"Alluvial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the great landed proprietors resided. The wealth of remains which it has furnished is merely a by-product of the "coprolite" digging, and it is probable that equally systematic digging would have like results in almost any alluvial district in the island. We may therefore regard it as fairly established that these districts were as thickly peopled under the Romans as at any other period of history, and that the agricultural population of our island has never been larger than in the 3rd and 4th centuries, ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... products providing income, foreign exchange, and government revenues. There is little industry. Commerce accounts for about 10% of GNP, and the construction, public works, and service sectors for about 34%. Undeveloped natural resources include titanium, iron ore, manganese, uranium, and alluvial gold. Oil exploration is taking place under concessions offered to ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... at a place called Long Creek, on the margin of a broad and rapid stream, which might well have borne the more dignified appellation of river—the land on its borders was the flat, rich "intervale," so highly prized, formed by alluvial deposits. There are, I believe, two descriptions of this intervale,—one covered with low small bushes, and, therefore, more easily cleared—the other with a gigantic growth of the butternut, the oak, and the elm. This where we ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... which she had passed, but over the lesson in physical geography she must teach in the morning. Her lips moved gently, and a listener, had there been one, might have heard her murmur: "The four great alluvial plains of Asia—those of China and of the Amoo Daria in temperate regions; of the Euphrates and Tigris in the warm temperate; of the Indus and Ganges under the Tropic—with the Nile valley in Africa, were the theatres of the most ancient ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... gross corruption and mismanagement. Businesses, for the most part, are owned by government officials and their family members. Undeveloped natural resources include titanium, iron ore, manganese, uranium, and alluvial gold. The country responded favorably to the devaluation of the CFA franc in January 1994. Boosts in production, along with high world oil prices, should further ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... February 14. On alluvial land it is best to plant them on slight rises as a protection against the rains which sometimes occur toward the end of the month. If frost should threaten just as the beans begin to peep out, cover them an inch deep with the plow or hand cultivator. Sow Early Mohawk ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... flourishes at an altitude of 4,000 feet above the sea. But of this we see nothing, for we are off again long before daylight; and by the time that external objects can be made out we find ourselves in a new region. A valley floored with rich alluvial soil from the hills that rise steeply on both sides, their tops shrouded in clouds. Signs of wonderful fertility in the fields of maize and barley along the roadside. The air warm, but full of mist, which has already penetrated ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... transit lines, the confluence of two or more streams of trade, and easy communication. The final limit to the size and importance of the great city has been the commercial "sphere of influence" commanded by that city, the capacity of the alluvial basin of its commerce, so to speak, the volume of its river of trade. About the meeting point so determined the population so determined has grouped itself—and this is the point I overlooked in those previous vaticinations—in accordance ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... there was a good deal of very genuine excitement to be got out of placer-mining in British Columbia, especially when there was frost in the ranges, and you had to thaw out your giant-powder. Shallow alluvial workings have a way of caving in when you least expect it of them. After all, however, I think I like the ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... hope rang in Billie's breast. She might have reached the lava. If so, there was a chance that she might be alive. For though the wind had sweep enough here, the fine dust-sand of the alluvial plain could not be carried so densely into this rock-sea. Perhaps she had slipped into a ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... which, in the season of the rains, rush from the extensive plain, as from a wide ocean, down to the deep channel of the river in narrow streams. These streams cut their way easily through the soft alluvial soil, which must once have formed the bed of a vast lake.[14] On coming through the forest, before sunrise we discovered our error of the day before, for we found excellent deer-shooting in the long grass and brushwood, which ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... through which water habitually percolates, to be increased by the pressure of the 85-foot lock when made, have been referred to by many of our technical advisers as another element of danger. The vast masses of earth piled on this alluvial base to the height of 135 feet will certainly settle, and as the drift material of this base or foundation has varying depth, to 250 feet or more, the settlement of the new mass, as well as its base, will be unequal, and it is predicted that cracks ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden
... on the edge of the alluvial land a short distance below the crossing-place, with a head and foot stone of rock from the adjoining hill, which were long visible and could be pointed out by the nearest neighbors; but these were finally concealed from view by successive overflows of sand from ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... ganana signifies queue, or tail, which explains at once the river which Christopher makes enter the Webbe near Galwen, coming from the north-westward, to be in reality a branch flowing off from the Jub at that place. It is a thing unknown to find a river rising in a low alluvial country. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... commercial fertilizers, vast regions once considered barren have been brought into profitable cultivation, and really afford a more reliable and constant crop than the rich alluvial lands of the old slave plantations. In nearly every agricultural county in the South there is to be observed, on the one hand, this section of fertile soils, once the heart, of the old civilization, now abandoned by the whites, held in tenantry by a dense Negro population, full of dilapidation ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... native country, and which consequently has not been subjected to any change of climate. It has been protected to a certain extent from the competing roots of plants of other kinds; it has generally been grown in manured soil; but probably not richer than that of many an alluvial flat; and lastly, it has been exposed to changes in its conditions, being grown sometimes in one district and sometimes in another, in different soils. Under such circumstances, scarcely a plant can be named, though cultivated in the rudest manner, which has not given birth to several varieties. ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... have left the Sefid River altogether, and we are now in a very mountainous region, with a singular low plateau in the centre of an extensive alluvial plain traversed by the road. We cross the Shah Rud, or River of the King, and at Paichinar, with its Russian post-house, we have already reached an altitude of 1,800 ft. From this spot the road ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... is situated on the left bank of the river Arpatchai, which here forms the boundary between Russia and Turkey. It is distant thirty-five miles from Kars and eighty-four miles from Tiflis. The plain on which it is situated is perfectly level and very peculiar. It has a stratum of alluvial soil for the depth of one foot six inches on the surface, and then a substratum of fine uniform lava, ten to fifteen feet thick, supposed to have issued from Mount Alagos (13,450 feet), an extinct volcano thirty miles from Alexandropol. The depth of the earth ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... However, in either locality most of the mound houses were only one story high, and where second or third stories were indicated, they were never found intact. In neither place were circular houses observed. The mounds here were located on a rich, alluvial clay soil. ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... Werner, by which he separated the rocks into Primitive, Transition, Secondary, Alluvial, and Volcanic, proved to be based on a partial misapprehension of the nature of the earth-crust, yet it led to their subsequent division into the three great groups now known as the Primary, or Palaeozoic, as they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... is another pest in the low country, which is a source of considerable annoyance, and often of loss, to the husbandman. This is the cattle leech[2], which infests the stagnant pools, chiefly in the alluvial lands around the base of the mountain zone, whither the cattle resort by day, and the wild animals by night, to quench their thirst and to bathe. Lurking amongst the rank vegetation that fringes these deep pools, and hid by the broad leaves, or concealed among the stems and roots ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... river waters one of the finest tracts of land in the state of New York. Its alluvial flats are extensive, and very fertile. These are either natural prairies, or Indian clearings, (of which, however, the present Indians have no tradition,) and lying, to an extent of many thousand acres, between ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... the Narenta is but thinly populated, a circumstance easily accounted for by the noxious vapours which exhale from the alluvial and reed-covered banks of ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... the masses of rank vegetation which hung over our path, we felt a sort of hot blast on our faces. Every thing looked unwholesome, but we had no fever. The Ue flows between high banks of a soft red sandstone streaked with white, and pieces of tufa. The crumbling sandstone is evidently alluvial, and is cut into 12 feet deep. In this region, too, we met with pot-holes six feet deep and three or four in diameter. In some cases they form convenient wells; in others they are full of earth; and in others still the people have made them into ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... vapors rising on the Gulf of Mexico have not a hillock three hundred feet high to obstruct their flow up the Mississippi eastward and northward, until they reach the State of Illinois. And the men that do business in the cities of this prosperous State, or till its fertile and alluvial soil, that was lifted up, not many geologic ages ago, from beneath the bottom of the sea, are so rich they do not know how rich they are. But it is a peril to be rich. Jesus, Paul and Solomon unite in saying so, and it ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... the circumstances of the means do not. When the end is of extreme urgency, circumstances may be disregarded: the means become morally divested of them. So I have seen an island in a river, a nucleus of rock with an environment of alluvial soil. While the stream was flowing placidly in its usual course, the island remained intact, both rock and earth. But when the water came rushing in a flood, which was as though the island itself had gone speeding up the river, the loose matter at its sides was carried away, and only the central ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... insignificant on the map, its area being only two thirds as large as that of the State of Maine. But never was a country better situated in order to develop a new civilization. A temperate climate, where the vine, olive, and fig ripened with wheat, barley, and flax; a rich alluvial soil, resting on limestone, and contained in a series of valleys, each surrounded by mountains; a position equally remote from excesses of heat and cold, dryness and moisture; and finally, the ever-present neighborhood of the sea,—constituted ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... mountain trough. From an altitude of four or five hundred feet, the country falls in sharp steeps to a narrow alluvial bench, and then a broad beach of shale and pebble; the slopes are broken, here and there, where deep, shadowy ravines come winding down, bearing muddy contributions to the greater flood. The higher hills are crowned with forest trees, the lower ofttimes checkered with brown fields, recently planted, ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... charitable, so that at death he became one of the judges of hell. His city in time got overwhelmed with the encroaching ocean, but its walls were not overthrown, nor were the rooms encumbered with the weeds and alluvial of the sea. One day a dwarf, named Vamen, asked the mighty monarch to allow him to measure three of his own paces for a hut to dwell in. Baly smiled, and bade him measure out what he required. The first pace of the dwarf compassed ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... thriving trade in fruit, olive oil and grain. As it commands the highway down the Tagus valley to Lisbon, it has usually been regarded as an important military position. Originally an Iberian settlement, founded about 300 B.C., it received the name Aurantes from the Romans; perhaps owing to the alluvial gold (aurum) found along the Tagub. Roman mosaics, coins, the remains of an aqueduct, and other antiquities have been discovered in the neighbourhood. Abrantes was captured on the 24th of November 1807 by the French under General Junot, who for this achievement was created ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Territorial sea: 12 nm Disputes: a portion of the boundary with India is in dispute; water sharing problems with upstream riparian India over the Ganges Climate: tropical; cool, dry winter (October to March); hot, humid summer (March to June); cool, rainy monsoon (June to October) Terrain: mostly flat alluvial plain; hilly in southeast Natural resources: natural gas, uranium, arable land, timber Land use: arable land 67%; permanent crops 2%; meadows and pastures 4%; forest and woodland 16%; other 11%; includes irrigated 14% Environment: vulnerable to ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the Swan River, as well as of the Canning and most other rivers of the colony, contain many miles of rich alluvial soil, capable of growing wheat sufficient for the support of a large population. Many of these flats have produced crops of wheat for sixteen years successively, without the aid of any kind of manure. It must, however, be owned, that a very slovenly ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... purple cliffs; then at the dim Isle of Lundy far away at sea; then at the cliffs and downs of Morte and Braunton, right in front of him; then at the vast yellow sheet of rolling sand-hill, and green alluvial plain dotted with red cattle, at his feet, through which the silver estuary winds onward toward the sea. Beneath him, on his right, the Torridge, like a land-locked lake, sleeps broad and bright between the old park of Tapeley and the charmed rock of the Hubbastone, where, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... and highland, meadow and forest, no slopes of hills, or hanging woods, or dells, or gorges, or cascades, or rushing streams, or babbling rills, meet his gaze on any side; look which way he will, all is sameness, one vast smooth expanse of rich alluvial soil, varying only in being cultivated or else allowed to lie waste. Turning his back with something of weariness on the dull uniformity of this featureless plain, the wayfarer proceeds southwards, and enters, at the distance of a hundred miles from ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... Mount Arjuna, where I was told there were extensive forests, and where I hoped to be able to make some good collections. The country for many miles behind Sourabaya is perfectly flat and everywhere cultivated; being a delta or alluvial plain, watered by many branching streams. Immediately around the town the evident signs of wealth and of an industrious population were very pleasing; but as we went on, the constant succession of ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... and frowning face. With this ledge of rocks terminate the Cumberland mountains, which cross the State of Tennessee to the margin of the river. The stream here flows nearly west, through a beautiful valley of alluvial land, formed by the Cumberland mountains and a continuation of the Blue Ridge of Virginia. Immediately opposite the termination of the Cumberland mountains commences a broken and rocky surface, which extends along the shore of the river for many ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... farming. Who cares for rules, when he has only to drop a seed and tread on it, to be sure of a hundred-fold return? Who talks of succession of crops, when twelve burdens of wheat, taken from the same soil in as many years, leave the ground black and ready for another yield of almost equal abundance? An alluvial tract of about three hundred thousand acres, near the Mississippi, has been cultivated in Indian corn a hundred and fifty years,—indeed, ever since the French occupation of Illinois. What of under-draining? Some forty or fifty ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... fields which, in our autumns, would have been ripe and yellow, were now covered with a thin, backward crop, so unnaturally green that all hope of maturity was out of the question. Low meadows were in a state of inundation, and on alluvial soils the ravages of the floods Were visible in layers of mud and gravel that were deposited over many of the prostrate corn fields. The peat turf lay in oozy and neglected heaps, for there had not ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... should he do? This place was played out. There was alluvial gold indeed, but Leonard knew to-day that it was not in the earth, but in the veins of quartz which permeated the mountains, that the real wealth must be sought for, and how could he extract it from the quartz without machinery ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... them is land of some little height, and quite dry. It is ooelitic on the east, chalky on the south, and the old towns and the old roads look from all round this amphitheatre of dry land down upon the alluvial flats beneath. Peterboro', Cambridge, Lynn, are all just off the Fens, and the Ermine street runs on the bank which forms ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... to my mother, Linda; there's nothing to be much alarmed for as yet; I hope this plan of Holt's may stop its progress. I'll be at the house as soon as I can, tell her;' and he ran after the others, down to the mouth of the creek, where a strip of alluvial land, covered with bushes and rank grass, interrupted the belt of firs and cedars. Calling in fire as an ally against itself seemed to Robert very perilous; but the calm Indians, accustomed to wilderness exigencies, ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... good-sized bush or small tree occupying the low depressions above the saline alluvial ground on the Gulf of Carpentaria. ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... more striking form in the north of the island, the greater portion of which may be regarded as the conjoint production of the coral polypi, and the currents, which for the greater portion of the year set impetuously towards the south. Coming laden with alluvial matter collected along the coast of Coromandel, and meeting with obstacles south of Point Calimere, they have deposited their burthens on the coral reefs round Point Pedro; and these gradually raised above the sea-level, and covered ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... know," continued Mr. Sprudell, tapping his glasses judicially upon the edge of the sluice-box, "the richest gold in all alluvial deposits—" ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... communicate with the open sea by narrow channels easily fortified, the rocks rising precipitously from the water along the greater part of the coast, whereas on the Italian side there is an equally continuous strip of alluvial plain between ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... Republican rule prevailed on the Rand. The great stay of law and order was the individual digger, and this element of stability has always been missing at the goldfields, except in the few instances where alluvial mining has been pursued. ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... extend the bounds of learning. Astronomy gained much by the observations of General Caffarelli. A series of measurements was begun for an exact survey of Egypt: the geologists and engineers examined the course of the Nile, recorded the progress of alluvial deposits at its mouth or on its banks, and therefrom calculated the antiquity of divers parts of the Delta. No part of the great conqueror's career so aptly illustrates the truth of his noble words to the magistrates ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... deluge, inundation, overflow, cataclysm, freshet. Associated Words: antediluvial, antediluvian, diluvial, diluvian, alluvium, alluvial, alluvion. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Khan was distracting the country by his ambitious attempts, occurred a failure of the periodical rains, followed by one of those tremendous famines which form such a fearful feature of Indian life. In Bengal, where the monsoon is regular, and the alluvial soil moist, these things are almost as unknown as in England: but the arid plains of Hindustan, basking at the feet of the vastest mountain-chain in the world, become a perfect desert, at least once in every quarter of a century. The famine of 1783-4 has made ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... their banks to produce a constant variation in their courses, which in a long period of time might amount to something very considerable. It is impossible to say, with respect to any portion of the alluvial plain, that it may not at some former period have been the bed of one or the other river. Still it would seem that, on the whole, a law of compensation prevails, with the result that the general position of the streams in the valley is not very different ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... side by side. The two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, commanding the trade of the north and the south; proximity to the desert with its caravans of traders going back and forth from the Euphrates to the Nile; the rich alluvial soil, which supported a dense population when properly drained and cultivated; and the necessity of developing in a higher degree the arts of defence in order to maintain the much contested territory,—these were a few of the many conditions ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... of curvature in all natural forms whatsoever. I believe that, except in crystals, in certain mountain forms admitted for the sake of sublimity or contrast, (as in the slope of debris,) in rays of light, in the levels of calm water and alluvial land, and in some few organic developments, there are no lines nor surfaces of nature without curvature, though as we before saw in clouds, more especially in their under lines towards the horizon, and in vast and extended plains, ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... thickness, containing tertiary shells apparently of fresh-water origin, now washed by the sea and encrusted with Balini; this appears to indicate a small amount of subsidence subsequent to its deposition. At Pernambuco (latitude 8 degrees S.), in the alluvial or tertiary cliffs, surrounding the low land on which the city stands, I looked in vain for organic remains, or other ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... accompanied by a rumbling noise. The line of disturbance was from north to south, striking the Mendips, and traversing parts of the shires of Somerset and Gloucester. 'The chief focus of oscillation was at Cheddar, where the hill is said to have waved to and fro during several seconds; and in the alluvial flat or marsh below Cheddar, some houses had the plaster of the ceilings cracked; while in others, the clocks struck, doors slammed, bells rung, &c.' With such commotions taking place in the solid earth, geologists will not fail of sources of interest ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... and casts into cannon and ball. But this iron ran into a bog, formed low combinations, and had no other mould than twigs and leaves afforded. Its volcanic origin was forgotten when it ran with sand and gravel away from the mountain vein and upland ore along the low, alluvial bar, till, like an oyster, the iron is dredged from the stagnant pool, impure, inefficacious, corrupted. So is it with man, whose magnetic spirit follows the dull declivity to the barren sandbars of the world, and lodges ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... But it was seen long ago that something could be done with the Fergus "slob" if anybody could be found to do anything. Companies were formed and concessions were obtained, but nothing was done, although several square miles of magnificent alluvial deposit sixteen feet in depth were to be had ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... him sufficed to show that, like a Norman peasant, he invariably held the upper hand in business matters. He was an authority on wine-making, the leading science of Touraine. He had managed to extend the meadow lands of his domain by taking in a part of the alluvial soil of the Loire without getting into difficulties with the State. This clever proceeding gave him the reputation of a man of talent. If Monsieur de Bourbonne's conversation pleased you and you were to ask who he was of ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... most of all—intermediate forms between apes and man—has been recently furnished. E. Dubois, as is well known, discovered in 1893, near Trinil in Java, in the alluvial deposits of the river Bengawan, an important form represented by a skull-cap, some molars, and a femur. His opinion—much disputed as it has been—that in this form, which he named Pithecanthropus, he has found a long-desired transition-form is ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... anew the structure of gravel and brush that must be depended upon, if bread were to be secured from the land. The Little Colorado is a treacherous stream at best, with a broad channel that wanders at will through the alluvial country that melts like sugar or salt at the ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... used hogsheads of sugar, which were conveniently near, for the same purposes. These our shot easily knocked to pieces, saturating the damp earth around with the saccharine sweets. Our breastworks were more substantially and easily made of the alluvial earth. ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... dead monotony of cultivated alluvium, square mile upon square mile of wheat, rice, vetch, sugar-cane, and other crops, amidst which mango groves, bamboo clumps, palms, and hamlets are scattered promiscuously. In some places the hills rise sheer from this, in others they are separated from the alluvial plains by belts of country known as the Tarai and Bhabar. The Tarai is low-lying, marshy land covered with tall, feathery grass, beautifully monotonous. This is succeeded by a stretch of gently-rising ground, 10 or 20 miles in breadth, known as the ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... ages a soil for plants of greater bulk and a higher order; and had Scotland been left to the exclusive operation of this slow agent, it would be still a rocky desert, with perhaps here and there a strip of alluvial meadow by the side of a stream, and here and there an insulated patch of rich soil among the hollows of the crags. It might possess a few gardens for the spade, but no fields for the plough. We owe our arable ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... confinement, remote from the great currents of men and ideas that move along the river valleys. They are regions of much labor and little leisure, of poverty to-day and anxiety for the morrow, of toil-cramped hands and toil-dulled brains. In the fertile alluvial plains are wealth, leisure, contact with many minds, large urban centers where commodities and ideas are exchanged. The two contrasted environments produce directly certain economic and social results, which, in turn, become the causes ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... the Bonnie Annie to float along the stream, taking care only to keep her off the rocks. Past them went the banks—here steep and stony, but green with moss where little trickling streams found their way into the channel; there spreading into low alluvial shores, covered with lovely grass, starred with daisies and buttercups, from which here and there rose a willow, whose low boughs swept the water. A little while ago, they had skated down its frozen surface, and had seen a snowy land shooting past them; now with an unfelt gliding, they floated ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... the ancient demon of water-force had excelled himself in enchantments. The slopes of the alluvial soil were dotted with little buttes of mingled sandstone and shale, varying from five to twenty feet in height, many of them bearing a grotesque likeness to artificial objects. There were columns, there were haystacks, there were enormous bells, there ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... stands upon a small alluvial delta, of a triangular form, at the exact point of union between the rivers,—a spot so lovely, that, as I looked upon it, much as I respect manufactures, I found myself involuntarily wishing that fate had reserved it for some less dirty purpose. ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... afternoon to a detached knoll a mile or two west of Talbothays, whence he again looked into that green trough of sappiness and humidity, the valley of the Var or Froom. Immediately he began to descend from the upland to the fat alluvial soil below, the atmosphere grew heavier; the languid perfume of the summer fruits, the mists, the hay, the flowers, formed therein a vast pool of odour which at this hour seemed to make the animals, the very bees and butterflies drowsy. Clare was ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... how the boat was lost is accurate," The cargo's another thing. There may have been conspiracy between merchant and ship-owner; I don't know yet, but if it was conspiracy, this would account for much. Some of the gum shipped was very costly, and African alluvial gold, washed by the negroes, has been found mixed ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... of this part of the Amoor do not wash like the alluvial lands along the Mississippi and Missouri, but are more like the shores of the Ohio. They are generally covered with grass or bushes down to the edge of the water. There are no shifting sand-bars to perplex the pilot, but ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... to strolling up and down the streets of Ballarat when that eviscerated city was merely in process of disembowelment, before alluvial mining gave way to quartz-crushing, when the individual had a chance, if a very vague one, of sudden and delightful fortune. The Ballarat blacks were a scaly lot, to talk of them like ill-fed hogs, as men were wont ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... the end of November I left the beautiful lake of Buhi, and proceeded from its eastern angle for a short distance up the little river Sapa [103], the alluvial deposits of which form a considerable feature in the configuration of the lake. Across a marshy meadow we reached the base of the Malinao or Buhi mountain, the slippery clay of the lower slope merging higher up into volcanic sand. [Leeches.] The damp undergrowth swarmed with small leeches; ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... not depends upon the condition of the sub-soil. If you are on river flats with an alluvial soil, rather loose to a considerable depth, dynamiting is not necessary. If, by digging, you encounter hardpan, or clay, dynamiting may be very profitable. This matter must be looked into, because the failure of trees on river lands is more often due to their planting over gravel streaks, which too ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... black dye; its wood being hard and durable, may be easily used for printing-blocks and various other articles; and, finally, the refuse of the nut is employed as fuel and manure.... It grows alike on low alluvial plains and on granite hills, on the rich mould at the margin of canals, and on the sandy sea-beach. The sandy estuary of Hangchan yields little else; some of the trees at this place are known to be several hundred years old, and though ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... in this song, in which it occurs six times. It is also found often in the Psalms. If Moses were the singer, we might see in this often-repeated metaphor a trace of influence of the scenery of the Sinaitic peninsula, which would he doubly striking to eyes accustomed to the alluvial plains of Egypt. What are the aspects of the divine nature ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... summoned to rise against the tyrants of the earth, rose from all the varying soils of France, as if the dragon's teeth had been sown broadcast, and had yielded fruit equally on hill and plain, on rock, in gravel, and alluvial mud, under the bright sky of the South and under the clouds of the North, in fell and forest, in the vineyards and the olive-grounds and among the cropped grass and the stubble of the corn, along the fruitful banks of ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... times heavier than water. Next to iron it is the most extensively diffused metal upon our planet. It occurs in granite, the oldest rock known to us, and in all the rocks derived from it. It is, however, much more common in alluvial grounds than among primitive and pyrogenous rocks. Nine-tenths of the gold which has been produced has been obtained from alluvial beds. Gold mines are generally situated at the extreme limits of civilization. Herodotus ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... The alluvial soil through which the Mississippi runs easily yields to the action of the fierce current. The land worn away at one point is often deposited, in the form of a bar or tongue of land, in the concave of the next bend. The area thus ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... lack of evidence. There was no work suitable to our instincts; so me and Liverpool began to subsist on the red rum of the country and such fruit as we could reap where we had not sown. It was an alluvial town, called Soledad, where there was no harbour or future or recourse. Between steamers the town slept and drank rum. It only woke up when there were bananas to ship. It was like a man sleeping through dinner until ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... he had seen enough of it to recognize that prospecting is an art. Men certainly strike a vein or alluvial placer by the merest chance now and then, but the trained man works from indication to indication until, though he is sometimes mistaken, he feels reasonably sure as to what waits to be uncovered by the blasting charge or shovel. Grenfell's previous account of the discovery had, however, ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... as though Chaldea or Lower Mesopotamia, regarded from this point of view, could never have originated any architecture at all, for it is, at first sight, absolutely deficient in building materials of any sort. The whole land is alluvial, that is, formed, gradually, through thousands of years, of the rich mud deposited by the two rivers, as they spread into vast marshy flats towards the end of their course. Such soil, when hardened into sufficient consistency, is the finest of all for cultivation, ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... before us at the outset as a piece of very composite alluvial ground. It is a beginning of positive science, and also a residue of all philosophical opinions which have had some vogue. That, however, is not its primary basis. Primum vivere, deinde philosophari, says the proverb. In certain respects, "speculation is a luxury, ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... personally I have no objection to bare boards. I suppose linoleum is easier to keep clean than wood; and that aisle, tramped on incessantly by hobnail boots which in damp weather were, as to their soles and heels, mere bulbous trophies of the alluvial deposits of the neighbourhood, was sometimes far from speckless. But to me the strip of linoleum made our hut look remotely like a real room in a real house: it was a touch of the conventional which I never cared for, and I only subscribed to it when ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... that there are flats there?" said Stumpy, the grocer of Merchant Street, alluding to the deposits so famous in alluvial gold-mining. ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... bipinnate, and composed of numerous bluish-green leaflets. Flowers white, borne in loose spikes in the beginning of summer, and succeeded by flat, somewhat curved brown pods. It prefers a rich, strong soil or alluvial deposit. ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... carefully avoided all that could shock their national or religious prejudices. His administration was indeed in many respects faulty; but the Bengalee standard of good government was not high. Under the Nabobs, the hurricane of Mahratta cavalry had passed annually over the rich alluvial plain. But even the Mahratta shrank from a conflict with the mighty children of the sea; and the immense rice harvests of the Lower Ganges were safely gathered in, under the protection of the English sword. The first English conquerors had been more rapacious ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the most widely diffused of metals. Traces of it are found in practically all igneous and most sedimentary rocks. It occurs in sea-water, and quite frequently in beach-sands. Traces of it are also usually to be found in alluvial deposits and in the soils of most mountain-folds. In spite of its wide diffusion, however, all the gold that has been mined could be stored readily in the vaults of any ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... alluvial accumulations are rapidly increasing on some points of this coast, owing to the enormous mass of fresh water, charged with earthy matter, that here mingles with the sea. The surface of the water at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, where the depth ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... The rich alluvial lands of Alabama, recently belonging to the Indian reserves, and now on sale by government or through land-speculators, are attracting thousands of families from the washed-out and impoverished soil of the older Southern States; and, during this and the preceding season, the numbers moving along ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... still desperately pulled to divide them, so that the torrent could escape through. The eyes of this object rolled in pain, but he gave no sign of relinquishing his hold, and again the painful whisper skipped through the abyss, "Who goes back from the alluvial?" Mr. Waples got a breathful of air from an explosion of bubbles, and boldly replied, "The ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... to every running stream or rivulet exposed to the air, and always flowing in an open channel. It is formed of spring water, which, by exposure, becomes more pure, and of running land or surface water, which, although turbid from particles of the alluvial soil suspended in it, is otherwise very pure. It is purest when it runs over a gravelly or rocky bed, and when its course is swift. It is generally soft, and more free from earthy salts than spring water; but it usually contains less common air and carbonic acid gas; ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... partners and a few Indians from the Pampas, had set out on a gold-prospecting expedition on the head waters of the Gallegos River. They were disappointed in their search until they crossed the Cordillera, and sighted the gloomy shores of Last Hope Inlet, leading into Smyth Channel. They there found alluvial sand and gold-bearing quartz, yielding but poor results. Unfortunately, some natives assured them that the metal they sought abounded in Hanover Island. They obtained canoes, voyaged down the long inlet, crossed the straits, and struck inland towards the unknown ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... Vienna Academy of Sciences, showed to Cuvier sundry human bones found deep in the alluvial deposits of the upper Rhine, and suggested that they were of an early geological period; this Cuvier virtually, if not explicitly, denied. Great as he was in his own field, he was not a great geologist; he, in fact, led geology astray for many years. Moreover, he lived in a time of ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... got confused in the immensity of the uproar, and deafness became epidemic. In winter, the surface of Macadam formed a series of little lakes, resembling on a small scale those of Canada; in summer, it formed a Sahara of dust, prodigiously like the great desert. Acres of the finest alluvial clay floated past the shops in autumn; in spring, clouds of the finest sand were wafted among the goods, and penetrated to every drawer and wareroom. And high over all, throughout all the main highways of commerce—the Strand—Fleet Street—Oxford ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... surface of a country takes its complexion from the prevailing rock-formation. The Essays of Foster, and the Sermons of Chalmers excepted, the evangelical theology of the last hundred years has been chiefly alluvial; and in its miscellaneous composition the element which we chiefly recognize is a detritus from Mount Owen. To be sure, a good deal of it is the decomposition of a more recent conglomerate, but a conglomerate in which larger boulders of the original formation are still discernible. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... Arab troops passed in succession Yeddie, a large walled city twenty miles from Angoumou, Badagry, and several other towns built on an alluvial soil which ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... She was like the wild sweet-brier roses which crowded alluvial strips of the island, fragrant and pink and bristling. "Yes, monsieur, that black feather—regard it. Me, I am sick of that black feather. You say I have concealments. I have. All winter I go lonely. The ice is massed on ...
— The Black Feather - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... even, as a soldier's eye would have seen, that an investment of the place was utterly impossible.[978] The rigour of the season had aggravated the difficulties presented by the site. Above towered the city walls perched on their precipitous rock; below was the alluvial plain which the deluging rains of a Numidian winter had turned into a swamp of liquid mud. Yet Aulus, either dazzled by the vision of the gold concealed within the fortress which it had caused him such labour to reach, or with ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... been distinctly proud of their battery, which possessed the high-sounding title of "The Ever Victorious," and had achieved fame by having in the "good times" of the Flat yielded a certain Peter Finnerty two thousand ounces of gold from a hundred tons of alluvial. The then owner of the battery was an intelligent, but bibulous ex-marine engineer, who had served with Gordon in China, and when he erected the structure he formally christened it "The Ever Victorious," in memory of Gordon's army, which stamped ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... the capital of the state and the county seat of Franklin County, is located at the center of the state at the junction of the Scioto and Olentangy Rivers, on a slightly elevated alluvial plain, and is nearly equidistant from Cincinnati, southwest; Cleveland, northeast; Toledo, northwest; and Marietta, southeast, the average distance from these points being one hundred and fifteen miles. It has a population of ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... merchants, it seemed, were well known to the Cornishmen on shore, and Hereward went up with them unopposed; past the ugly dykes and muddy leats, where Alef's slaves were streaming the gravel for tin ore: through rich alluvial pastures spotted with red cattle; and up to Alef's town. Earthworks and stockades surrounded a little church of ancient stone, and a cluster of granite cabins, thatched with turf, in which the slaves abode." If this is a picture of ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... grinding action of the glacial period. No long Sacramento Valley, stretching away to the south and west of the quartzite upheavals, has here retained and preserved the spoils of those long ages of attrition and denudation. The alluvial gold has mostly been carried, by the action alluded to, into the sands and beneath the waves of the Atlantic Ocean; and it is only at the bottom of the numerous little lakes which dot the surface of the country, that the precious ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... a less elevation, to the extremity of the continent. On the south lie the plains of Mesopotamia. Arabia is a low plateau of vast extent, connected by the plateau and mountains of Syria with the mountain region of Asia Minor. As might be expected, civilization sprang up in the alluvial valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, the Indus and the Ganges, and on the soil watered by the great rivers of China, the Hoang-Ho and the Yang-tse-Kiang. Egypt was looked on by the Ancients as a part of Asia. Its language was distinct from the languages of ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... country is flat and swampy, and covered with willows, poplars, larch, spruce, and birch-trees; but the requisition for fuel has expended all the wood in the vicinity of the fort, and the residents have now to send for it to a considerable distance. The soil is alluvial clay, and contains imbedded rolled stones. Though the bank of the river is elevated about twenty feet, it is frequently overflown by the spring-floods, and large portions are annually carried away by the disruption of the ice, which grounding in the stream, have formed several muddy ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... pass through broad valleys or basins, once the beds of great lakes, whose rich, alluvial soil give forth abundant crops of cereals. Here, too, flows the Niemen, 500 miles in length, watering a basin 40,000 square miles in area and separating Poland from Lithuania. It advances northward in a great, winding pathway, between limestone hills covered ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... had been sailing through the immense alluvial plain of Pe-tche-Li. Not until the fourth day after leaving Tien Tsing was the blue outline of mountains perceived on the horizon. Pekin was now in sight; and on the 6th of August, 1793, the yachts anchored within two miles ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... obovate, the upper ones seated on stem; lower very large ones diminishing toward base into long petioles; at first rich, dark purple, afterward pale bluish gray. Fruit: 4 seed-like little nuts, leathery, wrinkled when mature. Preferred Habitat - Alluvial ground, low meadows, and along streams. Flowering Season - March-May. Distribution - Southern Canada to South Carolina and Kansas, west to Nebraska; ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... the most part in large underground tanks excavated in the retentive clay. These remarkable tanks are often as much as 30 ft. in diameter by 60 ft. in depth, and hold from 5,000 to 8,000 barrels. In the construction of the tanks the alluvial soil, of which there is about 18 ft. or 20 ft. above the clay, is curbed with wood and thoroughly puddled with clay. On the completion of the excavation, the entire vertical surface is then lined ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... or three years, anyway," answered Will, "for it will be deep marsh, alluvial to the bottom and ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... sculpture, and music.[93] China belongs, in the dawn of its history, to the great river empires, of which Egypt and Babylonia contributed to our origins, by the influence which they had upon the Greeks and Jews. Just as these civilizations were rendered possible by the rich alluvial soil of the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Tigris, so the original civilization of China was rendered possible by the Yellow River. Even in the time of Confucius, the Chinese Empire did not stretch far either to south or north of the Yellow River. But in spite of this similarity in physical ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... perhaps, a less extravagant invention than we are at first inclined to think. A lake, nearly as large as the Victoria Nyanza, once covered the marshy plain where the Bahr-el-Abiad unites with the Sobat and with the Bahr-el-Ghazal. Alluvial deposits have filled up all but its deepest depression, which is known as Birket Nu; but in ages preceding our era it must still have been vast enough to suggest to Egyptian soldiers and boatmen the idea of an actual sea opening ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... a year Rosendo had panned the isolated alluvial deposit, and on his regular monthly returns to Simiti he and the priest had sent from thirty to ninety pesos gold to Wenceslas. To this Jose sometimes added small amounts collected from the people of Simiti, which they had gratuitously given him for Masses and for the support ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... warm, those fields, its chosen birthplace. Up-turned by the plough, crossed and recrossed by the harrow, clodless, levelled, deep, fine, fertile—some extinct river-bottom, some valley threaded by streams, some table-land of mild rays, moist airs, alluvial or limestone soils—such is the favorite cradle of the hemp in Nature. Back and forth with measured tread, with measured distance, broadcast the sower sows, scattering with plenteous hand those small oval-shaped fruits, gray-green, black-striped, heavily ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... rapid instrumentalities in the development of a new country are the finding and prospecting for mineral deposits. The discovery of large deposits of gold in the quartz and alluvial area of British Columbia in 1858 was the incipiency of the growth and prosperity it now enjoys. But although the search for the precious is alluring, the mining of the grosser metals and minerals, such as iron, lead, coal, and others, are much more reliable ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... the country is not particularly varied. The ground is nearly flat in the sandy districts, and quite flat in the alluvial plains, where the brackish water stagnates in pools. Nothing could be better for a line of railway. There are no cuttings, no embankments, no viaducts, no works of art—to use a term dear to engineers, ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... is a stream of great size and volume, and, like all rivers subject to periodic flood, is enclosed by high banks of alluvial deposit, between which the river winds its devious way, laden with that rich and fertile mud which, in the course of ages, has formed the ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... explain nature, A. A.," said Percy Knapendyke. "Nature does so darned many unnatural things that you can't pin your faith to it at all. Of course, it was a pure experiment we made. We happened to have a lot of hard spring wheat, and this alluvial soil, deep and rich, was worth tackling. Old Pedro was as much surprised as I was when it began to come up. Using that fertilizer was an experiment, too. He swore it wouldn't help a bit. Now he just scratches his head and says God did it. We've got fifty acres out there as green ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... other parts of the country. To the other portions of the coast it is as nearly central as it could be without losing fatally in other respects. Delaware and Chesapeake Bays afford fine roadsteads; but the low sand barrens and wet alluvial flats which form their shores compelled Philadelphia and Baltimore to retire their population such a distance up the chief communicating rivers as to deprive them of many important advantages proper to a seaport. Under the influence of free ideas may be expected ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... indeed of any lake or river, or body of water whatsoever, struck me, at first glance, as the most extraordinary feature in its geological condition. Yet, strange to say, I beheld vast level regions of a character decidedly alluvial, although by far the greater portion of the hemisphere in sight was covered with innumerable volcanic mountains, conical in shape, and having more the appearance of artificial than of natural protuberance. The highest among them does not exceed three and three-quarter miles in perpendicular ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... enjoyment. Sterile, Sterile, Sterile. That was the key to the enigma. Mind and senses were fruitlessly debauched. A brilliant art, full of wit and cleverness—a lovely form, in truth, a tradition of beauty, impregnably seated, in spite of foreign alluvial deposits—a theater which was a theater, a style which was a style, authors who knew their business, writers who could write, the fine skeleton of an art, and a thought that had been great. But a skeleton. Sonorous words, ringing phrases, the ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... rocks, containing the remains of animals and vegetables, and consequently formed after their creation;—the Tertiary formation, composed of layers of clay, sand, gravel, and marl, and containing peculiar organic remains;—and the Alluvial formation, constituted of parts of previous rocks separated by water, ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... have consequently been opened to its culture, and the alluvial lands of Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas have been devoted to the plant. Slaves have thus been attracted from the Middle States and diverted from the less profitable culture of wheat and tobacco to the cotton-fields. Half a century ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... turned in towards the river about three p.m. on the 16th, at Makaberab, or, as the natives call it, Omdabiya—i.e., the place of hyenas. For over a mile, men and animals had to make their way through halfa-grass scrub, and then over bare alluvial land, deeply sun-cracked and scored in all directions. The ground was cris-crossed like a chessboard, the lines being a foot to two feet apart, and four to six inches wide, and several feet in depth. There were numberless spills through these pitfalls. One camel snapped his leg, and many mules ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... Philippines is essentially mountainous, the only plains that occur being alluvial districts at the river mouths and the spaces left by the intersection of the ranges. The principal ranges have a tendency to run north and south, with a certain amount of deflection east and west, as the case may be, so that the orographic diagram ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... clarified by further exposition. Webster furnishes the following definition: "(1) Delta is the name of the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet (equivalent to the English D) from the Phoenician name for the corresponding letter. The Greeks called the alluvial deposit at the mouth of the Nile, from its shape, the Delta of the Nile. (2) A tract of land shaped like the letter "delta," especially when the land is alluvial, and enclosed within two or more mouths of a river, as the Delta of the Ganges, of the Nile, ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... formerly. We found ourselves with no certainty of procuring grub and oil; our engine became more and more untrustworthy; our paddles had been lost. What winds we had generally blew against us, and the character of the banks was changing. The cliffs gave way to broad alluvial valleys, over which, at times, the gales swept with ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... air that prevail on the hills of moderate height, and on the whole, also, in the valleys and plains. In development of coast it is inferior; it wants, in particular, the island-studded sea which made the Hellenes a seafaring nation. Italy on the other hand excels its neighbour in the rich alluvial plains and the fertile and grassy mountain-slopes, which are requisite for agriculture and the rearing of cattle. Like Greece, it is a noble land which calls forth and rewards the energies of man, opening up alike for restless adventure the way to distant lands and for quiet exertion ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen |
