"Excavation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... took place in the school-house at Wallsend, the old parish church being at the time in so dilapidated a condition from the "creeping" or subsidence of the ground, consequent upon the excavation of the coal, that it was considered dangerous to enter it. On this occasion, Robert Gray and Anne Henderson, who had officiated as bridesman and bridesmaid at the wedding, came over again to Willington, and stood godfather and godmother to little Robert,—so ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... The principal excavation was begun at the point where the bed was deepest, and which consequently the older miners must have had most trouble in reaching. Here were set up two Letestu pumps that were actuated by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... cliffs. The eggs are a buffy white color and are faintly marked with light brown, some of these being in the shape of spots and others lengthened. Size 2.40 x 1.40. Data.—Sanak Islands, July 1, 1894. Two eggs on the ground under a tuft of grass and in a slight excavation lined with ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... the excavations at Bamian, in a neighbouring district. These "still form the residence of the greater part of the population.... The hills at Bamian are formed of indurated clay and pebbles, which renders this excavation a matter of little difficulty." Similar occupied excavations are noticed by Moorcroft at Heibak and other places ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... of the Tsala tents are nearly flat, and the middle has an opening six inches wide along its whole length. An excavation from twelve to twenty-four inches deep is made in the soil, and a rude wall of stones, about one foot high, is built round it, over which the tent cloth, made in narrow widths of yak's or goat's hair, is extended by ropes led over ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... burning was introduced during the migrations after the Dorian invasion. Men could carry the ashes of their friends to the place where they finally settled. [Footnote: Helbig, Homerische Epos, p.83] The question may, perhaps, be elucidated by excavation, especially in Asia Minor, on the sites of the earliest Greek colonies. At Colophon are many cairns unexplored by science. Mr. Ridgeway, as is well known, attributes the introduction of cremation to a conquering northern people, the Achaeans, his ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... although far inferior to its giant neighbor, was nevertheless a wonderful excavation, striking audaciously into sombre mountain recesses, sublime with precipices, peaks, and grotesque masses. The footing was of the ruggedest, a debris of confused and eroded rocks, the pathway of an extinct river. One thing was beautiful: the creek was a perfect ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... year of such prosperity would nearly, if not quite, recoup them for their outlay in machinery, they having started without the terribly expensive task of sinking the mine through the rock. All that they had had to do was to pump out the first excavation, and then begin raising rich tin ore ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... watchman, "but it has been filled these three weeks. The new pit lies in this direction." So saying, he pursued his course, and they presently entered a field, in the middle of which lay the plague-pit, as was evident from the immense mound of clay thrown out of the excavation. ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... make a hotbed also on top of the ground without any excavation. Spread a layer of manure evenly one foot in depth and large enough to extend around the frame three feet each way. Pack this down well, especially around the edge, put on a second and third layer until you have a well-trodden and compact bed of manure ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... father's library for mental pabulum, they had come upon Belzoni's quarto, and had read, with the avidity of imaginative boys, the tale of his discoveries, taking especial delight in his explorations of the tombs of the kings in the rocks of Beban el Malook: these it was that now suggested excavation. ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... of 1852 Layard, assisted by H. Rassam, continued the excavation of the "South West Palace" at Kuynjik. In one part of the building he found two small chambers, opening into each other, which he called the "chamber of records," or "the house of the rolls." He gave ...
— The Babylonian Story of the Deluge - as Told by Assyrian Tablets from Nineveh • E. A. Wallis Budge
... recompense he had willing labourers on the part of the gentlemen. Antommarchi says, "The Emperor urged us, excited us, and everything around us soon assumed a different aspect. Here was an excavation, there a basin or a road. We made alleys, grottoes, cascades; the appearance of the ground had now some life and diversity. We planted willows, oaks, peach-trees, to give a little shade round the house. Having completed the ornamental ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... as well as they could, and undermining its edges. Again and again the dark muzzle shot forth, but the wolves always sprang away in time to escape punishment. This went on till the wolves had made such an excavation that the man thought they must be nearing the bottom of the den. He waited breathlessly for the denouement, which he knew ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... naturally stepped backwards into the excavation, as designed, and sat down as completely and largely helplessly as one of his figure could be counted upon to do, and coming to Dawn's assistance I planted the broom on his chest, and bore with my feeble ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... large trees or even deep-rooted brushwood;—that they were arranged in regular order, suggesting a military encampment rather than the abode of savages; that they were of uniform size, with few exceptions; that on excavation they yielded fragments of hard wood, unglazed pottery, and a Japanese dirk, and, finally, that their site corresponded with that of military encampments established in Yezo and the Kuriles by the Japanese Government in the early part of the nineteenth century as ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... made the work very exhausting; and by lunch time they had only succeeded in excavating a hole some twenty-five feet long—or the distance between the two masts—by six feet wide and four feet deep. They had widened this excavation by a couple of feet and sunk it some four feet deeper by six o'clock that evening; and then they knocked off work for the day, returning to the Flying Fish stiff, and exhausted with their unwonted ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... possibilities of passing the limits of the pen alive, to tunneling. This was also surrounded by almost insuperable difficulties. First, it required not less than fifty feet of subterranean excavation to get out, which was an enormous work with our limited means. Then the logs forming the Stockade were set in the ground to a depth of five feet, and the tunnel had to go down beneath them. They had an unpleasant habit of dropping down into the burrow under them. ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... from base to near the summit, accommodating a large population. That there were once terraces and steps here which would carry out such an idea is very clear from the portions which have been laid bare by excavation. ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... dries up its source. The most common cause of the intermittence of such a waterfall is the formation of a crevasse higher up, across the watercourse which supplied it, and which now begins another excavation. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... sublimity of such an ethical snarl reduced him to inanity. He stayed to dinner. Charity had not expected him to stop. She had planned an evening's excavation into her correspondence and had not changed her street dress. She was surprised and childishly delighted to have him with her—then childishly unhappy as ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... men not coming forward with their camels, the party took the advantage of their detention to visit the neighbouring hills. One part appeared at a distance as an artificial excavation, which, however, disappeared as they approached, and they found it to be a smooth surface, with a portion so removed as to give rise to ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... accumulated or washed out on the surface from a great dinosaur bed beneath. A Mexican sheep-herder had collected some of these petrified bones for the foundations of his cabin, the first ever built of such strange materials. The excavation of a promising outcrop was almost immediately rewarded by finding a thigh-bone nearly six feet in length which sloped downward into the earth, running into the lower leg and finally into the foot, ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... faced the west, lay the large pine coffin lid, while to the south of it, turned bottom up, was the coffin with fresh chips beside it hewn out that morning in further excavation. Children played around the coffin and people lounged on its upturned bottom. Near the front of the house a pot of water was always hot over a smoldering, smoking fire. Now and then a chicken was brought, light wood was tossed under the pot, the chicken was beaten to death — first the ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... rapidly as possible, I made my way through the storm into the next cabin. It was then but a moment's work to lift Olga's casket to the floor from its icy bed beneath. As I did so a small stream of water burst its way through below the flooring and began pouring over the side of the excavation, at the bottom of which only a moment before ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... at such times as his aid was needed to support Dolores in some exhibition of black magic. She stepped swiftly along the passage, giving no further heed to the panic-stricken pirate until Milo had carried and dragged him to where she awaited him. This was still another dark excavation, running deeper yet into the bowels of the cliff; and the devilish red glare was here intensified until surrounding ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... generally understood to mean "a subterraneous work or excavation for obtaining metals, metallic ores or mineral substances;" but this definition does not apply to our placer mines, which are places where gold is taken from diluvial or alluvial deposits. Most of the work is ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell
... simply a country mansion so called, but a stone edifice with battlements and a round tower at one corner, and a gate which looked as if it might have had a portcullis, and narrow windows in a portion of it, and a cannon mounted upon a low roof, and an excavation called the moat,—but which was now a fantastic and somewhat picturesque garden,—running round two sides of it. In very truth, though a portion of the castle was undoubtedly old, and had been built when strength was needed ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... have a ready explanation for every fresh discovery. When some years later Mr. Layard's assistant and successor in the work of excavation, Mr. Rassam, uncovered, at Abu-habba, a remarkable bas-relief with the figure of the seated Sun-god and three approaching worshippers, the Arab diggers rushed to him, declaring that they had found Noah and his three ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... sand into it again. Some natives also had visited the place while we were away, their fresh tracks were visible in the sand around, and on the top of the tank. They must have stared to see such a piece of excavation in their territory. When the horses did get water, two of them rolled, and groaned, and kicked, so that I thought they were going to die; one was a mare, she seemed the worst, another was a strong young horse which had carried me well, the third ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... "In the excavation of a bed of coal these petrified trees are not unfrequently cut off below, when the slight taper of the trunk permits them to ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 31, June 10, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... been filled with creek sand and the whole rammed hard. On this a solid platform of two-inch planks had been laid by the sawyers and at intervals of three feet long, thin stakes, sharpened at the top, had been driven deeply into the ground just at the ends of the excavation. Thus all had been prepared for the erection of the sod walls ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... where practically exposed was carefully measured, and where any change was discernible it was noted and special samples taken. The floor of the lowest level reached was not only sampled, but a hole a couple of feet below the lowest excavation was dug, and ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... Cheddar (entrance fee 1s.). The stalactites within are highly fantastic in shape and peculiarly rich in colour. There is, however, more to be seen for the money at Gough's, a little higher up, where a similar charge is made. A long natural gallery, rendered in places more accessible by excavation, runs for a quarter of a mile into the heart of the rock and opens up a series of vast chambers elaborately hung with stalactites. When the electric light is thrown on these pendants an almost pantomimic ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... without very bad effects on the men, Messrs. Sooysmith & Company had an experience with a work on which men were engaged in six-hour shifts, separated into two parts by half-hour intervals for lunch. This work was excavation in open, seamy rock, carried on for several weeks under about 45 pounds pressure. The character of the material through which the caisson is being sunk or upon which it may be resting at any time bears quite ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... swiftly. He felt paralysed, numb, even his brain functioning strangely, the danger of his helpless condition its only incentive to action. He endeavoured to rise, rolling partially over in the effort which failed, but the movement, slight as it was, left one hand dangling over an excavation at his right. His fingers explored the edge of this opening cautiously, revealing a cellar-way, leading down into the basement. The opening was black, silent, mysterious, yet it was a hiding place. If he could manage to roll down those steps into those depths ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... lose my precious relics, and when I called for them would say, every day, "Domane—domane," or try to put me off with some substitute—as if a boy could be deceived in such a matter! I once found in the neighborhood of a recent excavation a semi-transparent tourmaline of a cool green hue when held to the light; it had once been set in the ring of some Roman beauty. It had, from long abiding in the earth, that wonderful iridescent surface ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... aid in the fulfillment of the pledge. Gratifying progress has been made during the past year, and especially during the past four months. The greater part of the necessary preliminary work has been done. Actual work of excavation could be begun only on a limited scale till the Canal Zone was made a healthful place to live in and to work in. The Isthmus had to be sanitated first. This task has been so thoroughly accomplished that yellow fever has been virtually extirpated from the Isthmus ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... floor—that is to say, between the floor and the foundation of the house—was just deep enough for him to lie there at full length. Here, then, was a possible avenue of escape. Setting to work, he succeeded, after much effort, in wrenching up another board, and then another, and getting into the excavation thus made, he worked his way along on his stomach, until he came to a grating, which, to his utmost joy, proved to be loose. It was but the work of a few minutes to force it out and to dislodge a few bricks, and ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... may erect it at some convenient place and turn the canal under it when completed. This we saw in the case of a new railroad bridge near Sungkiang. The bridge was completed and the water had just been turned under it and was being compelled to make its own excavation. Great expense had been saved while traffic on the canal had not ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... of the Porta Pia, and near Santa Agnese. The drones at Santa Agnese knew nothing about them, but I met La Ferronays riding as I was returning in despair, and he showed me the way to them. They have been discovered about six years, and are in a garden. The excavation may be fifteen feet by about eight or nine, more or less, and is full of broken urns and inscriptions, some of which are very good indeed. One is ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... accumulated in thousands, large and small, some intact and fresh as when just made, others already out of shape and of no value. The places of concealment were soon forgotten, and the stores hidden therein reposed beyond the reach of men until the day when the chances of excavation brought them to light. ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... been recognized as closely related to atrophy of the optic nerve with deep excavation. No line of demarcation can be drawn between them, except by reserving the term of glaucoma for cases that depart from the pure type, terminating in glaucoma of some other kind, which is no more significant than the passage of a conjunctivitis into a keratitis, or an iritis into a ...
— Glaucoma - A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago - Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 • Various
... bottle of gin, drinking steadily. In another moment I had gone down the gangway and was making for the shed. Just then I felt if I didn't speak to somebody who wasn't under the spell of the Corydon, I would go crazy. I slipped into an excavation and skinned my knees. I fell over some stacked rails and barked my shins. I heard something scuttling in the darkness. I saw the night-watchman on the Corydon standing at the galley door, looking out. And then, looking again towards my objective, I saw an open door in the ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... A very remarkable escape from the Old Sugar-House is related of a Boston prisoner. He dug a passage under Liberty Street from the prison to the cellar of the house on the opposite side of the way. The difficulty of making the excavation will be plain to every one who looks at the labors of a party of workmen opening a trench for gas-pipes or water. Yet the Boston boy burrowed under-ground ...
— Harper's Young People, June 22, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... obtain from Philip all such tools as would be needful for the task of excavation. Although the young man himself had small hopes of Cuthbert's success, he was interested in spite of himself in the proposed plan, and would have been more so had he known how much had been already discovered. ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... gold lockets. Of course it might have been stolen and hidden—but that's far-fetched. It's much more likely that this was the very tomb where Delcasse was working at the time of his death. For one thing, the place showed signs of previous excavation up to the inner corridor, and there I'll swear no modern got ahead of me. And for another thing, it's a perfect specimen of the limestone carving of the Tomb of Thi which Delcasse wrote his book about—looks very much as if it might be by the same artist. There's a flock of hippopotami in a marsh ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... a counter attack from the Bolo, as our force was much smaller than his, and spent the first part of the night making trenches. An excavation deeper than eighteen inches would have water in the bottom. We were very cold, as it was October in Russia, and every man wet to the skin, with no blankets or overcoats. About midnight the British sent up two jugs of rum, which was ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... reaching the surface at a point beyond the lee of the Hut. It was thought that the scouring effect of the wind, there, would keep the opening of the tunnel free of drift. But when completed, it filled rapidly with snow and had to be sealed. It was then used to receive slop-water. While the fever for excavation was at its height, Whetter drove, as an off-shoot to the first, another tunnel which came to be used as a nursery for ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... the distance. The Mongol carefully examined his construction; he seemed nervous. A man with the appearance of a peasant standing near him on the edge of the excavation and close beside the capstan watched all his movements. It was Elias, well disguised by ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... course," said Ascobaruch. "Take it or leave it. I shan't be offended. If you know a superior excavation, go to it. But as a sensible man—and I've always maintained that you are the most sensible man in the country—you must see that it would be a solution. Merolchazzar has been a pretty good king, of course. No one denies that. A fair general, no doubt, and a plus-man at ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... standing out in the street (where they always hold high change), making such an iron hum and buzz, that they confuse me horribly. In addition, there is a bellman announcing something—not the readings, I beg to say—and there is an excavation being made in the centre of the open place, for a statue, or a pump, or a lamp-post, or something or other, round which all the Wolverhampton boys ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... spittoon were secured for working tools, when operations commenced. Sufficient of the masonry was removed from the fire-place to admit the passage of a man through a diagonal cut to the store-room below; and an excavation was then made through the foundation wall toward the street, and the construction of the tunnel proceeded night by night. But two persons could work at the same time. One would enter the hole with his tools and a small tallow ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... however, and when in the vicinity of the city lockup, the detective turned from the street to cross a vacant lot. They were thus in a gloomy spot, and compelled to pass near the edge of a deep hollow, an excavation made a long ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... to be a log. San Francisco is built on sand dunes, and in early days the houses were log-cabins for the most part, constructed of logs that two stout men could handle. After many minutes of silent but most vigorous excavation we joyfully decided that one of these very logs ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... wait to finish breakfast before rushing out to descend the flights of iron steps that lead to the bottom of the vast excavation. And presently they were standing on the ground below and looking up at the vine covered cliffs that shut out ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... same day to a small-arms factory of importance. Not many women here so far, though the number is increasing, but look at the expansion figures since last summer! A large, new factory added, on a bare field; 40,000 tons of excavation removed, two miles of new shops, sixty feet wide and four floors high, the output in rifles quadrupled, and ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cavities (of the brain of Microprosopus) distilleth a certain distillation, and it is called the Brook. As it is said in 1 Kings xvii. 3, "The brook Kherith," as it were an excavation ...
— Hebrew Literature
... see it is still an excursion well worth making. Dr. de Petra, of the chair of Archaeology in the University of Naples, and formerly the Director of the National Museum, is warmly in favor of the proposed excavation of this buried city, as is Professor Spinazzola of the San Martino museum, who believes that Italy may well become one vast museum of antiquities. "As the theatre of Herculaneum is actually at present a subterranean excavation," he observed, "why not excavate ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... is near the fountain Trevi, and it stands in an inclosure, the pavement of which is seven feet lower than the piazza on which it stands. The inclosure is walled round. Had not this excavation been made, one third of the column (lower part) would not be seen. The Piazza, on which this column stands is called Il foro Trajano. The column represents Trajan's triumphs over the Daci, Quadi and Marcomanni, and is the model from whence Napoleon's column ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... appeal to, so we've got to stick it. All the same, he's got some digging to do before he can draw the money, and I'm ready to lay a monkey that he does it himself. What's more, the last thing he'll want is to be disturbed. In fact, any interference with his work of excavation will undoubtedly shorten his life. Properly organized innocent interference will probably affect his reason. Our course ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... known on the Sorrentine shore, as the water-cavern at the ruins of Queen Joan's country-house. Cavern it is not, though the entrance is beneath a low, natural arch—the basin within being open to the heavens, and the place resembling an artificial excavation made to shelter boats. Let the origin of this little haven be what it may, art could not have devised a more convenient or a more perfect refuge than it afforded to our fugitives. Once through the arch, they would have been effectually concealed from their pursuers under a noonday ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of a woman," but on what grounds I cannot discover, as it does not seem to have been carefully examined, and is therefore probably mere conjecture, based upon its juxtaposition to the larger coffin. In the account of the excavation a "macabre" incident is recorded. One of the workmen, seizing the shin-bone of the giant, placed it against his own leg, and found that it reached halfway up his thigh; whereupon, taking up the lower jawbone, he fitted it easily over his own lower jaw, ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... perfectly still. At her feet was a dark excavation where was the skeleton of Ovi the King. This was the hidden burial-place of the modern Hiawatha of these savage islands, unknown even to the natives themselves, and kept secret with a half-superstitious reverence by this girl, who had discovered ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... houses with carved poles in front, what appeared to be the remains of an earth and stone work fortification. It occupied an elevated situation about a mile from the sea shore, and consisted of an excavation about 100 feet square, surrounded by an embankment of earth and stones, which could hardly have been made ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... from twelve to fourteen miles. One of the mines is quite picturesque, being cut into the solid rock, under a roof supported by great columns of the valuable ore. The workmen, with their picks and barrows, passing to and fro, as seen from the top of the excavation, look like German pictures of tiny gnomes and elves delving for precious minerals. The yield from the ore is about eighty per cent., and of very superior quality. The return road passes down the hill, whence is the splendid view of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... pie at dinner, they should be distributed at a side-table, not handed round from guest to guest. The Countess having shuddered at it and resumed her biscuit, it was left to me to make the opening excavation. The difficulty was to know where each quail began and ended; the job really wanted a professional quail-finder, who might have indicated the point on the surface of the crust at which it would be most hopeful to ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... his wife and two daughters; Mary Ann, now the wife of R. J. Price, Esq., Dorothy, now widow of the late David Morris, Esq. With them also was his father, Samuel Philpot, now dead. Soon after his removal to Portage county he became interested with Mr. Philip Price, in the excavation of the Pennsylvania and Ohio canal, and during the progress of the work they purchased land on either side of the canal, including Lock fourteen, where they built a saw and flouring mill, using the canal water as motive power. Towards the latter part of 1839, Mr. Philpot purchased ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... slightly twisted, according to the exigencies of the soil, and always approaches the vertical, or the direction of the shortest passage. It is perfectly free along its entire length. We shall search in vain for the rubbish which such an excavation must apparently produce; we shall find nothing of the sort. The burrow terminates in a cul-de-sac, in a fairly roomy chamber with unbroken walls, which shows not the least vestige of communication with any other burrow or prolongation ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... Bjaaland and Jorgen Stubberud, began building the house. It was a ready-made house, which we had brought with us; nothing had to be done but to put together the various numbered parts. In order that the house might brave all storms, its bottom rested in an excavation four feet beneath the surface. On January 28th, fourteen days after our arrival, the house was completed, and all provisions had been landed. A gigantic task had been performed; everything seemed to point toward a propitious future. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... writer, except as far as the implements and methods are concerned, to study the time required to do all kinds of work in the building trades. In six years he has made a complete study of eight of the most important trades—excavation, masonry (including sewer-work and paving), carpentry, concrete and cement work, lathing and plastering, slating and roofing and rock quarrying. He took every stop watch observation himself and then, with the aid of two comparatively ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... follows that this excavation practically occupies the whole of that part of Back Cup island which appears above water. As to the length of the submarine tunnel by which communication is obtained with the outside, and through which the tug passed, I estimate that it is fifty ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... curious countryman followed his glance and watched all his movements; this was Elias, who had also come to witness the ceremony, but in his salakot and rough attire he was almost unrecognizable. He had secured a very good position almost at the side of the windlass, on the edge of the excavation. With the music came the alcalde, the municipal officials, the friars, with the exception of Padre Damaso, and the Spanish employees. Ibarra was conversing with the alcalde, of whom he had made quite a friend ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... pulses throbbed, and he could feel his blood tingling, he fell to work systematically, groping about the excavation the dead man had made where the snowslide had rent apart the forest and scored out the rock for him. Here and there he smashed a fragment of it with the back of the axe, or picked up a discoloured stone of unusual gravity and compared it with the pieces ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... amazed to find all the traces of a previous occupation. Several sheds, formed of bamboo hurdles set up against the ground with sticks, like traps, were grouped together. Under each was a hearth, a simple excavation, two feet across and a few inches deep, and filled with ashes. A few arrows, feathers and rude pieces of pottery were scattered around. They greeted these Indian relics as Crusoe did the footprints of the savages. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... made, it will simplify matters to make them after the grass has become well established, supposing only a good surface footway of ashes or concrete to be needed; for the small amount of excavation necessary under either of these systems may be scattered over the grass spaces without injury. But if the more thorough system is adopted of underlaying the walk with a foot or more of stones, then the work, except the final ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... Every siege or shipwreck or polar expedition brings out some hero who keeps the whole company in heart. Last year there was a terrible colliery explosion at Courrieres in France. Two hundred corpses, if I remember rightly, were exhumed. After twenty days of excavation, the rescuers heard a voice. "Me voici," said the first man unearthed. He proved to be a collier named Nemy, who had taken command of thirteen others in the darkness, disciplined them and cheered them, and brought them out alive. Hardly any of them could see or speak ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... Whereupon Stubb quickly pulled to the floating body, .. and hailing the pequod to give notice of his intentions, at once proceeded to reap the fruit of his unrighteous cunning. Seizing his sharp boat-spade, he commenced an excavation in the body, a little behind the side fin. You would almost have thought he was digging a cellar there in the sea; and when at length his spade struck against the gaunt ribs, it was like turning ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... succession, form, even without the abbey church, a remarkable memorial of the wealth of the foundation. Behind them lie picturesque gardens which contain the ruins, the plan of which is difficult to trace, though the outlines of some portions, as the chapter-house, have been made clear by excavation. There is a handsome Roman Catholic church of St Edmund. The so-called Moyses Hall (perhaps a Jew's House, of which there is a parallel example at Lincoln) retains transitional Norman work. The free grammar school, founded by Edward VI., has two scholarships at Cambridge, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... summer in that section of California. After an hour's ride, reached Willow Springs, where were the mines we had come to see. This was an hydraulic mine; that is, it is worked by water. We clambered about in the excavation, saw the bed rock, upon which there is a layer of gold-bearing gravel, then one of clay, another of gold-bearing gravel, then of clay again, and one more of gravel. They play with a hose on the ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... surrendered to Captain Hudson of the navy; and on the same day the broken remains of Lincoln's cavalry, which had been re-collected, were again routed by Tarleton. Clinton's third parallel was erected close to the canal; and this canal was drained by means of another excavation. Consternation and despair seized upon the inhabitants of the town, but still Lincoln and the garrison resolved to hold out. Hostilities were recommenced with additional fury, and an incessant fire was kept up for two days, in the midst of which ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Crystal-gazer in ordinary to the ex-King CONSTANTINE, is prepared for a small fee to advise intending explorers, prospectors or treasure-seekers as to suitable spots for excavation, oil-boring, etc. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... fault," he snapped back; "then I suppose it was mine! I suppose I fell down the elevator shaft just to please mother, eh? Maybe you think I dropped into the excavation just to pass the time away? Have you an idea that I dove down into the earth because I wanted to get back to the mines? Wasn't your fault, indeed! Maybe you think I fell in the well simply because I wanted to give an imitation of the old ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... he does only what a highway surveyor might properly do.[17] It is also the duty of cities and towns to guard with sufficient and suitable railings every road which passes over a bank, bridge, or along a precipice, excavation, or deep water; and it makes no difference whether these dangerous places are within or without the limits of the road, if they are so imminent to the line of public travel as to expose travellers to unusual hazard.[18] ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... — N. concavity, depression, dip; hollow, hollowness; indentation, intaglio, cavity, dent, dint, dimple, follicle, pit, sinus, alveolus[obs3], lacuna; excavation, strip mine; trough &c. (furrow) 259; honeycomb. cup, basin, crater, punch bowl; cell &c. (receptacle) 191; socket. valley, vale, dale, dell, dingle, combe[obs3], bottom, slade[obs3], strath[obs3], glade, grove, glen, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... beginning to consider his excavation almost deep enough to bury two ten-gallon kegs and forty bottles of whisky, when the shadow of a head and shoulders fell across the hole. Casey did not lift the dirt and rocks he had on his shovel. He froze to a tense quiet, goggling ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... his memory been his grandmother's, then became his own, and returned to his disposal when James Gracie died, he made his study; and from it to the drawing-room, with the assistance of a village mason, excavated a passage—for it was little less than excavation—in the wall connecting the two blocks, under the passage in which had lain ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... fund of knowledge is immense and sometimes astonishing. He manifests interest in everything, even to the smallest detail, which can have any bearing upon human improvement. I remember a half hour's conversation with him once over a cupping glass, which he had gotten from an excavation in the Roman ruin called the Saalburg, near Homburg. He always appeared to me most deeply concerned with the arts of peace. I have never heard him speak much of war, and then always with abhorrence, nor much ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... the five Roman burial-places discovered close to Canterbury, and if anything else were needed it is only necessary to look at the walls of St. Augustine's Abbey and many other buildings of the Middle Ages to see the large quantities of Roman material then available. Wherever any excavation has taken place in the heart of the present city, the foundations of Roman buildings with tesselated pavements and quantities of pottery, small objects of domestic use, and coins have been brought to light. These remains ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home
... head whimsically upon one side, gazed after him not altogether unsympathetically, then descended again into the excavation whence he had lately emerged. Being a philosopher he was not surprised, that afternoon, in the course of a drive he took in the old carriage with the Major, when, George was encountered upon the highway, flashing ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... trials, and now, in extreme old age, was rewarded by presenting to her mirror an almost unwrinkled expanse of firm pink and white flesh, in the center of which the traces of a small face survived as if awaiting excavation.... Around and below, wave after wave of black silk surged away over the edges of a capacious armchair, with two tiny white hands poised like gulls on the surface of ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... Lead-smelting and shot-making was carried on at a spot a few miles to the eastward. It was a great delight to see the melted metal poured through a sieve at the top of a tower and raining down into an excavation with water at the bottom. I remember the manager of the works once showing me an immense ingot of silver. It was lying on a table in his office between two flannel shirts, the edges of which were just able to meet over its ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... one straw or spear of grass, or thread of moss! You cannot approach it and put your hand into it without violating the place more or less, and yet the little architect has wrought day after day and left no marks. There has been an excavation, and yet no grain of earth appears to have been moved. If the nest had slowly and silently grown like the grass and the moss, it could not have been more nicely adjusted to its place and surroundings. There is absolutely ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... had resolutely put the doings of the treetops away from my consciousness, so now I forgot visitors and parasites, and armed myself for the excavation of this buried metropolis. I rubbed vaseline on my high boots, and about the tops bound a band of teased-out absorbent cotton. My pick and shovel I treated likewise, and thus I was comparatively insulated. Without precautions no living being could withstand ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... although blood did not flow from it. No blood flowed from the stigmas excepting upon the 3rd of March, the day of the finding of the holy Cross. She had also a vision of the discovery of the true cross by St. Helena, and imagined herself to be lying in the excavation near the cross. Much blood came in the morning from her head and side, and in the afternoon from her hands and feet, and it seemed to her as though she were being made the test of whether the cross was really the Cross ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... the year the foundations of the New Royal Exchange were dug out and concreted, and, as it was always anticipated that some important discoveries might take place in the course of the excavation, proper arrangements were made on the commencement of the work, that any articles of interest which might be disinterred, should be secured for the Gresham Committee. In the Specification for the Works, issued in 1840, the Contractor and Excavator were required, ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... doors, and the hawks make short work of them. I suspect that the crows get nothing but the gratification of curiosity and the pickings of some secret store of seeds unearthed by the badger. Once the excavation begins they walk about expectantly, but the little gray hawks beat slow circles about the doors of exit, and are wiser in their generation, though ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... gratulation that the work of excavation for the foundation of the new dormitory, delayed because the Association builder was elsewhere occupied, was well advanced. It is hoped that the building will be nearing completion when the term begins ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 2, June, 1898 • Various
... estufas, which are used as places of council, and for the performance of their religious rites, are still found at all the present occupied pueblos in New Mexico. There are six at Taos, three at each house, and they are partly sunk in the ground by an excavation. They are entered through a trap-doorway in the roof, the descent being by ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... tomb of Eyub, (a disciple of Mahomet, who was killed in the first siege of Constantinople, in 608,) erected by Mahomet II. after the capture of the city, as is said, in consequence of the place of his sepulchre having been revealed to one of his favourites in a dream; he immediately ordered an excavation to be made, and very soon, either by hazard or imposture, a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... specimens of our southern California species, which builds the cork-type door, including observations of them at night, when they are particularly active, indicates that the construction of the tube involves other material than the silken lining employed by many burrowing spiders. In the excavation of the tube and retention of the walls, the spider appears to employ a glairy substance, which thoroughly saturates the soil and renders the interior of the tube of almost cement- like hardness. It is then plastered with a thick jet of silk from the spinning glands. This ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... this quotation:—'In 1810, as Sir Carnaby Haggerstone's workmen were digging in Flodden Field, they came to a pit filled with human bones, and which seemed of great extent; but, alarmed at the sight, they immediately filled up the excavation, and proceeded ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... his winter-quarters in a cavity of a ledge of rocks, about twelve miles from Ontonagon, Lake Superior, in the neighborhood of the Minnesota Copper Mine. In order to capture their game, they procured a pick and shovel, and commenced an excavation by removing the vegetable mould and rubbish that had accumulated about the mouth of what proved to be a small cavern in the rock. At the depth of a few feet they discovered numerous stone hammers or mauls; and they saw that the cavern was not a natural ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... Any fresh excavation of cellar or cistern, or cut for road or railway, will show the characteristics of the humus layer. It may form only a gray film on the surface, or we may find it a layer a foot or more thick, dark, or even black, ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... and the sand had been blown into small hills not over three or four feet high. I followed the track till it led to the top of one of these small hills where a small well-like hole had been dug and in this excavation was a kind of Indian mummy curled up like a dog. He was not dead for I could see him move as he breathed, but his skin looked very much like the surface of a well dried venison ham. I should think by his looks he must ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... that it must have condensed all his steam, as little notice is taken of it except that he got no encouragement. We find that it has also been used by some of the ancients in connection with their deities. Rusterich, one of the Teutonic gods, which was found in an excavation, proves how the priests deceived the people. The head of this one was made of metal and contained a pot of water. The mouth and another hole in the forehead being stopped by wooden plugs, a fire ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... places as we pass up the Broad Walk, it would be time to turn back before we reach them, and I simply wave my stick at Cecco's Tree, that memorable spot where a boy called Cecco lost his penny, and, looking for it, found twopence. There has been a good deal of excavation going on there ever since. Farther up the walk is the little wooden house in which Marmaduke Perry hid. There is no more awful story of the Gardens by day than this of Marmaduke Perry, who had been Mary-Annish ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... cost of a road is usually about $3,000 a mile. They first dig an excavation about three feet deep, as if they were going to make a canal. On the bottom are thrown heavy blocks of stone through which the water can filter, and occasionally there is a little drain to carry it off. Upon this is a layer of smaller stones, and then ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... two feet on rocks and cases, and under these the sailors and some of the scientists, with the two invalids, Rickenson and Blackborrow, found head-cover at least. Shelter from the weather and warmth to dry their clothes was imperative, so Wild hastened the excavation of the ice-cave in the slope which had been started before ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... been Egypt, his liberal checks had assisted in many an excavation, and his knowledge of her relics was remarkable. Inserting a steel paper cutter in a crack he deftly pried open the upper half of the mummy's front. Beneath lay the mass of wrappings in which thousands of years ago the priests of the Nile had swathed some lady of ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... Loch Leven is now a solitary ruin. The waters of the loch have been lowered by means of an excavation of the outlet, and a portion of land has been left bare around the walls, which the proprietor has planted with trees. Visitors are taken from Kinross in a boat to view the scene. The square tower, though roofless and desolate, still stands. The window ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... America. It is nobody's fault, least of all is it the architect's fault. For see what you expect of an architect. He must know about digging deep holes; and about sheath-piling, that he may retain the loose soil and keep it from smothering the workmen at the bottom of his excavation; and he must know the best machines to use for drilling rock and the best method for removing it; he must know about all the stones in the country and the best way of making concrete; he must be familiar with the thousand new inventions, and discriminate ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... N. concavity, depression, dip; hollow, hollowness; indentation, intaglio, cavity, dent, dint, dimple, follicle, pit, sinus, alveolus^, lacuna; excavation, strip mine; trough &c (furrow) 259; honeycomb. cup, basin, crater, punch bowl; cell &c (receptacle) 191; socket. valley, vale, dale, dell, dingle, combe^, bottom, slade^, strath^, glade, grove, glen, cave, cavern, cove; grot^, grotto; alcove, cul-de- sac; gully &c 198; arch &c (curve) 245; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... he still heard at intervals the sound which had alarmed him, he reassured himself and resumed his flow of spirits as if a little ashamed even of his panic. He stopped the Countess to look at the pretext of this excursion. This was the rocky wall of the deep excavation of a marl-pit, long since abandoned. The arbutus-trees of fantastic shape which covered the summit of these rocks, the pendant vines, the sombre ivy which carpeted the cliffs, the gleaming white stones, the vague reflections ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... first urged against Sir Charles Lyell's noble views on "the modern changes of the earth, as illustrative of geology;" but we now seldom hear the agencies which we see still at work, spoken of as trifling and insignificant, when used in explaining the excavation of the deepest valleys or the formation of long lines of inland cliffs. Natural selection acts only by the preservation and accumulation of small inherited modifications, each profitable to the preserved being; and as modern geology has almost banished ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... four large barrels that had stood on the sidewalk slowly topple over the side of an excavation and roll out ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... and eddies. These deep pools are to be filled at the same time that the reefs are cut away, and it is estimated that nearly three million cubic feet of loose stonework will be needed for this purpose alone. In addition to the excavation, artificial banks and breakwaters, for modifying the course of the stream, are to be built; so that it is estimated that the masonry to be executed in this section will amount to about five ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various |
