"Basalt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is an isolated rocky tongue rising suddenly like an island from the low levels, and trending north-west to south-east. The site is perfectly healthy; the ground is gravel, not clay, and the stone is basalt. The upper heights are forested and full of game; the lower are cleared and await the colonist. With the pure and keen Atlantic breeze ever blowing over it, the Mount is a ready-made sanatorium. Its youth ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... god of destruction, and his wife Parvati seated behind him; they have both snakes in their hands, and Siva has a large one round his loins as a waistband. There are several demons in human shape lying prostrate under the belly of the bull, and the whole are well cut out of one large slab of hard basalt from a dyke in the marble rock beneath. They call the whole group 'Gauri Sankar', and I found in the fair, exposed for sale, a brass model of a similar one from Jeypore (Jaipur), but not so well shaped and proportioned. On noticing this we were told that 'such difference was to be expected, since ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... place worth all we have undergone. The crags are wonderful, chalk at the bottom, basalt above, and of course all round to the Giant's Causeway it is finer still. Well may we, as the Bishop is always doing, give thanks that we were taken, by the Divine Hand guiding tide and current, to this milder ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... same! Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence 20 One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side, And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats, And up into the aery dome where live The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk: And I shall fill my slab of basalt there, 25 And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest, With those nine columns round me, two and two, The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands: Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse. 30 —Old Gandolf ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... it. I found myself in a large oak-panelled room, with small barred windows admitting a sickly light. The floor was paved with stone; and in the centre, built into the pavement, stood a large block of basalt, black and smooth, which was roughly carved into the semblance of a gigantic human head. I stared at this for a long time, and then swiftly withdrew, overcome with horror which I could not translate into words. All that I seemed to know was that some kind of shocking ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... harbours in the world. About a third of its interior to the north and east is occupied by an elevated mountainous region, raised from 3,000 to 5,000 feet above the sea, and consisting of Primary rocks—granite, gneiss, and basalt—probably very ancient land, and forming during the Secondary geological epoch an island much smaller than the Madagascar of to-day. While our Oolitic and Chalk rocks were being slowly laid down under northern seas, the extensive coast plains of the island, especially on ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... rocks are definite associations of cryctognostically simple fossils. There are four phases in the formative condition; rocks of eruption, p 20 endogenous (granite, sienite, porphyry, greenstone, hyperathene, rock, euphotide, melaphyre, basalt, and phonolithe); sedimentary rocks (silurian schist, coal measures, limestone, travertino, infusorial deposit); metamorphosed rock, which contains also, together with the detritus mica schist, and more ancient metamorphic masses. Aggregate and sandstone ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... cows over the corn. Generally, however, Moslems prefer the old classical {Greek letters}, the Tribulum of Virgil and Varro, a slipper-shaped sled of wood garnished on the sole with large-headed iron nails, or sharp fragments of flint or basalt. Thus is made the "Tibn" or straw, the universal hay of the East, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... shore on the right fell away, forming a sort of cove a mile wide, at the widest point of which the grass-covered soil sloped steeply down to the water's edge, rising again in the form of a cliff as the cove took a bend away toward the north-east. The rocky cliffs seemed to be composed of basalt, with a thick covering of rich deep-red soil, upon which vegetation flourished luxuriantly. The breeze, following the trend of the channel—the water in which seemed deep enough to float a battleship—wafted ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... one deity traces are visible on the heights of Fruska Gora in the fossil sea-shells strewn around, and in Veterani's cave with its petrified relics of saurian monsters of the deep; of the other god, the basalt of Piatra Detonata bears witness. While the man of the iron hand is revealed by long galleries hewn in the rock, a vaulted road, the ruined piers of an immense bridge, the tablets sculptured in bas-relief ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... coast of Northumberland, "over against" an obscure town of the same name. It stands upon a basalt rock, of a triangular shape, high, rugged, and abrupt on the land side; flanked by the German Ocean, and strong natural rampires of sand, matted together with sea rushes on the east; and only accessible to an enemy on the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... Foyle, one of the most beautiful bays in Ireland, gave us a fine return in fish. Especially I remember the magnificent turbot which we took off the wild shore between the frowning basalt cliffs of the Giant's Causeway, and the rough headlands of Loch Swilly. We sold our fish in the historic town of Londonderry, where we saw the old gun Mons Meg, which once so successfully roared for King William, still in its place on the old ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... in prickly undergrowth and noxious weeds, while foetid exhalations from swamp and fen cling close to the humid, spongy ground. All around breathes desolation; on the face of nature is stamped a perpetual frown. The shipwrecked sailor, crawling painfully to the summit of basalt cliffs, or the ironed convict, dragging his tree trunk to the edge of some beetling plateau, looks down upon a sea of fog, through which rise mountain-tops like islands; or sees through the biting sleet a desert of scrub ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... by stone hinges Hung to its flanking tower. The path they followed Threaded an old paved road whose flags were edged With dry grass and dry weeds, even cactuses Had pushed the stones up or found root in muck heaps: The path struck up the slope of the fallen door, Basalt like midnight, o'er which dusty feet Had greyed a passage, for it rested on Some debris fallen from the left-hand tower, And from its upper edge rude blocks like steps Led down into the straight main street, that ran Past eyeless ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... Atacatzo, and Guamani are irregular. The Ecuadorian volcanoes have rarely ejected liquid lava, but chiefly water, mud, ashes, and fragments of trachyte and porphyry. Cotopaxi alone produces pure, foam-like pumice, and glossy, translucent obsidian.[62] The paucity of quartz, and the absence of basalt, are remarkable. Some of the porphyroids are conglomerate, but the majority are true porphyries, having a homogeneous base. Dr. T. Sterry Hunt calls them porphyroid trachytes. They have a black, rarely reddish, vitreous, or impalpable base, approaching obsidian, with a specific ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... the product of the complete distillation of liquid hydrocarbons with which the rock was once impregnated. The remarkable purity of such graphite is the natural result of its mode of formation, and such cases resemble the occurrence of graphite in cast iron and basalt. The black clouds and bands which stain many otherwise white marbles are generally due to specks of graphite, the residue of hydrocarbons which once saturated the rock. Some limestones are quite black from ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... meant for the baptistery: this is covered with a cupola surmounted by the monogram of Christ; and over the gate are curtains drawn up on each side, See Raoul-Rochette-Tableau des Catacombs, p. 332. The font is an ancient urn of basalt the paintings above it, between the second order of columns, representing, the life of S. John ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... very large well in the desert of Aina. It had a girdle wall like a mountain of basalt(?), with twenty buttresses(?) in the foundation [on] the ground, and its height was thirty cubits, and it had bastions. The frame-work and the doors were cut out of cedar, and the bolts thereof and their sockets were of copper. I cut out large sea-going boats, with smaller boats before them, ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... bordering on the cave, shaded by fir and other trees, was thoroughly explored, and on turning the point of the south-western spur, the colonists entered a narrower gorge similar to the picturesque columns of basalt on the coast. Here the trees were fewer. Stones took the place of grass. Goats and musmons gambolled among the rocks. Here began the barren part of the island. It could already be seen that, of the numerous valleys branching off at the base of Mount Franklin, three only were wooded ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... southernmost point of America, so dreaded by all mariners. Bare, pointed mountains, one of which looks like a crater that has fallen in, form the extremity of the mighty mountain-chain, and a magnificent group of colossal black rocks (basalt?), of all shapes and sizes, are scattered at some distance in advance, and are separated only by a small arm of the sea. The extreme point of Cape Horn is 600 feet high. At this spot, according to our works on geography, the Atlantic Ocean changes its name and assumes that of the Pacific. Sailors, ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... quay, the Negro still at his side. A few prowling sailors passed them. But for the most part the waterfront was deserted. The ships lay side by side—an intricate tangle of bowsprits and rigging, masts and chains. Around them the water was black as basalt, only that now and again a spark of light was struck by the faint lifting of the current ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... sticks. We can't break away from the ghetto." A great excitement seized Herzl, and he left the atelier, and on the way home the inspiration came on him like a hammerblow. What was it? The complete outline of a play, "like a block of basalt." ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... like those of a tempestuous sea. Into the vast burning chasms, whence these ejections were thrown, two rivers plunged in cataracts; but the water only increased the violence of the eruption. It was thrown into steam with explosive force, and great quantities of mud and balls of basalt were ejected. On the surface of the swollen mound there were formed thousands of small cones, from six to ten feet in height, and sending forth steam to heights varying from twenty to ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... stood gazing out of the window at the Square. It was Saturday, and all over the Square little stalls, with yellow linen roofs, were being erected for the principal market of the week. In those barbaric days Bursley had a majestic edifice, black as basalt, for the sale of dead animals by the limb and rib—it was entitled 'the Shambles'—but vegetables, fruit, cheese, eggs, and pikelets were still sold under canvas. Eggs are now offered at five farthings apiece in a palace that cost twenty-five ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... villa at Tibur, to enable him to celebrate his voluptuous feasts under the friendly eyes of Serapis. He extolled the merits of the deified Antinous in inscriptions couched in the ancient language of the Pharaohs, and set the fashion of statues hewn out of black basalt in the Egyptian style.[36] The amateurs of that period affected to prefer the hieratic rigidity of the barbarian idols to the elegant freedom of Alexandrian art. Those esthetic manifestations probably corresponded to religious prejudices, and the ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... is visible a beautiful waterfall, a palisade of wonderful basalt, and occasionally some island draped with verdure of many tints. Further away a murmuring brook or crystal streamlet may be heard hurrying down a rocky hillside or winding between towering cliffs, adding its share to the tuneful ...
— The Beauties of the State of Washington - A Book for Tourists • Harry F. Giles
... to find another 'Old Blue' or a 'perfect treasure of a black basalt' by that time," ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... suggested, no doubt geographers will be able to point out many examples of this action. The Zambesi is thought to present a great difficulty to the erosion theory, because of the sinuosity of the chasm below the Victoria Falls. But, assuming the basalt to be of tolerably uniform texture, had the river been examined before the formation of this sinuous channel, the present zigzag course of the gorge below the fall could, I am persuaded, have been predicted, while the sounding ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... Adone was flung, as the sunlit salt spray of the ocean is cast on a cliff of basalt, against the barrier of that weary and prostrate despair which the State dares to tell the poor is their duty ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... ACIDIC, and those containing less silica and a larger proportion of the bases (lime, magnesia, soda, etc.) and therefore called BASIC. The acidic lavas, of which RHYOLITE and THRACHYTE are examples, are comparatively light in color and weight, and are difficult to melt. The basic lavas, of which BASALT is a type, are dark and heavy and melt ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... these matters as he sped on over the Great Indian Peninsula Railway. The western Ghauts were now far behind him and their dark basalt crags. Bombay, Hyderabad, Berar, the Central Provinces, Central India, and the southern prong of Oude was reached. He was, however, no whit the wiser when he reached the Ganges and hastily sought the telegraph station at Allahabad. ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... stood, and pointed. I followed the direction of his hand and came to the low table whereon rested, amongst other curios, the mummy of the cat which had raised Silvio's ire. I got a candle and easily found the mark of the bullet. It had broken a little glass vase and a tazza of black basalt, exquisitely engraved with hieroglyphics, the graven lines being filled with some faint green cement and the whole thing being polished to an equal surface. The bullet, flattened against the ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... which carried them in wild bounds across impassable chasms, their laboring lungs checked them in the ascent. The joyous inebriation was wearing off. Winslow met his companion's eyes sheepishly as they stopped where a sheer cliff of basalt above caught and held the warmth of the sun's rays. Behind them it rose a straight hundred feet, and before stretched a vast panorama. The sun was mounting now in the sky. It brought into strong relief the welter of volcanic ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... the rivers, densely charged with mud, deluged the country far and wide. At the end of four days (October 12th), a second eruption occurred, more violent than the first, in which hot water and mud were again vomited, and great blocks of basalt were thrown to the distance of seven miles from the volcano. There was at the same time a violent earthquake, the face of the mountain was utterly changed, its summits broken down, and one side, which had been covered with trees, became an enormous gulf in the form of a semicircle. ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... marble steps, beneath a balcony to which a stair ascended from behind a carved screen. Trumpets announced the approach of Caesar, who could enter unobserved through a door at the side of the dais. From the moment that the trumpet sounded, and the guards grew as rigid as the basalt statues in the niches of the columned walls, it was a punishable crime to speak or even to move until Caesar appeared and ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... all-inclusive. They are the two which are often jointly ascribed to God, especially in the Psalms. Our attitude to one another should be moulded in God's to us all. The tiniest crystal has the same facets and angles as the largest. The giant hexagonal pillars of basalt, like our Scottish Staffa, are identical in form with the microscopic crystals of the same substance. God is our Pattern; goodness ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... J. B. Stearns, of Short Hills, N.J. The example shown in Fig. 7 was obtained near the Gulf of Dolce, 82 deg 55' west. Three views are presented: profile, front, and back. It is carved from what appears to be a compact, grayish olive tufa or basalt, and represents a male personage, distinct in style from the female figure first presented. The head is rounded above, the arms are flattened against the sides, and the feet are folded in a novel position beneath the body. The ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... with, God curse the same! Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence 20 One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side, And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats, And up into the aery dome where live The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk: And I shall fill my slab of basalt there, And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest, With those nine columns round me, two and two, The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands: Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse, 30 —Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone, deg. ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... expression of sensibility and fineness, not theirs, and for the like of which one must pass onward to the Antonines. Popular hatred had been careful to destroy its semblance wherever it was to be found; but one bust, in dark bronze-like basalt of a wonderful perfection of finish, preserved in the museum of the Capitol, may have seemed to some visitors there perhaps the finest extant relic of Roman art. Had the very seal of empire upon those sombre brows, reflected from his mirror, suggested his insane attempt ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... Claudius the Censor, a proud and inflexible Patrician. His, great works were the Appian road and aqueduct. The road led to Capua through the Pontine marshes one hundred and twenty miles, and was paved with blocks of basalt; the aqueduct passed under ground, and was the first of those vast works which supplied ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... their hour. The black column of basalt quivers to its heart with one keen lightning thrill that vindicates its kin to the electric flash without; the granite cliff loses one atom from its bald front, and every other atom quails before the dumb shiver of gravitation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... he saw hills and a small mountain, but all the country in that direction seemed to be extremely arid and repellent. The bare basalt of volcanic origin showed everywhere, and, even at the distance, he could see many deep quarries in the stone, where races older, doubtless, than Aztecs and Toltecs, had obtained material for building. It was always ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... which bricks, stone, marble, and basalt, are irregularly mixed, covers a surface of 49,000 feet; while the chief mound is nearly 300 feet high, and from 200 to 400 feet in width, commanding an extensive view over a country of utter desolation. The Tower consisted of seven distinct stages or square ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... whose sides, just below the water-line, are heavily mossed with seaweed. The polygonal masses composing these shapes are called by the fishermen 'tortoise-shell stones.' There is a legend that once Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami, to try his strength, came here, and, lifting up one of these masses of basalt, flung it across the sea to the mountain of Sanbeyama. At the foot of Sanbe the mighty rock thus thrown by the Great Deity of Kitzuki may still be seen, it is alleged, even ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... arms, jewels, and picture writings, these last relating to historic matters, both Toltec and Aztec. The great sacrificial stone of the aborigines, placed on the ground floor of the museum, is, in all its detail, a study to occupy one for days. It is of basalt, elaborately chiseled, measuring nine feet in diameter and three feet in height. On this stone the lives of thousands of human beings, we are told, were offered up annually. The municipal palace is on the south side of the plaza, nearly opposite to which is a ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... murder you," advised Saxham, facing the passionate emotion of the younger man as a basalt cliff might oppose a breaking wave, "you ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Therefore your basalt, jade, and gems, Your Saracenic silver, your Nilotic gods, your diadems To bind the brows of Queens, impure, Perfidious, passionate, perfumed—these Your petted, pagan stage-properties, Seem but as toys of trifling worth. For I ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... and flow into innumerable graceful forms; you may be past master of every intricacy, multiplying your skill to the power of n;—but you will still in reality have made no progress beyond that unknown carver who shaped his syenite, or his basalt, into the "peace which passeth understanding"—"the eternity which baffles and ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... the Piazza della Rotonda was found, under the apse of the church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, together with the one now in the Villa Mattei von Hoffman. In 1435, Eugenius IV. discovered the two lions of Nektaneb I. which are now in the Vatican, and the two of black basalt now in the Capitoline Museum. In 1440 the reclining figure of a river-god was found and buried again. The Tiber of the Louvre and the Nile of the Braccio Nuovo seem to have come to light during the pontificate of Leo X.; at all events it was he who caused them to be removed ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... the chalky cliffs may be discovered a little eastward from Portrush; after a short course, they are suddenly depressed to the water's edge, under Dunluce Castle, and, soon after, lost entirely in passing near the basalt-hill of Dunluce, whose craigs, near the sea, are all columnar. At the river Bush the lime-stone recovers, and skims a moment above the level of the sea, but immediately vanishes in approaching towards the great basalt promontory of Bengore, under which it is completely ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... placed a pavement of large stones, which were firmly set in cement. These stones were sometimes square, but more frequently irregular. They were, however, always accurately fitted to each other. Many varieties of stone were used, but the preference was given to basalt. Where large blocks could not be conveniently obtained, small stones of hard quality were sometimes cemented together with lime, forming a kind of concrete, of which masses extending to a depth of several ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... lava flow of California the gravel beds of rivers far antedating the gravels of the Somme. It is therefore not a little interesting to learn from Prof. Whitney that he finds many proofs of the existence of man in the gravels of the Pliocene Age in California. Under the solid basalt of Table Mountain have been found many works of men's hands, as well as the ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... for the splendid and little-known scenery of American mountains in January. By one of the castles, a ruin belonging to the Steins of Nassau, poetically called Landskroene, or the "Land's Crown," from its beautiful situation on a basalt hill, is a perfectly-preserved chapel perched on the top of the rock, where, says the legend, the daughter of the besieged lord of the castle once took refuge during a local war. The sacristy has an unusual shape, and is hewn ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... of wells, generally muddy, brackish, or bitter, and at fearful intervals. On the first evening, the place of encampment was a small plain, with no other vegetation than a few prickly talk bushes, encircled by high mountains of basalt, which gave it the appearance of a volcanic crater. Here, at a well of tolerably good water, called Gatfa, the camels were loaded with water for five days. The next day, the horse and foot men passed over a very steep mountain called Nufdai, by a most difficult path of large irregular ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... had reached, and much of the range they had crossed, was formed of basalt in various stages of decomposition; but in the country before them, for several miles in advance, huge masses of granite and fragments of quartz indicated a change in the nature of the prevailing rock. The position of these masses, as well as ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... the more nearly before us, it is possible to make a substance resembling basalt in a furnace; limestone and sandstone have both been formed from suitable materials in appropriate receptacles; the phenomena of cleavage have, with the aid of electricity, been simulated on a small scale, and by the same agent crystals are formed. In short, ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... entirely volcanic, rises 3442 feet above the Mediterranean, and the Trebia Lada, 2723 feet high, is one of the three basaltic feet forming the Trebina, or Tripod, on the summit of Monte Arcuentu, a mountain between Orestano and Ales formed of horizontal layers of basalt. Further south at Nurri, closely approaching the primitive chain, are two hills, called “pizzè-ogheddu,” and “pizzè ogu mannu,” or peaks of the little and great eye, which were certainly ignivomous mouths, and the peasants ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... preserving their echoes, or of shrining them in the eternal basalt of print, like to the oft-repeated cries of Lurley's hunted in-dweller. The humorous infection caught also me, as a thing inevitable; but the case, I wot, proved an unfavourable one: and who dare enter the arena of contention with these ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... [Footnote: From Ain to Mahaber (direction E. by N.) about twenty miles.] the road is most picturesque; always following the winding of the small river Ain, here and there compressed to only a few yards by perpendicular walls of trachyte, or basalt; further on expanding into miniature green plateaus, bordered by conical hills, covered to the very summit by mimosas and huge cactuses, alive with large hordes of antelopes (the agazin), which, bounding ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... through three eventful days, and slipped out toward the waste of water bound by the flaunting autumn of the west. An island wind, fragrant of bark and secret berries, blew in puffs from the steep. A gull swooped to her nest in a cranny of the basalt. From below a servant came on deck, his broad American face smiling over a tray of glasses and decanters and tinkling ice. It was all very tranquil and public and almost commonplace—just the high tropic seas at the moment of their unrestrained sundown, ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... pieces of the iron were conveyed to our museums. There is, for instance, in the national collection a most interesting exhibit of the Ovifak substance. Close examination shows that this so-called meteorite lies in a bed of basalt which has been vomited from the interior of the earth. Those who believe in the meteoric origin of the Ovifak iron are constrained to admit that shortly after the eruption of the basalt, and while it was still soft, this stupendous iron meteorite ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... pointing out to me the extreme care and attention with which he finished his buildings. He inserted small fragments of basalt into the mortar of the external joints of the stones, at close and regular distances, in order to protect the mortar from the adverse action of the weather. And to this day they give proof of their efficiency. The ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... from claimed archipelagic baselines) Exclusive economic zone: 200 nm Territorial sea: 12 nm Disputes: none Climate: temperate; warm, dry, summer; precipitation very erratic Terrain: steep, rugged, rocky, volcanic Natural resources: salt, basalt rock, pozzolana, limestone, kaolin, fish Land use: arable land 9%; permanent crops NEGL%; meadows and pastures 6%; forest and woodland NEGL%; other 85%; includes irrigated 1% Environment: subject to prolonged droughts; harmattan wind can obscure visibility; volcanically ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... small, numerous on the apices of the stems, rose-coloured, lined with purple; they are developed in summer. This also forms dense tufts of stems. A specimen at Kew, only a few years old, has already over thirty heads. It is a native of Mexico, at an altitude of 5000 ft., growing on lava and basalt, and even on the trunks of trees. For its cultivation, a shelf in a sunny greenhouse is a most suitable position, both in ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... impassable nature of the country, Borneo has never been crossed by the white man. Travelling over some of the mountains seems to be an absolute impossibility. Many of them consist almost wholly of huge blocks of basalt, soft, moist, and too slippery to walk upon. I would rather attempt to cross the continent of Africa than the island of Borneo. The explorer must carry with him provisions enough to last both going and returning. The jungle affords nothing fit for human sustenance, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... appears almost to touch the feathery heads of them. And all things within and without the yellow vista are steeped in a sunshine electrically white, in a radiance so powerful that it lends even to the pavement of basalt the ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... once more at the narrow rift of Ty-uonyi as it opened from the canon of the Rio Grande between two basalt columns to allow the sparkling Rito to pass where barely two men could walk abreast. Back from the stream the pale amber cliffs swept in smooth laps and folds like ribbons. Crowded against its sheer northern face the irregularly terraced heaps of the communal ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... chanced to espy one evening as I stood on the hillside. I beheld it far down in the valley, staggering, struggling, climbing, falling: blindly groping its way to the great lake that slumbered, the other side of the forest, in the peace of the dawn. Here it was a block of basalt that forced the streamlet to wind round and about four times; there, the roots of a hoary tree; further on still, the mere recollection of an obstacle now gone for ever thrust it back to its source, bubbling in impotent fury, ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... and one which proves that the various kinds of coal which are found are nothing but stages begotten by different degrees of disentanglement of the contained gases, that where, as in some parts, a mass of basalt has come into contact with ordinary bituminous coal, the coal has assumed the character of anthracite, whilst the change has in some instances gone so far as to convert the anthracite into graphite. The basalt, which is one of the igneous rocks, has ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... pretence of activity or haste, but in the slow, persistent way peculiar to the sedentary Indian, which makes of him a steady though not a very profitable worker. Tyope's only implement was a piece of basalt resembling a knife, and he weeded on without interruption until the shadows of the plants extended from row to row. Then he straightened himself and scanned quietly the whole valley as far as visible, like ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... around the bend in the river, Rochemaure the Black came into sight: a withered stronghold topping an isolated rock of black basalt six hundred feet above the stream. It is a grewsome place: the ruin of a black nightmare of a basalt-built castle, having below and around it a little black nightmare of a basalt-built town—whereof the desperately steep and crooked streets are paved with black basalt, and ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... Oceans, as it does not often rest on specific determinations, and therefore should be received with caution. Six of the COOK AND AUSTRAL Islands (S.W. of the Society group), are fringed; of these, five were described to me by the Rev. J. Williams, as formed of coral-rock, associated with some basalt in Mangaia), and the sixth as lofty and basaltic. Mangaia is nearly three hundred feet high, with a level summit; and according to Mr. S. Wilson (Couthouy's "Remarks," page 34.) it is an upraised reef; "and there are in the central hollow, formerly ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... bend of the Nile, and in seven days' forced camel march we again reached the river Abou Hamed. The journey through that desert is most fatiguing, as the march averages fifteen hours a day through a wilderness of scorching sand and glowing basalt rocks. The simoom was in full force at that season (May), and the thermometer, placed in the shade by the water skins, stood at 114 ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... mussulmans erected a mosque, that they might perform their devotions where, according to their belief, mohammed received from the angel gabriel the first chapter of the Koran."—Author. "In the kaaba at mecca, there is a celebrated block of volcanic basalt, which the mohammedans venerate as the gift of gabriel to abraham, but their ancestors once held it to be an image of remphan, or saturn; so 'the image which fell down from jupiter,' to share with diana the homage of the ephesians, was probably nothing more than a meteoric stone."—Id. "When ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... country. The cities of Assyria—NINEVEH (Koyunjik), KALAH (Nimrud), ARBELA, DUR-SHARRUKIN (Khorsabad) were built in the midst of a hilly region abounding in many varieties of stone, from soft limestone to hard basalt; some of them actually stood on rocky ground, their moats being in part cut through the rock. Had they wanted stone of better quality, they had only to get it from the Zagros range of mountains, which skirts all Assyria to the East, separating it from Media. Yet they never availed ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... canon is built up in stories of basalt rock, each story defined by a horizontal fissure, out of which these mysterious waters gush, white and cold, taking glorious colors in the sunlight from the rich under-painting of the rock. There is an awfulness about it, too, as if that sheer front of rock were ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... marble, toned by time to a hue of richest orange. Here stood soldiers, to whom again the password was given. Entering, they beheld a great hall, surrounded by a colonnade of the Corinthian order, whereon had been lavished exquisite carving; in niches behind the columns stood statues in basalt, thrice the size of life, representing Roman emperors, and at the far end was a tribune with a marble throne. This, once the hall of audience, at present served as a sort of antechamber; here and there loitered a little group of citizens, some of whom had been ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... humour had failed to move the brutal egoism of his brother, beating upon it like the lightest of sea-foam on a rock of basalt, he was made to fall back upon the alternative of heavy denunciation. And it was significant that this commonplace tirade drew more applause than all the pretty wit that had gone before it. Seldom have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... spiritless and faint—yet, gaze as I might toward the top, I could see nothing. I skirted the main rock and climbed as far as I easily could up the ravine. Here my attention was arrested by a dot of scarlet against the grim, bare face of the basalt. Yes, there she was, about forty feet above me, hanging on to a shelving rock with her little Italian greyhound in her arms. She was peering down, disclosing a pallid face. I saw at once that she had hung there until her strength was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... us take the black obelisk of Shalmaneser II., found by Layard at Nimroud. It is a column of basalt seven feet high and about two feet wide at the base, from which it narrows slightly, until near the top it is reduced by three steps. On the four sides is engraved in five rows of bas-reliefs, twenty in all, the pictured history of the royal ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... otherwise a short traverse might have saved us some days. The few eminences that are on this side were mistaken for islands when seen from the opposite shore; they are for the most part cliffs of basalt, and are not above one hundred feet high; the subjacent strata are of white sand-stone. The rocks are mostly confined to the capes and shores, the soil inland being flat, clayey, and barren. Most of the headlands shewed traces of ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... river, and found the Valley of Lagoons. The following year another party, consisting of Messrs. Cunningham, Somer, and three others, explored the tributaries of the Upper Burdekin, and opened up several good tracts of pastoral country. The permanent running stream which flows through a rugged wall of basalt into an ana-branch of the Burdekin, was first noticed by this party, and ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... rowed away, the songs say, along the Mysian shore, and past the mouth of Rhindacus, till they found a pleasant bay, sheltered by the long ridges of Arganthus, and by high walls of basalt rock. And there they ran the ship ashore upon the yellow sand, and furled the sail, and took the mast down, and lashed it in its crutch. And next they let down the ladder, and went ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... taste for elegance and beauty of form, and to enliven the national industry. Plaster-casts, to the amount of forty thousand dollars, were sent out by the King of Spain, and as they possess in the academy various colossal statues of basalt and porphyry, with Aztec hieroglyphics, it would have been curious, as the same learned traveller remarks, to have collected these monuments in the courtyard of the Academy, and compared the remains of Mexican sculpture, monuments of a semi-barbarous ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... a terrible temptation. They knew the walls of the citadel of morality, built alone on natural virtue and unaided by divine grace, would soon crumble before their powerful machinations. In moments of sober reflection our resolutions are like prisms of basalt, that will not be riven by the lightning, but which in the hour of real trial prove to be ice-crystals that a sunbeam can dissolve. The powers that wage war with frail humanity have hung on the portals of the infernal kingdom, ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... a wing of the great, black pile, was the ancient habitat of these worthies, and the torture chamber, still extant, is a hall almost as big as the Dresden throne-room. In an inscription hewn in the basalt, the sovereign bishop, Johannes VI, poses as builder and seems proud of the damnable fact. Other princes of the Church let us know in high-sounding Latin script that they created the "Monk hole" and the ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... Basalt is a brown rock of igneous origin. It assumes regular forms, which astonish by their singular appearance. Here we found Nature proceeding geometrically, and working quite after a human fashion, as if she had employed the plummet line, the compass and the rule. If elsewhere she produces grand ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... in Egypt were carved out of opaque or semi-transparent stones, and those cut in hard stone were usually made of some one of the following varieties: green basalt, diorite, granite, haematite, lapis lazuli, jasper, serpentine, verde antique, smalt, root of emerald, which is the same as plasma or prase[19] cornelian, amethyst, sardonyx, agate and onyx. Those of ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer
... do for him? Malachite and alabaster are of no avail; jasper, serpentine, basalt, porphyry, granite: stones from Paros and marble from Carrara—they are all a waste of pains: genius can do ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... ever been successfully imitated on the continent. What was the astonishment of Oswald in hearing her! He remained at first immovably fixed to the spot where he was, and feeling confused he leaned against one of the lions of basalt at the foot of the stairway descending from the Capitol. Corinne viewed him again, forcibly struck with the emotion he betrayed; but she was dragged away towards the car, and the whole crowd disappeared long before Oswald had recovered his strength and his ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... were covered with painting, and sometimes in part gilt, and often three in number, one enclosing the other. The stone mummy-cases were yet more valuable, as they were either of white alabaster or hard black basalt, beautifully polished, in either case carved with hieroglyphics, and modelled to the shape of the body ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... corner of Monroe, threw momentary glares of red and green lights across the mists of rain, and filled the air continually with the jangle of their bells. Further on one caught a glimpse of the Court House rising from the pavement like a rain-washed cliff of black basalt, picked out with winking lights, and beyond that, at the extreme end of the vista, the girders and cables of the ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... speculate whether the dark-stained lustrous flint implements discovered by Mr. Henry Balfour at a high level below the Victoria Falls, and possibly deposited there by the river Zambezi before it had carved the present gorge in the solid basalt, prove that likewise in South Africa man was alive and busy untold thousands of years ago. Also, I shall here confine myself to the stone-age, because my object is chiefly to illustrate the long pedigree of the species from which we ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... and beautiful examples of rock-scenery. The natural monoliths of the barrancas of the State of Hidalgo are strange examples of scenic geology; monumental caprice of Nature in megalithic structure, as shown by the remarkable basalt columns of the profound Gorge of Itzala. Vari-coloured lichens cover these basalt pillars, affording singular contrast of light and shade. Through the gorge a torrential stream flows, and the floor of the valley is covered with fragments of obsidian, or volcanic glass, ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... type to use, till Mel dragged out his rock book. Most, automatically, had wanted basalt. However, the moon's density being low, heavier rocks are probably scarce—one good reason not to expect radioactive ores there. We finally ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins
... the Seine along which he coasted, bending to the oar. Then Brittany with its beaches, where high waves rolled in beneath low and dreary skies, then Auvergne, with its scattered huts amid the sour grass, beneath rocks of basalt; and, finally, Corsica, Italy, Sicily, not with artistic enthusiasm, but simply to enjoy the delight of grand, pure outlines. Africa, the country of Salammb, the desert, finally call him, and he breathes those distant odors ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... undermines the cliffs and wastes the coasts. The tear and wear of external occupations is ever acting upon our religious life. Travellers tell us that the constant friction of the sand on Egyptian hieroglyphs removes every trace of colour, and even effaces the deep-cut characters from basalt rocks. So the unceasing attrition of multitudinous trifles will take all the bloom off your religion, and efface the name of the King cut on the tables of your hearts, if you do not counteract them by constant earnest effort. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... which a river boiled and roared in a series of cascades and rapids. Ever and anon we passed over glades and prairies, carpeted with orchids, and dotted with clumps of shrubbery, a mass of golden bloom, or tremendous blocks of basalt hung with crimson creepers. Butterflies with azure wings of a surprising spread and lustre, alighted on the flowers, and great birds of resplendent plumage flashed from grove to grove. A sun, twice the diameter of ours, blazed in the northern sky, but the intensity of his rays was tempered by a thin ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... touched my lips, lo! the river vanished, and the flat country with its poppies and lilies, and I dreamed that I was in a boat by myself again, floating in an almost land-locked bay of the northern sea, under a cliff of dark basalt. I was lying on my back in the boat, looking up at the intensely blue sky, and a long low swell from the outer sea lifted the boat up and let it fall again and carried it gradually nearer and nearer towards the dark cliff; and as ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... from the cliff to be clear of the shadow. The sun shone on its brown weed-clad sides, glistened on black clusters of mussels, glowed on the red seams of the rock where the iron cropped out, and baked the black basalt of the upper surface. The spirits of the party revived when they landed. Una's gaiety ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... indication of mineral wealth in the white sand area, but in the north and east there is not only every prospect of a great agricultural and pastoral future but also of considerable mining development. Though basalt predominates in the neighbourhood of the Victoria Falls and large fields of granite crop up on the Batoka plateau and elsewhere, there is every indication of the existence of useful minerals in these districts. Gold, copper, tin, lead, zinc ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... animated faces of the crowd—the grey and vast mass of the Capitol; and, not far from the side of Rienzi, it brought into a strange and startling light the sculptured form of a colossal Lion of Basalt, (The existent Capitol is very different from the building at the time of Rienzi; and the reader must not suppose that the present staircase, designed by Michael Angelo, at the base of which are two marble lions, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... owing to the swell, we pulled along the cliffs for a short way. These Crozier cliffs are remarkably interesting. The rock, mainly volcanic tuff, includes thick strata of columnar basalt, and one could see beautiful designs of jammed and twisted columns as well as caves with whole and half pillars very much like a miniature Giant's Causeway. Bands of bright yellow occurred in the rich brown of the cliffs, caused, the geologists think, ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... The southern part of the island has an undulating surface, and is covered either with an open forest or with high ferns. In general the soil is extremely fertile, and where it is naturally drained a rich vegetation of fern and flax occurs. On the north-west are several conical hills of basalt, which are surrounded by oases of fertile soil. On the south-western side is Petre Bay, on which, at the mouth of the river Mantagu, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... of basalt having been theoretically demonstrated, Mr. Henry Adcock, C.E., in 1851 took out letters patent for the manufacture of a number of articles from the Rowley ragstone. Furnaces were erected at Messrs. Chance Brothers, and the experiment thoroughly carried out, a number ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... older tertiary formations, with their abundant shells, and their relics of vegetable life buried under great sheets of basalt, led him to consider carefully the question of climate during these earlier periods. In opposition to prevalent views on this subject, Darwin points out that his observations are opposed to the conclusion ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... the northern hills begin with the basalt buttresses of Antrim and the granite ribs of Down, and pass through northern Ulster and Connacht to the headlands of Mayo and Galway. Their rear is held by the Donegal ranges, keeping guard against the ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... to-day, the port of Nubia. It is about 275 miles, or 25 days' camel-journey, from thence to Berber on the Nile. The road passes through Korib, and among fine red granite and black basalt mountains, 4,000 feet high. We left one of the firemen, Tom Dollar, behind at Aden by mistake, and only found out yesterday that we had done so. It appears that he has a brother living there, whom he was most anxious to go and see directly the anchor ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... basalt," answered the little girl. Then, leaning far out of the saddle to point to the ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... mundane animal, or whatever title one chooses to give the thing, can look at its product with a certain degree of complacency and satisfaction. For it has your curved lines: it starts off into noticeable angles; it is jagged like corals; it darts forward like crystals; it agglomerates like basalt; nay, there is no conceivable line that does not hop, skip, and jump about our bodies. We, coz, are the spoilt, the cockered children of the formation: and this is why the common rabble of nature are so malicious and envious toward us. Their slim wretched fashion is next door to the ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... of huge silver beeches a stone chess-table was set embedded in the moss; and Iole indolently stretched herself out on one side, chin on hands, while Wayne sorted weather-beaten basalt and marble chess-men which lay in a pile ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... of the surf filled his ears; through flying patches of mist he caught glimpses of rollers bursting white against the reef; heard duller detonations along unseen sands, and shattering reports where heavy waves exploded among basalt rocks. ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... Macadam's practice was this: to break the stones into angular fragments, so that a bed several inches in depth should be formed, the material best adapted for the purpose being fragments of granite, greenstone, or basalt; to watch the repairs of the road carefully during the process of consolidation, filling up the inequalities caused by the traffic passing over it, until a hard and level surface had been obtained. ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... too great; besides, our daughters must have husbands who will last, and you no longer know how to preserve yourselves. Of the last persons who were brought here, scarcely fifteen centuries ago, nothing now remains but a pinch of ashes. Look! my flesh is as hard as basalt, my bones are bars of steel. I shall be present on the last day, with the body and features I had in life. My daughter Hermonthis will last longer than a statue of bronze. But at that time the winds will have dissipated the last grains of your dust, ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... than its strength, especially in pavements or steps, where it is subject to great wear; also in plinths and quoins of buildings where it is desired to preserve a good face and sharp arris. The order of strength and hardness of stone is—(1) Basalt, (2) granite, (3) limestone, (4) sandstone. Granite, seinite, and gneiss take the first, place for strength, hardness and durability, but they will not stand a high temperature. "Stones which are of a fine, uniform grain, compact texture and deep color are the strongest; ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... basalt. As built by Appius, however, the surface was of gravel; the stone blocks ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... EGYPTIAN WRITING.—The key to the Egyptian writing was discovered by means of the Rosetta Stone. This valuable relic, a heavy block of black basalt, is now in the British Museum. It holds an inscription, written in hieroglyphic, in demotic, and in Greek characters. Champollion, a French scholar, by comparing the characters composing the words Ptolemy, Alexander, and other names ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers |
