"Bitumen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the Assyrian cities has been easy and rapid: the country is destitute of stone and timber; and the most solid structures [27] are composed of bricks baked in the sun, and joined by a cement of the native bitumen. The name of Cufa [28] describes a habitation of reeds and earth; but the importance of the new capital was supported by the numbers, wealth, and spirit, of a colony of veterans; and their licentiousness was indulged ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... was correct. At their departure he gave to each of them a jewel of gold, according to his estimation of their respective merits. The Indians beat the gold into very thin plates, in order to make masks of it, and to be able to set it in bitumen; if it were not so prepared it could not be mounted; other ornaments they make of it, to wear on the head and to hang in the ears and nostrils, for these also they require it to be thin; since they set no store by it as wealth but only for adornment. Guacamari desired them by signs and as well ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... of these baskets was scattered a little ground meal of the acorn, a staple article of food with all the Indians of California. The other basket, similar to the first in shape and size, but of rougher weave, and lined on the inside with bitumen, was nearly full of water; for though the finely woven baskets of the Southern California Indians were really water-tight, they were not generally used for liquids. Any one, acquainted with the customs of these Indians, would understand the meaning of the little ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... Minard was really an inflated balloon. Expressing himself in empty phrases, mistaking sycophancy for politeness, and wordiness for wit, he uttered his commonplaces with a brisk assurance that passed for eloquence. Certain words which said nothing but answered all things,—progress, steam, bitumen, National guard, order, democratic element, spirit of association, legality, movement, resistance,—seemed, as each political phase developed, to have been actually made for Minard, whose talk was a paraphrase on the ideas of his ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... however, being obtained from an official source, may be fully relied upon as correct: The whole space between Charles Street and Tottenham Court Road is occupied by 12 different specimens, which are completed in the following order, commencing at Charles Street: viz.—40 feet of Robinson's Parisian bitumen—24 feet laid in straight courses, and 16 feet diagonally; 74 feet of parish stone paving, 54 feet of which is laid in straight courses, the stones 9 inches deep, and the interstices filled up with Claridge's asphalte; the remaining 20 feet consisting of stones only 4.5 ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... Tigris-Euphrates valley rather than Palestine. The description of the construction of the ark in Genesis 6:14-16 is not only closely parallel to that found in the Babylonian account, but the method—the smearing of the ark within and without with bitumen—is peculiar to the Tigris-Euphrates valley. Many scholars believe, therefore, that Babylonia was the original home of the Biblical ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... perceive something very peculiar in their history and situation. They were particularly devoted to the worship of the Sun; and they were generally situated near hot springs, or else upon foul and fetid lakes, and pools of bitumen. It is, also, not uncommon to find near them mines of salt and nitre; and caverns sending forth pestilential exhalations. The Elysian plain, near the Catacombs in Egypt, stood upon the foul Charonian canal; which was so noisome, that every fetid ditch and cavern was from it called Charonian. ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... II. An inscription reads: "On the brick wall towards the north my heart inspired me to build a palace for the protecting of Babylon. I built there a palace, like the palace of Babylon, of brick and bitumen." ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... glorious hour, even for the old dust of Egypt, which fills the air eternally, without detracting at all from its wonderful clearness. It savours of spices, of the Bedouin, of the bitumen of the sarcophagus. And here now it is playing the role of those powders of different shades of gold which the Japanese use for the backgrounds of their lacquered landscapes. It reveals itself everywhere, close to and on the horizon, ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... sunshine struck down on the smiling plain, and lake and river gleamed like silver, and all things woke to new hopes and fresh life, then the sky darkened, and the earth sank, and horrible rain of fiery bitumen fell from the black pall, salt mud poured in streams, and over all hung a column of fat, oily smoke. It is not my province to discuss the physical cause of the destruction; but I may refer to the suggestions of Sir J. W. Dawson, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... itself for work, the smoke from the pipes floating in long lines toward the ceiling, befogging the big white albatross that hung from a wire in the skylight. Munson, who had rubbed in a background of bitumen over a square tile, sat next to Fred, who was picking out, with the end of a wooden match, the outlines of an army-wagon sketched on a plate smeared with color. Simmons was looking over a portfolio that Watson, a new member, had brought with ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... exhibited during seven days. On this occasion, an artificial mount was erected in the middle of the imperial court, covered all over with branches of cypress, and planted with 100,000 torches; by means of little artificial mice, made of bitumen or wild fire, which ran along a number of ropes, fixed for the purpose, these torches were all lighted up in a moment, forming a wonderful blaze of lights from the bottom of the mountain to the top; and many other lights appeared all over the city. During all the seven days of this festival, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... With mighty hills defenced from foreign rage, And to this part the tyrant gan unite His subjects born and bands that serve for wage, From this exploit he spared nor great nor lite, The aged men, and boys of tender age, To fire of angry war still brought new fuel, Stones, darts, lime, brimstone and bitumen cruel. ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... and iron. Except Eridu, where ancient workers quarried sandstone from its sea-shaped ridge, all the cities were built of brick, an excellent clay being found in abundance. When brick walls were cemented with bitumen they were given great stability. This resinous substance is found in the north and south. It bubbles up through crevices of rocks on river banks and forms small ponds. Two famous springs at modern Hit, on the Euphrates, have been drawn upon from time immemorial. "From one", ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... less flourishing than agriculture; Italy at this period was rich in industries—silk, wool, hemp, fur, alum, sulphur, bitumen; those products which the Italian soil could not bring forth were imported, from the Black Sea, from Egypt, from Spain, from France, and often returned whence they came, their worth doubled by labour ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of ink writing which have outlasted decay and disintegration through so many ages, are found to be closely allied to materials like bitumen, lampblack obtained from the smoke of oil- torches or resins; or gold, silver, ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... Gallipoli; and how, after two years' observation, I had to come to the conclusion that the lake was leaking, and discovered that this Imbros sand was not suitable for mixing with the skin of Portland cement which covered the cement concrete, and had to substitute sheet-bitumen in three places; and how I did all, all for the sake of God, thinking: 'I will work, and be a good man, and cast Hell from me: and when I see it stand finished, it will be an Altar and a Testimony to me, and ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... be that the asphalt of Siddim was coveted by the Babylonian kings. Bitumen, it is true, was found in Babylonia itself near Hit, but if Amiaud is right, one of the objects imported from abroad for Gudea of Lagas was asphalt. It came from Madga, which is described as being "in the mountains of the river Gur(?)ruda." But no ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... of bitumen were found upon the beach; but the principal season of the year for finding it is in winter, especially at the commencement of winter, when the lake becomes unusually agitated, and breaks off masses of it from the bottom, often of very large size—the peasants of Hebron, with exaggeration, say, ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... and of this ark; among whom is Berosus the Chaldean. For when he is describing the circumstances of the flood, he goes on thus: "It is said there is still some part of this ship in Armenia, at the mountain of the Cordyaeans; and that some people carry off pieces of the bitumen, which they take away, and use chiefly as amulets for the averting of mischiefs." Hieronymus the Egyptian also, who wrote the Phoenician Antiquities, and Mnaseas, and a great many more, make mention of the same. Nay, Nicolaus of Damascus, in his ninety-sixth book, hath a particular relation about ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... The Spaniards you pass are pure joy to the artist; the women have such nice ivory colouring with the faintest tint of pink, and such eyes, brown and dark, and kind, and such eye-lashes—it's easy colour to paint too in Henner's way, Prussian blue, bitumen and ochre and a breath of rose! Look at the bloom on their hair, blue as the light on raven's wing, and the flour on their faces, hanging thick on their black eyebrows. I think they must have a little of the Indian in them. There's a far-away kinship in the expression ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... Cape San Lucas to the Bay of Todos Santos, in lat. 32 deg. N., on the Pacific, and to the mouth of the Colorado on the Gulf side, is a pile of volcanic debris and scoriae. Much of the surface is still heated by subterranean fires. No craters are in action; but hot springs of water and bitumen, and frequent earthquakes, and the scorched face of the whole region, demonstrate it to be a mere mass upheaved from the sea, and burned to cinders. The range of mountains that comes up through Lower California, runs ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... the English school of the earlier part of this century. They "painted" the picture, and then just before exhibiting it "toned" it by glazing it all over with a large brush and some transparent pigment, generally bitumen. This did, in fact, bring the picture in tone after a fashion. But it is not a colorist's method. It is the rule of thumb method of a false technique and a vicious color sense. True tone is not something put onto the picture after it is painted. It is an inherent ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... With rivulets of tears. And here, they say, The Naiaed nymphs their bubbling art supply'd. Ne'er drought to know: more to afford, their power Sure could not. Straightway, as the pitchy drops Flow from the fir's cleft bark; from solid earth As stiff bitumen oozes; or as streams, By cold congeal'd, thaw with the southern wind And warming sun: Phoebean Byblis so By her own tears exhausted, was transform'd, A fount becoming; which still in that vale, 'Neath a dark ilex springing, keeps ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... and the verb is linere, "to daub, besmear, etc." Next in chronological order comes the mother of Moses, who "took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch" (Exodus, ii. 3), bitumine ac pice in the Vulgate. Bitumen, or mineral pitch, was regularly applied to this purpose, even by Elizabethan seamen. Failing this, anything sticky and unctuous was used, e.g., clay or lime. Lime now means usually calcium oxide, but its original sense is anything ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... plains, one elevated, the other depressed. The latter is by some held to be the original bottom of the lake, and the former to have been caused by the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. But this also is only a fancy. The bitumen, which is found in such large quantities in and near the lake, is a symptom and remnant of the volcanic nature of the region. Several lines of earthquake are traced from it in a north-eastern direction; and it is conjectured that the three lakes, ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote |
