"Bitumen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... though, for it is a fine and instructive collection. And the work is all very good of its kind. You notice that the Ushabti figures and the heads that form the stoppers of the Canopic jars are quite finely modelled. The mummy itself, too, is rather handsome, though that coat of bitumen on the back doesn't improve it. But Sebek-hotep must ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... we have seen, generate sulphureted hydrogen and muriatic acid, upheave tracts of land, and omit streams of melted feldspathic materials; salses, on the contrary, disengage little else but carbureted hydrogen, together with bitumen and other products of the distillation of coal, and pour forth no other torrents except of mud, or argillaceous materials mixed up with water. Daubeney, op ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... given them is likely to be even approximately correct, and they may as well date from B.C. 12,000 as from B.C. 8000. Of one fact, however, we may be quite certain; that is to say, that the oldest human remains that have been found in Egypt bear upon them traces of the use of bitumen, which proves that the Egyptians at the very beginning of their stay in the valley of the Nile made some attempt to preserve their dead by means of mummification. [Footnote: See J. de Morgan, Ethnographie Prehistorique, Paris, 1897, p. 189.] If they were, as many think, ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... plains, one elevated, the other depressed. The latter is by some held to be the original bottom of the lake, and the former to have been caused by the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. But this also is only a fancy. The bitumen, which is found in such large quantities in and near the lake, is a symptom and remnant of the volcanic nature of the region. Several lines of earthquake are traced from it in a north-eastern direction; and it is conjectured that the three lakes, Merom, Tiberias, and Asphaltites, ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... receive the Sun's rays. Do you not see in our fires, that various kinds of wood produce different colors? Pines and firs give a flame mixed with thick smoke, and throw out little light. That which rises from sulphur and thick bitumen is bluish. Lighted straw gives out sparks of a reddish color. The large olive, laurel, ash of Parnassus, etc., trees which always retain their sap, throw a whitish light similar to that of a lamp. Thus, comets whose fires are formed of different materials, ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... they must be made of wood and not coal, and of particular sorts of wood too, such as fir, in particular, or cedar, because of the strong effluvia of turpentine; others were for coal and not wood, because of the sulphur and bitumen; and others were neither for one or other. Upon the whole, the lord mayor ordered no more fires, and especially on this account, namely, that the plague was so fierce that they saw evidently it defied all means, and rather seemed to increase than decrease ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... particular strata forming the system are somewhat different in different countries; but there is a general character to the extent of these being a mixture of flagstones, marly rocks, and sandstones, usually of a laminous structure, with conglomerates. There is also a schist shewing the presence of bitumen; a remarkable new ingredient, since it is a vegetable production. In the conglomerates, of great extent and thickness, which form, in at least one district, the basis or leading feature of the system, inclosing water-worn fragments of quartz and other rocks, we have evidence of the seas of that ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... three days, they arrived at the wall of Media,[101] as it is called, and passed to the other side of it. This wall was built of burnt bricks, laid in bitumen; it was twenty feet in thickness, and a hundred in height, and the length of it was said to be twenty parasangs; and it was not far distant from Babylon. 13. Hence they proceeded, in two days' march, the distance of eight ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... Pines, there are, in Carolina, at least, four sorts. The Pitch-Pine, growing to a great Bigness, most commonly has but a short Leaf. Its Wood (being replete with abundance of Bitumen) is so durable, that it seems to suffer no Decay, tho' exposed to all Weathers, for many Ages; and is used in several Domestick and Plantation Uses. This Tree affords the four great Necessaries, Pitch, Tar, Rozin, and Turpentine; which two last are extracted by ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... France. The success of translations of Scott had called the attention of the trade to English novels. The race of publishers, all agog for a second Norman conquest, were seeking industriously for a second Scott, just as at a rather later day every one must needs look for asphalt in stony soil, or bitumen in marshes, and speculate in projected railways. The stupidity of the Paris commercial world is conspicuous in these attempts to do the same thing twice, for success lies in contraries; and in Paris, of all places in the world, success spoils success. So beneath ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... palm-leaves. All the rest of the body is uncovered. Both men and women wear their hair, which is of a yellowish color, loose and long, gathering it up behind the head." Their canoes are "very neatly and well made, sewed together with cord, and finished with a white or orange-colored bitumen, in place of pitch. They are very light, and the natives sail in them with their lateen sails made of palm-mats, with so much swiftness against the wind or with a side wind that it is a thing to marvel at." The trading was all done from the canoes ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair
... N., on the Pacific, and to the mouth of the Colorado on the Gulf side, is a pile of volcanic debris and scoriae. Much of the surface is still heated by subterranean fires. No craters are in action; but hot springs of water and bitumen, and frequent earthquakes, and the scorched face of the whole region, demonstrate it to be a mere mass upheaved from the sea, and burned to cinders. The range of mountains that comes up through Lower California, runs on northwardly into Upper California, at an average ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... entrance is very high and spacious. What is most remarkable in this place is that the stones of the mountain are of crystal, rubies, or other precious stones. Here is also a sort of fountain of pitch or bitumen,[63] that runs into the sea, which the fish swallow, and evacuate soon afterward, turned into ambergris[64]; and this the waves throw up on the beach in great quantities. Trees also grow here, most of which are of wood of aloes,[65] equal in ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... no less flourishing than agriculture; Italy at this period was rich in industries—silk, wool, hemp, fur, alum, sulphur, bitumen; those products which the Italian soil could not bring forth were imported, from the Black Sea, from Egypt, from Spain, from France, and often returned whence they came, their worth doubled by labour ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... nowhere, nor Indeed can be: but in this life is fear Of retributions just and expiations For evil acts: the dungeon and the leap From that dread rock of infamy, the stripes, The executioners, the oaken rack, The iron plates, bitumen, and the torch. And even though these are absent, yet the mind, With a fore-fearing conscience, plies its goads And burns beneath the lash, nor sees meanwhile What terminus of ills, what end of pine Can ever be, and feareth lest the same ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... many, many a time, as I passed by here on my way, at this hour, I eagerly inhaled the appetizing vapors, not in the least disturbed by the admixture of pitch. Even in my old age I am still fond of regaling myself, or at least my nerves, with the bitumen smoke that floats through our Berlin streets, when they are being ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... and capacious vessel built by Noah for preservation against the flood. It was 300 cubits in length, 50 in breadth, and 30 in height; and of whatever materials it was constructed, it was pitched over or pay'd with bitumen. Ark is also the name of a mare's-tail cloud, or cirrhus, when it forms a streak ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... also the lowlands of Chaldea and Babylonia yield in sufficient quantity and of various qualities. While in the early structures a kind of sticky red clay or loam is used, mixed with chopped straw, bitumen or pitch is substituted at a later period, which substance, being applied hot, adheres so firmly to the bricks, that pieces of these are broken off when an attempt is made to procure a fragment of the cement. This valuable article was brought ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... bituminous matter may have been, in part at least, derived from the decomposition of vegetables. But as impressions of plants are rare in these shales, which contain ammonites, oysters, and other marine shells, with skeletons of fish and saurians, the bitumen may perhaps be of animal origin. Some of the saurians (Pliosaurus) in Dorsetshire are among the ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... the flats and common lands of uncultured history. And yet, strange to say, when these authors are living amongst us, they occupy a very small portion of our thoughts, and fill up but desultory interstices in the bitumen and tufo wherefrom we build up the Babylon of our lives! So it is, and perhaps so it should be, whether it pleases the conceit of penmen or not. Life is meant to be active; and books, though they give the action to future generations, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... great city belong. The mound Babil is thought to be the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II. An inscription reads: "On the brick wall towards the north my heart inspired me to build a palace for the protecting of Babylon. I built there a palace, like the palace of Babylon, of brick and bitumen." ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... Pagan honour paid: So lofty was the pile, a Parthian bow, With vigour drawn, must send the shaft below. The bottom was full twenty fathom broad, With crackling straw beneath in due proportion strew'd. The fabric seem'd a wood of rising green, With sulphur and bitumen cast between, To feed the flames: the trees were unctuous fir, And mountain-ash, the mother of the spear; 960 The mourner-yew, and builder oak were there; The beech, the swimming alder, and the plane, Hard box, and linden of a softer grain, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... chemical composition of the beds of cannel coal and earthy bitumen, and of the more highly bituminous and carbonaceous shale, show them to have been of the nature of the fine vegetable mud which accumulates in the ponds and shallow lakes of modern swamps. When such tine vegetable sediment is mixed, as is ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... says to us, "I scumbled in the background solid, using bitumen as an undertone, then I dragged over my high lights and painted my cool color right into it," it is as meaningless to most of us as if another bread-winner had said, "I use a Singer with a straight shuttle and No. 60 cotton." What we want ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... style was sketchy, conscientious, and full of strength and decision. He worked in large lines, broad surfaces and masses of light or shade. His colour was good, running to purples, reds, and admirable greens, full of bitumen ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... wounded, they were to invite the Admiral to come to visit him. As they were going away, he gave each of them a golden jewel, as each "appeared to him to deserve it." "This gold," says Dr. Chanca, "is made in very delicate sheets, like our gold leaf, because they use it for making masks and to plate upon bitumen. They also wear it on the head and for earrings and nose-rings, and therefore they beat it very thin as they only wear it for its beauty ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... the seat near me, a mass of black mud, or some such substance. Always curious—a phrenologic doctor told me I had the bump of wonder—I took hold of it, and found it to be adherent. It smelt strongly of bitumen. The landlord seeing me examining it chimed in, and said that the Indians had brought it to him from thirteen miles beyond Cornwall's Creek, where there was an immense deposit of the same kind. It was, in fact, soft asphalte, or petroleum, or bitumen, ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... thickness, surmounted throughout its whole extent by a breastwork a foot and a half thick, to enable them to fight from the top of the wall." Diaz says, "We came to an enormous intrenchment, built so strongly of stone, lime, and a kind of hard bitumen, that it would only have been possible to break it down by means of pick-axes."[21] Such a wall, or the vestiges of it, would last for thousands of years; for it is not in the destructive power of man wholly to obliterate it, and yet I have been utterly unable to find even a ruin, and I verily ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... a glorious hour, even for the old dust of Egypt, which fills the air eternally, without detracting at all from its wonderful clearness. It savours of spices, of the Bedouin, of the bitumen of the sarcophagus. And here now it is playing the role of those powders of different shades of gold which the Japanese use for the backgrounds of their lacquered landscapes. It reveals itself everywhere, close to and on the horizon, modifying at its pleasure the colour of things, ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti |
