude-Joseph Pillerault, at that time an ironmonger on the Quai de la Ferraille, whom the young man had finally discovered by devoting himself to the subterraneous spying which distinguishes ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... the attributes of quality or action, had never entered into the human mind. How then was that Being to be called which had revealed its existence, and continued to make itself felt by everything that most powerfully impressed the awakening mind, but which as yet was known only like a subterraneous spring by the waters which it poured forth with inexhaustible strength? When storm and lightning drove a father with his helpless family to seek refuge in the forests, and the fall of mighty trees crushed at his side those who were most dear to him, there were, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... discovered the attempt to escape by digging a subterraneous passage, he drove all the prisoners into the yard of No. 1, making them take their baggage with them; and in a few days after, when he thought they might have begun another hole, but had not time to complete it, he moved them into another yard and prison, and so he kept moving ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... communicated with the streets by narrow archways, like the entrance of hives, so low that you were obliged to stoop for admission: while ascending to these same streets, from their dank and dismal dwellings by narrow flights of steps the subterraneous nation of the cellars poured forth to enjoy the coolness of the summer night, and market for the day of rest. The bright and lively shops were crowded; and groups of purchasers were gathered round the stalls, that by the aid of glaring lamps and flaunting lanthorns, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... Vacouas. Hospitality of the inhabitants. Letters from England. Refusal to be sent to France repeated. Account of two hurricanes, of a subterraneous stream and circular pit. Habitation of La Perouse. Letters to the French marine minister, National Institute, etc. Letters from Sir Edward Pellew. Caverns in the Plains of St. Pierre. Visit to Port Louis. Narrative transmitted to England. Letter to captain Bergeret ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... time for him to produce much effect. It seemed plain enough to the besieged that the object of the enemy would be to work his way through the Polder, and so gradually round to the Porcupine and the Sand Hill. Precisely in what directions his subterraneous passages might be tending, in what particular spot of the thin crust upon which they all stood an explosion might at any moment be expected, it was of course impossible to know. They were sure that the process of mining was steadily progressing, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... discharges of "mountain artillery" on humbler principles; attributing them to the loud reports made by the disruption and fall of great masses of rock, reverberated and prolonged by the echoes; others, to the disengagement of hydrogen, produced by subterraneous beds of coal in a state of ignition. In whatever way this singular phenomenon may be accounted for, the existence of it appears to be well established. It remains one of the lingering mysteries of nature which throw something of a supernatural charm over her wild mountain solitudes; ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... and awe, and threw myself back into centuries past, fancying that the shrouded figure of MATILDA herself glided by, with a look as if to approve of my antiquarian enthusiasm! Having gratified my curiosity by a careful survey of this subterraneous abode, I revisited the regions of day-light, and made towards the large building, now a manufactory, which in Ducarel's time had been a nunnery. The revolution has swept away every human being in the character of a nun; but the director of the manufactory ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... became subterraneous for a time, and then crossed another stream on a bridge of nine arches, the ruins of some of the columns of which are still to be seen; and from these ruins it would appear that the bridge had, at some time or another, been destroyed, probably by the stream running ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... as I have already hinted, to seek and hope for additional archaeological materials in literary as well as in subterraneous researches. And certainly, one especial deficiency which we have, to deplore in Scottish Archaeology is the almost total want of written documents and annals of the primaeval and early mediaeval portions of Scottish history. ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... give place to that of indignation at his cruel and cold-blooded persecutors. Schubart, who never had the heart to hurt a fly, and with all his indiscretions, had been no man's enemy but his own, was conducted to a narrow subterraneous dungeon, and left, without book or pen, or any sort of occupation or society, to chew the cud of bitter thought, and count the leaden months as they passed over him, and brought no mitigation of his ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... authorities for the grotesque style, which they were but too ready to follow. This extraordinary style of ornament had prevailed in ancient Rome early enough to be reprobated in the work of Vitruvius, and lay unobserved among obscure and subterraneous ruins till the discovery of the Baths of Titus opened a rich magazine of gay and capricious ornament. Raffaelle, struck with these remains of the antique art of painting, adopted the same style of ornament in the galleries ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... fire, we walked down to the beach, and soon observed that these curious spouts took place immediately after the fall of a huge wave, never before it; and, moreover, that the spouts did not take place excepting when the billow was an extremely large one. From this we concluded that there must be a subterraneous channel in the rock into which the water was driven by the larger waves, and finding no way of escape except through these small holes, was thus forced up violently through them. At any rate, we could not conceive any other reason for these strange water-spouts, and as this seemed a very ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... to this romantic place is from the Coventry road, by the side of shady plantations, until you arrive at a lofty stone arch, through which you enter the court yard, the whole of which is hewn out of the solid rock, and underneath there are subterraneous passages and cellars, wherein the atmospheric air produces so little effect, that during the heats of summer or the colds in winter the thermometer only varies one degree. In this court there are numerous stables excavated out of the solid ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... thought, that they shall lie after their death, near the remains of those whom they loved in life. But the Quakers, in general, have not thought it right or wise to indulge such feelings. They believe that all good men, however their bodies may be separated in their subterraneous houses of clay, will assuredly meet at the resurrection ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... children were stolen away, And there it stands to this very day. And I must not omit to say That in Transylvania there's a tribe 290 Of alien people who ascribe The outlandish ways and dress On which their neighbours lay such stress, To their fathers and mothers having risen Out of some subterraneous prison Into which they were trepanned Long time ago in a mighty band Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land, But how or why, they ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... blood that were almost daily carried on there; it being a receptacle for prostitutes and thieves; where every species of delinquency was practised; and where, indeed, there seldom passed a month without the commission of some act of murder. To this subterraneous abode of iniquity (it being a cellar) was our hero soon introduced; where he is now represented in company with his accomplice, and others of the same stamp, having just committed a most horrid act of barbarity, (that of killing a passer-by, and conveying ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... in those days, as is well known to German antiquaries, few castles or fortresses of much importance in Germany, which did not communicate by subterraneous passages with the exterior country. In many instances these passages were of surprising extent, first emerging to the light in some secluded spot among rocks or woods, at the distance of two, three, or even four miles. There were ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... it, though we had the attestation of the gardener, who said, he had put in corks, where the river Manyfold sinks into the ground, and had catched them in a net, placed before one of the openings where the water bursts out. Indeed, such subterraneous courses of water are found in various ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... scarcely possible to penetrate it. It grew thinner, however, as they advanced, dwindling by degrees into a straggling stunted vegetation, till, at the height of somewhat more than 13,000 feet, it faded away altogether. The Indians, who had held on thus far; intimidated by the strange subterraneous sounds of the volcano, even then in a state of combustion, now left them. The track opened on a black surface of glazed volcanic sand and of lava, the broken fragments of which, arrested in its boiling progress in a thousand fantastic forms, opposed continual impediments to their advance. Amidst ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... success, and proclaimed aloud that now they were certain of their game. The pursuers dashed into the long and narrow entrance, in time to catch a glimpse of the retreating forms of the Hurons. Their passage through the natural galleries and subterraneous apartments of the cavern was preceded by the shrieks and cries of hundreds of women and children. The place, seen by its dim and uncertain light, appeared like the shades of the infernal regions, across which unhappy ghosts and savage ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... grief; but, far from being able to calm or console her, my thoughts were so bewildered that I did not, till we alighted at the gate, begin to be really sensible of our situation. The night was dark and dreary, and our first entrance was into a kitchen, such as my imagination had pictured the subterraneous one of the robbers in Gil Blas. Here we underwent the ceremony of having our pocket-books searched for papers and letters, and our trunks rummaged for knives and fire-arms. This done, we were shown to the lodging I have described, and the poor priests, already insufferably crouded, were ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... employed in private conferences with Plator, whom Philip had put in command of the place. The city has two citadels, one overhanging the coasts, the other in the middle of the town, from which there is a subterraneous passage to the ocean, whose entrance next the sea is defended by a strong fortification, a tower five stories high. Here the affair commenced with a most furious contest, the tower being furnished with all kinds of weapons, and engines and machines of every ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... his sister's constancy, on pretence of building a tomb, caused this subterraneous habitation to be made, in hopes to find one day or other an opportunity to possess himself of that object which was the cause of his flame, and to bring her hither. He laid hold on the time of my absence to enter by force into the place of his sister's confinement; but that is a thing ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... of the subterraneous world is this Tartarus, or the place of torments: there was a city in it, and a prince to preside over it: within this city was a vast deep pit, in which the tortures were supposed to be performed: in this horrid part Virgil places ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... Incas, says: "They loved to indulge in the luxury of their baths, replenished by streams of crystal water which were conducted through subterraneous silver channels into ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... a huge subterraneous cavern into which Onucz and Anicza had descended. At the bottom of this hollow flowed a branch of the mountain stream which turned the mill and indeed was diverted thither by means of wooden pipes. Here, however, it flowed in its regular bed, glistening ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... fiery summer heat, and the intense winter cold. Many of the houses have a yard before them, which is walled round, and three or four are mostly clustered together. Sometimes excavations are made in a pit or hollow found on high ground, and then a subterraneous passage leading to them is excavated from the mountain sides: these are reckoned very secure. From the heights where I write, there is a boundless view of the plain and undulating ground which lie between the Mediterranean and this Atlas chain. The Arabs call it their sea, and it certainly ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... basin. They are of various sizes, from ten to fifty feet deep, and from ten to one or two hundred yards in circumference. Frequently they contain an outlet for the water received by the rains. Their existence shows that the substratum is secondary limestone, abounding with subterraneous cavities. ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... place enough,' answered the earl, 'but do you not know, dear Mary, that even here, the face of nature is oft times suddenly changed, by the awful sweep of the howling hurricane, or the thundering shock of the subterraneous earthquake.' ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker
... had no eyes for the strange continent which was rising before him. The land of the Pole was there, but not the man who had discovered it. Five hundred feet from the rocks the sea was boiling under the action of subterraneous fires. The island was from eight to ten miles in circumference, no more; and, according to their calculation, it was very near the Pole, if indeed the axis of the world did not pass exactly through it. As they drew near they noticed a little fiord large ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... branches be strewed among cabbage and cauliflower plants, or turnips, it will secure them from the ravages of flies and caterpillars; and if hung on the branches of trees, it will protect them from the effects of blight. Or if put into the subterraneous paths of the moles, it will drive them from the garden. An infusion of the leaves in water, and sprinkled over rose-buds and other flowers, will preserve them from the depredations of ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... the Roman princes, and embellished with splendid buildings; a tower of prodigious size, remarkable hot baths, relics of temples, and theatres, all inclosed within fine walls, parts of which remain standing. You will find on all sides, both within and without the circuit of the walls, subterraneous buildings, aqueducts, underground passages; and what I think worthy of notice, stoves contrived with wonderful art, to transmit the heat insensibly through narrow tubes passing up the ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... state of Kentucky there are several subterraneous caverns, which have attracted much attention, and which are described as among the most extraordinary natural curiosities in the world. They are also of considerable importance in a commercial view, from the quantity of nitre ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... this subterraneous establishment threw aside an old wire that served as a poker, and demanded payment in advance. The child handed him the three cents, received his rum and crackers, ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... run into bars. About Landa, where the diamonds are found, the whole of the stratum is observed to be a clay of a red burnt appearance, nearly to the same degree as that of burnt bricks, which gives to the rivers hereabouts a peculiar tinge. Whether this has been formed by the action of subterraneous fires, or is the effect of volcanoes or earthquakes, I cannot decide; the latter are said to be frequently felt at Pontiana and at Sambas; and the former are said to exist in the central mountains ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... southern port and emporium of commerce. It exports large shipments of wheat, sugar, and wool; imports cotton, groceries, iron, and coal, and manufactures flour, tobacco, machinery, and leather. It is well fortified, and though many of the poor live in subterraneous caverns, is a fine city, with a university, a cathedral, and a public library. It was a free port from 1817 till 1857. The population includes many ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... in Ireland certainly HAD great admiration mixed with reverence, if not dread, of fairies. They believed that beneath these fairy mounts were spacious subterraneous palaces, inhabited by THE GOOD PEOPLE, who must not on any account be disturbed. When the wind raises a little eddy of dust upon the road, the poor people believe that it is raised by the fairies, that it is ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... consequence, for instead of fighting them and reducing them to civility, they conceived such horror of the Spaniards, that they resolved to detest and fly their sight for ever; hence the greatest part died in caves and subterraneous places of the woods and mountains, in which places I myself have often seen great numbers of human bones. The Spaniards finding no more Indians to appear about the woods, turned away a great number of dogs they had in their houses, and they finding no masters to keep them, betook themselves ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin
... an enormous helmet. Determined that his line shall not become extinct, Manfred decides to divorce Hippolyta and marry Isabella, his son's bride. To escape from her pursuer, Isabella takes flight down a "subterraneous passage," where she is succoured by a "peasant" Theodore, who bears a curious resemblance to a portrait of the "good Alfonso" in the gallery of the castle. The servants of the castle are alarmed at intervals by the ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... (better known as Porphyry), and, above all, Jamblicus, who, in his book upon Egyyptian, Chaldaean and Assyrian Mysteries, speaks (III. 11) of the habit among the Romans of "interpreting the divine will by water": [Greek: di hudatos chraematizesthai], and explains the manner how, "for in a subterraneous temple" (by which, I presume, Jamblicus means a "sanctified cave or grotto") there was a fountain, from which the augur drank," [Greek: einai gar paegaen en oiko katageio, kai ap autaes pinein ton prophaetaen.] How can we ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... antiquities found in Herculaneum, with the additional compliment of asking in return, only, a compleat collection of our author's works, to which was adjoined, an invitation to visit that newly discovered subterraneous city: an invitation that could not but be greatly pleasing to a genius so inquisitive after knowledge, and which he declared, he should very gladly have embraced, had not his advanced years been an insuperable impediment, to the gratification of his curiosity. ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... time, and the great drops, which fell straight to the earth, shone likewise. The palace was in the heart of a rainbow. It was a rain of rubies, and sapphires, and emeralds, and topazes. The torrents poured from the mountains like molten gold; and if it had not been for its subterraneous outlet, the lake would have overflowed and inundated the country. It was ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... Norse, and bear descriptive and applicable meanings in that tongue; but hesitate to extend these names beyond the Norwegian colonisation, and to connect them with the Picts or other earlier inhabitants. No argument can be founded on the rude and miserable subterraneous buildings called Picts' houses, which, if they ever were habitations, or anything else than places of refuge, must have belonged to a people in a very low grade of civilisation. Be this as it may, Orkney and Zetland remained under ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... of gunpowder, went off at once with a most horrid explosion. A great number of the inhabitants are missing, supposed to have perished in the flames, or under the ruins of the houses, or to have been suffocated in the subterraneous vaults and caverns, to which they had fled ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... subject, and that subject almost hidden in a discolored, rolling, and oftentimes tumultuous and bursting sea. Bear in mind, too, that under these untoward circumstances he has to cut many feet deep in the flesh; and in that subterraneous manner, without so much as getting one single peep into the ever-contracting gash thus made, he must skilfully steer clear of all adjacent, interdicted parts, and exactly divide the spine at a critical point hard by its insertion into the skull. Do you not marvel, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... has subterraneous passages, to which the sewers of London are a mere song; and they all lead to a small cave at high-water mark on the sea-beach, covered with brambles and bushes, and just large enough at its entrance to admit of a man squeezing ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... 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 ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... this which gives them their peculiar characters. They do not contain, like the steppes of Southern Asia, and the deserts of Persia, those lakes without issue, or rivers which lose themselves in the sand or in subterraneous filtrations. The Llanos of South America incline towards the east and the south; their waters are tributary to the Orinoco, the Amazon, or the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... antiquity, which is known by the name of the Nun's Well. No account is to be found of its history, though it may perhaps have belonged to the neighbouring castle. The traditions among the inhabitants affirm, that a subterraneous passage connects this castle with the nunnery at Rusper, which is 8 miles distant, but no attempt has been undertaken to ascertain the truth of this conjecture. Passing over Tower Hill, an eminence near Horsham, ...
— The History and Antiquities of Horsham • Howard Dudley
... rises in a deep valley at the junction of granite and lias, which is, however, concealed for some way by an immense mass of detritus, through which the spring forces itself. It is conveyed 700 yards in a subterraneous conduit to the establishment, whence it issues with a ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... shown in the vicinity, beside which Mahomet reposed under the shade of the trees, and into which he dropped his seal ring. It is believed still to remain there, and has given sanctity to the well, the waters of which are conducted by subterraneous conduits to Medina. At Koba he remained four days, residing in the house of an Awsite named Colthum Ibn Hadem. While at this village he was joined by a distinguished chief, Boreida Ibn al Hoseib, with seventy followers, all of the tribe of Saham. These made profession ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... by a quantity of scoriae that had formed a crust over them; and the lava, having been conveyed in a covered way for some yards, came out fresh again into an open channel. After an eruption, I have walked in some of those subterraneous or covered galleries, which were exceedingly curious, the sides, top, and bottom BEING WORN PERFECTLY SMOOTH AND EVEN in most parts by the violence of the currents of the red-hot lavas which they had conveyed for many weeks successively." I was ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... still centre. l. 139. Many philosophers have believed that the central parts of the earth consist of a fluid mass of burning lava, which they have called a subterraneous sun; and have supposed, that it contributes to the production of metals, and to the growth of vegetables. See additional ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... from the great earthquake at Lisbon were felt in this country about the same time after the shock, as sound would have taken in passing from Lisbon hither; and thence ascribes these agitations to the vibrations of the solid earth, and not to subterraneous caverns of communication; Philos. Transact. But from the existence of warm springs at Bath and Buxton, there must certainly be unceasing subterraneous fires at some great depth beneath those parts of this island; see on this subject Botanic Garden, Vol. II. Canto IV. l. 79, note. ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... she recollected a subterraneous passage, which led from the vaults of the castle to the church of St. Nicholas. She determined, if no other means of deliverance offered, to shut herself up forever among the holy virgins, whose convent was contiguous to the cathedral. In this resolution, she seized a lamp that burned at the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... 533, and not 530 as Farin says, whose chronology is often erroneous, the archbishop saint Godard was interred in the subterraneous chapel of this church, which then changed its ancient name for that of the holy prelate, whose remains it had received. Saint-Romain was also ...
— Rouen, It's History and Monuments - A Guide to Strangers • Theodore Licquet
... suppression of riots; we shall be told, by the next pompous orator who shall rise up in defence of the army, that they have often dispersed the smugglers; that the colliers have been driven down by the terrour of their appearance to their subterraneous fortifications; that the weavers, in the midst of that rage which hunger and oppression excited, fled at their approach; that they have at our markets bravely regulated the price of butter, and, sometimes, in the utmost exertion of heroick fury, broken those eggs which they were not ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... given you to understand that there is a secret subterraneous communication between your apartment and the chapel of St. Anthony, scarcely two miles off? Could you shrink from so simple an adventure? No, no, you will proceed into this small vaulted room, and through this into several others, without perceiving anything very remarkable in ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... head and shoulders of Chapeau's assistant, who had been summoned from his own region by the sound of his mistress's bell; the stairs from this subterraneous recess did not open on to any passage, but ascended at once abruptly into the shop, so that the assistant, when called on, found himself able to answer, and to make even a personal appearance, as ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... thousand years ago," he said. "The Moon was shaken by subterraneous rumblings, followed by fiery ejections, covering a period of nearly one and one-half wagon-wheel revolutions. Whole cities were ruined, fertile valleys covered and ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... comprehends the mechanism—of which he understands the cause—of which he can unfold the manner of action. Man, in fathoming Nature, has arrived at discovering the true causes of earthquakes; of the periodical motion of the sea; of subterraneous conflagrations; of meteors; of the electrical fluid, the whole of which were considered by his ancestors, and are still so by the ignorant, by the uninformed, as indubitable signs of heaven's wrath. His posterity, in following up, in rectifying the experience already made, will perhaps go ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... Mr Banks to trace the River: Marks of subterraneous Fire: Preparations for leaving the Island: ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... engaged in measuring the distance from the Prussian batteries to his particular house. One friend I found seated in a cellar with a quantity of mattresses over it, to make it bomb-proof. He emerged from his subterraneous Patmos to talk to me, ordered his servant to pile on a few more mattresses, and then retreated. Anything so dull as existence here it is difficult to imagine. Before the day is out one gets sick and tired of the one single topic of conversation. We are like the people at Cremorne ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... and for ever upon that virgin soil: thenceforward claiming the jus dominii to the top of the atmosphere above it, and also the right of driving shafts to the centre of the earth below it; so that all people found after this warning either aloft in upper chambers of the atmosphere, or groping in subterraneous shafts, or squatting audaciously on the surface of the soil, will be treated as trespassers—kicked, that is to say, or decapitated, as circumstances may suggest, by their very faithful servant, the owner of the said pocket-handkerchief. ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... regular officers of a Lodge of Perfection. I further promise that I will not debauch any female related to a companion of this degree, either by blood or marriage, knowing her to be such, under penalty of being crushed under the ruins of a subterraneous temple. So ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... Cambodia. Stirrups, short and long. Stitched vessels. Stockade erected by Polo's party in Sumatra. Stone, miracle of the, at Samarkand. —— the green. —— towers in Chinese cities. —— umbrella column. Stones giving invulnerability. Suakin. Submersion of part of Ceylon. Subterraneous irrigation. Suburbs of Cambaluc. Subutai, Mongol general. Su-chau (Suju), plan of. Suchnan River. Sudarium, the Holy. Suddhodhana. Sugar, Bengal, manufactured; art of refining; of Egypt and China. Suh-chau (Sukchur). Suicides before an idol. Sukchur, province Sukkothai. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... She opened the wicket and sought for the door leading to the subterraneous Vaults, where reposed the mouldering Bodies of the Votaries of St. Clare. The night was perfectly dark; Neither Moon or Stars were visible. Luckily there was not a breath of Wind, and the Friar ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... around the whistling crannies spread, And suck out clammy dews from herbs and flowers, To smear the chinks, and plaster up the pores; For this they hoard up glue, whose clinging drops, Like pitch or bird-lime, hang in stringy ropes. They oft, 'tis said, in dark retirements dwell, 50 And work in subterraneous caves their cell; At other times the industrious insects live In hollow rocks, or make a tree their hive. Point all their chinky lodgings round with mud, And leaves must thinly on your work be strow'd; But let no baleful ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... sent word to the church he could not attend mass till next day; then alighting from his horse (for the Pope always rides on horseback upon these occasions) he went into her stall, and ate every oyster she had there, and afterwards retired into the cellar where she had a few more. This subterraneous apartment was her kitchen, parlour, and bed-chamber. He liked his situation so much that he discharged all his attendants, and to make short of the story, His Holiness passed the whole night there! Before they parted he gave her absolution, not only for every sin she had, but ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... of the ancient writers. Acrisius, hearing of a prediction that Danae, his daughter, should bring forth a child that would kill him, caused her to be shut in a tower with brazen gates, or, according to some, in a subterraneous chamber, covered with plates of that metal; which place, according to Pausanias, remained till the time of Perilaus, the king of Argos, by whom it was destroyed. The precautions of Acrisius were, however, made unavailing by his brother Proetus; ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... then have I veiled from every eye the fate of the wretched Lodovico, who for twenty years has expiated in the gloom of our subterraneous cells the crime of having revealed our convent secrets; and yet who on earth suspects, that he has not long since sought the grave, the victim of an accidental malady? Jeronymo, fear nothing; give me but time, and the success of my ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... or eight feet westward under that causeway, which leads from the Churchyard to the Abbey Green. When, as we may suppose, they have run a length proportionable to their width, they compose a bath which may indeed be called great, 96ft. by 68ft.... From the westernmost side of Lucas's Bath a subterraneous passage has been traced 24ft., at the end of which was found a leaden cistern, raised about 3ft. above the pavement, constantly overflowing with hot water. From this a channel is visible in the pavement, in a line of direction eastward, conveying the water to Lucas's Bath' ...
— The Excavations of Roman Baths at Bath • Charles E. Davis
... etc., all depended on a common cause; also that the greater the contortions of strata in a mountain chain, the smaller must have been each separate and individual movement of that long series which was necessary to upheave the chain. Had they been more violent, he contended that the subterraneous fluid matter would have gushed out and overflowed, and the strata would have been blown up and annihilated. (It is interesting to compare this with what Darwin wrote to Henslow seven years earlier.) He therefore introduces a cooling of one small underground injection, ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... artists of Ionia, and the wise men of Chaldea? Several distinct characters of civilisation have successively flourished in this part of Asia. To the primitive ages, to the reign of the Pelasgi, correspond the subterraneous excavations of Macri, and the Phrygian monuments of Seidi Gazi; to the Babylonian power, the ruins of Bagdad, and the artificial mountains of Van; to the Hellenic period, the baths, the amphitheatres, and the ruins which strew the coast of ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... duck-bills, Ornithostoma. They are confined to Australia and the neighbouring island of Van Diemen's Land (or Tasmania); they become scarcer every year, and will soon, like their blood-relatives, be counted among the extinct animals. One form lives in the rivers, and builds subterraneous dwellings on the banks; this is the Ornithorhyncus paradoxus, with webbed feet, a thick soft fur, and broad flat jaws, which look very much like the bill of a duck (Figures 2.269 and 2.270). The other form, the land duck-bill, or spiny ant-eater ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... fell."—"An important alteration has been made in the Magnetic Observatory. For several years past, various plans have been under consideration for preventing large changes of temperature in the room which contains the magnetic instruments. At length I determined to excavate a subterraneous room or cellar under the original room. The work was begun in the last week in January, and in all important points it is now finished."—"In the late spring, some alarm was occasioned by the discovery ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... known about the Tampha. According to what Hodgson was able to gather concerning his habits, "he dwells in the more secluded spots of inhabited districts, makes a comfortable, spacious and well-arranged subterraneous abode, dwells there in peace with his mate, who has an annual brood of two to four young, molests not his neighbour, defends himself if compelled to it with unconquerable resolution, and feeds on roots, nuts, insects and reptiles, but chiefly ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... no need to build a special museum for the objects discovered. Not only would this money be saved, but I feel convinced that so many visitors would be attracted as to more than pay for the maintenance. A subterraneous Herculaneum—surely a perfectly unique place of pilgrimage, just as it was nearly two thousand years ago—might be lighted by electric arc lights. I feel certain it would attract sight-seers from the ends of the world. ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... 28th and 29th of September, 1759, horrible subterraneous noises were heard, which had been preceded by slight shocks of an earthquake since the June preceding. The affrighted Indians fled to the Aquasareo, and soon thereafter a tract of land twelve miles square, which now goes by the name of the "evil land" (mal pais), rose up ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... incense, and lays his projecting hands on every person preparing to descend. A flambeau is carefully prepared at the same time, with a gum which exudes from a tree growing in the vicinity, and which is not easily extinguished by fixed air or subterraneous vapours." ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... of the unfortunate Clairet was laid out in a subterraneous apartment of the hospital, whither immense crowds repaired to see once more the mortal remains of one who was almost regarded as an extraordinary man; and who, at this moment, owed to his cruel adventures, the powerful interest, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... must not omit to say That in Transylvania there's a tribe 290 Of alien people who ascribe The outlandish ways and dress On which their neighbors lay such stress, To their fathers and mothers having risen Out of some subterraneous prison 295 Into which they were trepanned Long time ago in a mighty band Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land, But how ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... chronicled this blest event! And now my princess shall with me unite to root out secret subterraneous justice, and fixing it in fair and open day, unmask free knights, and hail the dawn of ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... a party of Bow Street officers searched a gaming house at 19, Great Suffolk Street. They were an hour in effecting their entrance. Two very stout doors, strongly bolted and barred, obstructed them. All the gamesters but one escaped by a subterraneous passage, through a long range of cellars, terminating at a house in Whitcomb Street, whence their leader, having the keys of every door, conducted them ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... shown as the place of the Nativity, and that of the manger, both of which are in a crypt or subterraneous chapel under the church of St. Katherine, are in the hands of the Roman Catholicks. The former is marked by this simple inscription on a silver ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... demon. All the writers talk of the place as infernal. We do not believe this place so near to hell as to heaven. We doubt if Satan ever comes here. He knows enough of hot climates, by experience, to fly from the hiss of these subterraneous furnaces. Standing amid the roaring, thundering, stupendous wonder of two hundred spouting water springs, we felt like crying out, "Great and marvelous are ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... Mrs. Gashleigh (of course that lady garrisoned her daughter's house with servants, and expected them to give her information of everything which took place there) up to that moment, I say, the cook had been quite contented with that subterraneous station which she occupied in life, and had a pride in keeping her kitchen neat, bright, and clean. It was, in her opinion, the comfortablest room in the house (we all thought so when we came down of a night to smoke there), and the ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... remarkable for eruptions of fire, which was called [697]Asta-cana, rendered by the Romans Astacene, the region of the God of fire. The island Delos was famous for the worship of the sun: and we learn from Callimachus, that there were traditions of subterraneous fires bursting forth in many parts ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... parish of Gladsmuir, East-Lothian, about four miles from Tranent. (See Patten's Expedition, sig. D ii. for a notice of his wife, when the English came "to Lang Nuddrey.") The mansion-house of Long-Niddry "is now known only by a circular mound, rising a few feet above the ground, containing the subterraneous vaults which were connected with the building."—(Stat. Acc. Haddington, p. 184.) Near it is the ruinous Chapel which still bears the name of John Knox's Kirk. Hugh Douglas, the father of Knox's pupils, ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... least, if that tradition be no imposture) is very wonderful; by whatsoever occult virtue, the forked-stick (so cut, and skilfully held) becomes impregnated with those invisible steams and exhalations; as by its spontaneous bending from an horizontal posture, to discover not only mines, and subterraneous treasure, and springs of water, but criminals, guilty of murther, &c. made out so solemnly, and the effects thereof, by the attestation of magistrates, and divers other learned and credibile persons, (who have critically examined matters of fact) is certainly next to miracle, and requires a strong ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... sepulchre which mews The bones and spirit, erst of Merlin's name. The tomb, of hardest stone which masons use, Shone smooth and lucid, and as red as flame. So that although no sun-beam pierced the gloom, Its splendour lit the subterraneous room. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... The subterraneous speeches of the Ghost are hardly defensible;—but I would call your attention to the characteristic difference between this Ghost, as a superstition connected with the most mysterious truths of revealed ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... resembling a gigantic quarry, at the bottom of which the sunken trees continued to grow. In the eastern side of the bottom of this subsidence a large opening extended under the rock and seemed to lead to a subterraneous cavity ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... believe that that mere physical occurrence, that catastrophe of flesh and blood, means the subsequent and eternal stagnation of all psychical life; that men either go forthwith into scenes with which ninety out of a hundred would be wholly unfamiliar, or are thrust headlong into a subterraneous locality called Sheol, or the grave in Hebrew, the English equivalent of which is hell, the only difference being that, whereas the good can grow no better, the wicked can ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... had the happiness of killing a sufficient number for her winter's subsistence, which she determined to pass at that place, and therefore formed a house for herself, after the manner she had learned from the Esquimaux. When spring came, and she emerged from her subterraneous dwelling, (for such the Chipewyans suppose it to have been,) she was astonished by observing a glittering appearance on a distant hill, which she knew was not produced by the reflection of the sun, and being at a loss to assign any other cause for it she resolved on ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... Telamone, a seaport on the confines of the Maremma, has led them to conceive hopes of becoming a naval power: but this scheme will prove as chimerical as their former plan for the discovery of a subterraneous stream under their city." Why they gave the appellation of Diana to the imagined stream, Venturi says he leaves it to the ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... high ledge of rocks, is about two feet square; from thence it descends obliquely fifteen feet, then running horizontally about ten more, it ascends gradually sixteen feet to its termination. The sides of this subterraneous cavity are composed of smooth and solid rocks, as also are the top and bottom, and the entrance in winter, being covered with ice, is exceedingly slippery. It is in no place high enough for a man to raise himself upright, nor in any part more than ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... unfathomable caves. From time to time a dull sound was heard, like that of a rising tempest or a billow of the sea; but nothing clear, nothing distinct, nothing intelligible; it was like those mysterious subterraneous noises that ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to the very moment when it penetrated our subterraneous laboratories to enlighten our PREPARERS, to establish principles, to create methods and to unveil causes which ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... statement of his opinions in the Article in the Moniteur Parisien (ante p. 23), which Article is believed to have been written by himself. It is true that M. Garella, being a Mining Engineer (Ingenieur des Mines) may have a partiality for subterraneous works; and this refection provokes the observation, that it is singular that the French Government should have selected, for this very important survey, an Engineer of Mines (however eminent in his department), rather than one experienced in the formation of ...
— A Succinct View of the Importance and Practicability of Forming a Ship Canal across the Isthmus of Panama • H. R. Hill
... the Yellow Stone Valley are tender and succulent. The climate is milder than that of Illinois. Warm springs gush up on the head-waters of the Yellow Stone. Lewis and Clark, on their return from the Columbia, boiled their meat in water heated by subterraneous fires. There are numerous beds of coal, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... subterraneous passages leading from the lowest part of the main tower to a great distance; and by these the besieged could make their escape in time of imminent danger, when the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... to avoid the humiliating pageant of Mr. Jefferson's inauguration. Yet far more fierce than this natural party warfare was the internal dissension which rent the Federal party in twain. Those cracks upon the surface and subterraneous rumblings, which the experienced observer could for some time have noted, had opened with terrible uproar into a gaping chasm, when John Adams, still in the Presidency, suddenly announced his determination to send a mission to France at a crisis when nearly all his ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... void of reason, as their practised conclusions. Some have held that snow is black, that the earth moves, that the soul is air, fire, water; but all this is philosophy: and there is no delirium, if we do but speculate the folly and indisputable dotage of avarice. To that subterraneous idol, and god of the earth, I do confess I am an atheist. I cannot persuade myself to honour that the world adores; whatsoever virtue its prepared substance may have within my body, it hath no influence nor operation without. I would not entertain a base design, or an action that should call ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... shepherd's calling he was prompt And watchful more than ordinary men. Hence he had learned the meaning of all winds, Of blasts of every tone; and oftentimes When others heeded not, he heard the South Make subterraneous music, like the noise Of bagpipers on distant Highland hills. The shepherd, at such warning, of his flock Bethought him, and he to himself would say, The winds are now devising work for me! And truly ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... tarn; and the whole region is often alive with waterfalls, of many of which, in its exquisite loveliness, the scenery is fit for fairy festivals—and of many, in its horrid gloom, for gatherings of gnomes revisiting the glimpses of the moon from their subterraneous prisons. One lake there is which has been called "wooded Winandermere, the river lake;" and there is another—Ulswater—which you might imagine to be a river too, and to have come flowing from afar: the one excelling in isles, and bays, and promontories, serene and gentle all, and perfectly beautiful; ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... that almost certainly afforded part of the imagery of "Kubla Khan." Bartram, says Mr. Coleridge, "speaks of waters which 'descend by slow degrees through rocky caverns into the bowels of the earth, whence they are carried by subterraneous channels into other receptacles and basons.' He travels for several miles over 'fertile eminences and delightful shady forests.' He is enchanted by a 'view of a dark sublime grove;' of the grand fountain he says that the 'ebullition is astonishing and continual, though its greatest force of fury ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... temples on top of pyramids," continued Fenton, "and not underground. There is one at Palenque said to be built on the lines of Solomon's temple. It has sanctuaries, sepulchers, cloisters, courts, subterraneous galleries, and dismal cells where the priests lived. No one knows how old the ruins are. No one knows how many distinct civilizations have held sway there, one, literally, on top of ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... is old butter kept several years in a matamore, or subterraneous cavern. It is called by the Arabs of the desert, budra; and much virtue is ascribed to it when it has attained a certain age: a small quantity swallowed, quickly diffuses itself through ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... usual to find in the orange groves of low latitudes. Several are very old, two or three dating from the fifteenth century, and one from the early part of it. What notions do you get of the magnificence of the place, when you are told, that a palace, subterraneous, it is true, is devoted to this single luxury, and that acres are covered with trees ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... is more of sublimity or beauty in the scene around us. Nature appears at once smiling and frowning, in activity and repose. How tremendous is the volcano, how magnificent this great laboratory of Nature in its unceasing fire, its subterraneous lightnings and thunder, its volumes of smoke, its showers of stones and its rivers of ignited lava! How contrasted the darkness of the scoriae, the ruins and the desolation round the crater with the scene below! There we see the rich field covered with flax, or maize, ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy |
