"Excavate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that which flows by the city of Kinsay. And at the place where it quits the main channel is the city of Tingui, of which all that is to be said is that there they make porcelain basins and dishes. The manner of making porcelain was thus related to him. They excavate a certain kind of earth, as it were from a mine, and this they heap into great piles, and then leave it undisturbed and exposed to wind, rain, and sun for 30 or 40 years. In this space of time the earth becomes sufficiently refined for the manufacture of porcelain; ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... work encounter every kind of risk and undergo every kind of hardship and exertion. Explorers and naturalists of the right type have open to them in South America a field of extraordinary attraction and difficulty. But to excavate ruins that have already long been known, to visit out-of-the-way towns that date from colonial days, to traverse old, even if uncomfortable, routes of travel, or to ascend or descend highway rivers like the Amazon, the Paraguay, and the lower Orinoco—all ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... the parent May-fly drops into the water, a six-legged grub is very soon hatched. This grub proceeds forthwith to excavate for himself a home in the soft bank of the river, below the surface of the water, and there remains for two long years, feeding upon the decaying matters of the mould. During this aquatic residence, the little creature finds it necessary to breathe; and that he may do so comfortably, notwithstanding ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... shell, as it hesitated on the edge, and then the turtle commenced a clumsy scramble up the beach, lifting itself along in a laborious manner. In ten minutes it had reached the loose sand above tide-water, and kept its course toward us until within thirty feet, when it began to excavate its nest. The operation seemed to be performed mostly with the hind feet, and was accomplished in a remarkably short time, considering ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... the large stones and then dig a sort of trench to wherever the puppies are," and Rudolph was able of course to indicate the exact spot to which the trench must lead. It was the work of an hour to excavate the foundation-stones, and an additional half-hour to dig the trench. Meantime Betsy appeared upon the scene, and, evidently appreciating what was going on, stood about and superintended matters with quite an important air. Rudolph clambered in and dug the last few feet of ...
— Tattine • Ruth Ogden
... figures; and these were associated with paleolithic tools. In the chalk of Champagne, where there are no cliffs, whole villages of underground habitations have been discovered, but none of these go back to the earliest age of all; they belong to various epochs; but the first to excavate them was the Neolithic man, he who raised the rude stone monuments elsewhere. He had learned to domesticate the ox and the sheep, had made of the dog the friend of man. His wife span and he delved; he dug the clay, and she formed ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... Youth,—the careless Sport, the Pleasure and Passion, the darling Joy. You open an old letter-box and look at your own childish scrawls, or your mother's letters to you when you were at school; and excavate your heart. Oh me, for the day when the whole city shall be bare and the chambers unroofed—and every cranny visible to the Light above, from the ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... spoken of was the Panama Canal affair. De Lesseps, the maker of the Suez Canal, had undertaken to excavate a similar one across the Isthmus of Panama, but the work was managed with such wild extravagance that vast sums were spent and the poor investors widely ruined, while the canal remained a half-dug ditch. At a later date this affair became a great scandal, dishonest bargains ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... down and watched him fling the grass in heavy forkfuls on to the growing pile, until at last he clambered up upon the frame supporting it and, pulling some out and ramming the rest back, proceeded to excavate a hollow. ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... metals and the like—belonging to the late owner, there is certainly no trace, for Signor Fiorelli's labourers were not the first to break the deep silence of this buried mansion. For it was the survivors of the stricken town, the citizens of Pompeii themselves, who were the foremost pioneers to excavate, and they carried off every work of art they could conveniently remove. Cutting from above into the deposit of ashes that filled the streets, they managed to reach in course of time the level of the ground, after ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... he was not mistaken in this instance. These lithodomes were oblong shells, suspended in clusters and adhering very tightly to the rocks. They belong to that species of molluscous perforators which excavate holes in the hardest stone; their shell is rounded at both ends, a feature which is not ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... where perhaps an entrance might be found. The party returned to Penzance, and their report at once engaged the attention of the local Antiquarian Society; a small subscription list was opened, permission obtained from the owner of the property, and within a week a gang of labourers began to excavate on the cliff-top directly above the jutting cornice. The ground here showed a slight depression, and the soil proved unexpectedly deep and easy to work. On the second day, at a depth of seven feet, one of the men announced that he had come upon rock. But having spaded away the ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... error: M. Botta made the first attempt to excavate the Ninevite remains at Khorsabad. Mr. Layard had, moreover, commenced his excavations before he received the countenance of the British Museum authorities. See "Nineveh—the Buried City of the East," ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... or ulcers on any part of the body, the doctors treated them by applying dirt or earth, and in warm weather would excavate a place in the ground and put the patient in it, either in a sitting or recumbent position, as the nature of the case required, and cover the affected part with earth for several hours, daily. Sometimes, by this mode of treatment, wonderful cures ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... as nothing is to be seen upon the surface except disjointed stones and a few fallen columns of the commonest description. The destruction has been complete, and if we wish to make discoveries, it is necessary to excavate to a considerable depth; but as all such explorations are prohibited, the subject remains fruitless. General di Cesnola, whose work upon the antiquities of Cyprus must remain unrivalled, describes the tombs as from forty to fifty-five ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... found nothing. Usually, the floor of the cave beneath a few inches of sand is rock. Only in the great cave under the point have I found sand to any depth. The formation in some cases is little more than a hardened clay, but to excavate it would require long toil, probably blasting—and I have no explosives. And I go always on the principle that Captain Sampson and his two assistants had not time for any elaborate work of concealment. Most likely they laid the chest ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... of support, where agriculture would fail them. At the mines, the regular rate of wages is from forty to fifty shillings a month; but miners have opportunities of making more than this. By what is termed "working on tribute," that is, agreeing to excavate the mineral lodes for a per centage on the value of the metal they raise, some of them have been known to make as much as six and even ten pounds each, in a month. When they are unlucky in their working speculations, or ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... Rassam arrived at Msul in 1853, and was collecting his men for work, he discovered that Rawlinson, who knew nothing about the lease of the mound which Rassam held, had given the French Consul, M. Place, permission to excavate the northern half of the mound, i.e., that part of it which he was most anxious to excavate for the British Museum. He protested, but in vain, and, finding that M. Place intended to hold Rawlinson to his word, devoted himself to clearing out part of the South West Palace which Layard ...
— The Babylonian Story of the Deluge - as Told by Assyrian Tablets from Nineveh • E. A. Wallis Budge
... people were probably all the better for scrimping themselves a little in order to make this a great feast. And it was not by any means over in a day. There were weeks deep of chicken-pie and other pastry. The cold buttery was a cave of Aladdin, and it took a long time to excavate all its riches. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... tough that engineers would much rather excavate the most obdurate rocks than attempt to remove it from their path. Hard rocks are more or less easily assailable with gunpowder, and the numerous joints and fissures by which they are traversed enable the workmen to wedge them out often in considerable ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... of the ground and emptied. How long do you calculate the man will require to dig in this manner, fifty, a hundred feet? How long to sink one or two such shafts on each and every claim he has staked? How long to excavate the numerous lateral tunnels ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... complaint or enquiry—without the shadow of a cause shown, or a reason assigned, except it might be that reason—to a Scotsman the most unpalatable of all—the propriety of assimilating the institutions of both countries; in other words, of coercing Scotland to adopt the habit of her neighbours—to excavate the foundation-stone of our whole prosperity, and make us the victims of a theory which, even if sound, could not profess to give us one tittle more advantage than the course which we had so long pursued! We believe that if the annals of legislation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... greater part of the kindred of the bees either construct the nests for their young in the manner of our wasps or hornets, building them entirely in the open air, or excavate underground chambers in the fashion of our bumble-bees, our domesticated form at some time in the remote past adopted the plan of choosing for its dwelling-place some chamber in the rocks, or cavity in a hollow tree which could be shaped to the needs ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... though with some difficulty, and taking the measure of his height I marked it out upon the ground, then drawing my pike from my pocket, I proceeded with the utmost coolness to excavate the earth, taking no notice of the questions the monk asked me. After working: for a quarter of an hour I set myself to gaze sadly upon him, and I told him that I felt obliged as a Christian to warn him to commend his soul to God, "since I am about to bury you here, alive ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt |
