"Fissure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... knees tremble, my heart break, must note the rumbling, heed only the shuddering down in the fissure beneath the rock of the ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... bed of some far inland creek, the water rises in the sand in shallow pools, during the dark hours of night, to vanish once more beneath the sun. And in low caverns in the limestone hills, down some deep fissure, can be seen the waters of a stream, whose rise and course no man has ever traced. Again a solitary lagoon is found whereon no lily grows, and wherein no fish swims. Where the belated bushman camping for the night, finds the next morning that the water ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... smoke of burning buildings and fields in the valley, or showed the white puff-like low clouds of the bursting shrapnel. Not for an instant did the roar diminish, not for a second was the kindly veil of night left unrent by a fissure of vengeful flame. Yet, all night long, as ceaselessly as the great guns poured out their angry fury, so did men pour out their indomitable will, and in that hell light of battle flame engineers labored to construct bridges, small bodies of ...
— 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
... my lad! I am still strong enough to bear you!" The young man understood in an instant. His father propped himself up against the rock. Harry got upon his shoulders, so that with his pick he could reach the line of the fissure. Then with quick sharp blows he attacked it. Almost directly afterwards a slight sound was heard, like champagne escaping from a bottle—a sound commonly expressed ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... fright, rushing up Market Street. I crouched beside a swaying building. As they came nearer they disappeared, seeming to drop into the earth. When the last had gone I went nearer and found they had indeed been precipitated into the earth, a wide fissure having swallowed them. I worked my way around them and ran out to the ferry. I was crazy with fear and ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... dazzling. The whole valley floor seemed to be brought quite close to the eyes. The dark lakes glistened; the road lay between them, a blinding stripe of white. The mountains stood like a dark wall beneath the glistening sky, showing every gap and fissure in the rocks, which were like scars on ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... to grasp her neck. But, at that instant, the frightened woman's strength suddenly gave way; her knees received the fall of the limp body. For a second she seemed huddled in a posture of prayer, then toppled over, slipped easily forward through a fissure in the wall and plunged headforemost into the chugging ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... the study of the Causses by M. Onesime Reclus in his work 'La France.' [Footnote: 'L'orage aux larges gouttes, la pluie fine, les ruisseaux de neige fendue, les sources joyeuses ne sont pas pour le Causse, qui est fissure, crible, casse, qui ne retient point les eaux, tout ce que lui verse la nue, entre dans la rocaille. Et c'est bien, bien bas que l'onde engloutie se decide a reparaitre, elle sort d'une grotte, au fond des gorges, au pied de ces roches droites, symetriques, monumentales, ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... summit presenting a red and bare appearance, owing to the alternate action of summer sun and winter frost. As the slopes approach the valley they become clothed with a garb of wild vegetation, which bursts forth from every fissure, and finds a foothold on every projecting rock: the base of the mountain is hidden in a tangled mass of glowing green, which the moist yet sunny Spring calls forth in abundance whenever the slopes are not too steep to ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the washtub size made by the 75's to the great fissure-torn holes made by the big naval guns, and which would make an ample cellar for an ordinary dwelling house. I have seen horses which had fallen into these great holes shot and covered over because they could not be gotten out without ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... at Leyden. He attempted to establish a permanent system of medicine based on the newly discovered theory of the circulation and the new chemistry, but his name is remembered by medical men because of the fissure in the brain (fissure of Sylvius) that bears it. He laid great stress on the cause of fevers and other diseases as originating in the disturbances of the process of fermentation in the stomach. The doctrines of Sylvius spread widely over the continent, but were not generally accepted in England until ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... flapping his ear, and beating it violently against his head. The inflammation is thus increased, and the tip of the ear becomes exceedingly sore. This causes him to shake his head still more violently, and the ulcer spreads and is indisposed to heal, and at length a fissure or crack appears on the tip of the cartilage, and extends to a greater or less distance down ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... The hesitation was only for a moment, for a voice among them cried out, and the whole pack gave tongue shrilly and surged on again. But that instant of check had given the stranger his chance. He was up the ladder, and, gripping the parapet, found rest for his feet in a fissure. Then he bent down, drew up the ladder, handed it to McGuffog, and with a mighty heave pulled himself over ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... me then, and, as I laid one hand across her arm, I felt her relax to a relieved trembling. Before us the night crowded down over the countryside, masking its ugliness like a film, through which our lights cut a white fissure towards town. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... creeping around some gaping fissure, that opened across our track—there wading over a sandy swell—and anon rolling briskly along the smooth, herbless plain; for the country we were passing through was a parched and ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... the rock until they were almost on a level with my head, and so thrust against the bar. It bent so suddenly that I almost slipped. I clambered about and bent the adjacent bar in the opposite direction, and then took the luminous fungus from my pocket and dropped it down the fissure. ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... worn by his grief, through which her comforts, that, like waters, press on all sides, and enter at every cranny and fissure in the house of life, might gently flow into him with their sympathetic soothing. Often he would creep away to the nest which Hugh had built and then forsaken; and seated there in the solitude of the wide-bourgeoned oak, he would sometimes feel for a moment as if lifted up above the world and ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... are the regions of our far-famed land: Thou shalt arrive at her remotest bounds, See her best people, choose some holiest house; Whether where Castro from surrounding vines Hears the hoarse ocean roar among his caves, And, through the fissure in the green churchyard, The wind wail loud the calmest summer day; Or where Santona leans against the hill, Hidden from sea and land ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... battles and world-wide fame which grew and died and passed away; and temples crumbled, and kings' tombs were forgotten, and cities were buried and others built over them after hundreds of years—and perhaps a few stones fell from a mountain side, or a fissure was worn, which the people below could not even see. And that was all. There they stood, and perhaps their secret was that they had been there for ever and ever. That was what the mountains said to Marco, which was why he did not want to talk much, but sat and gazed out ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... go adrift, the sun sets down the valley between the hills; when snow comes, it goes down behind the Cumberland and streams through a great fissure that people call the Gap. Then the last light drenches the parson's cottage under Imboden Hill, and leaves an after-glow of glory on a majestic heap that lies against the east. Sometimes it spans the Gap ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... of December, about the warmest period of the year, during my rambles through the forest in search of insects, I met with this manna in the above-mentioned state, but could never find in any part of the bark a fissure or break whence such a substance could flow. Wherever it appeared, moreover, the red-eyed cicadae were in abundance. I was inclined to think that the puncture produced by these suctorial insects into the tender shoots for juice, would in all probability give an exit for such a substance; but ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... explorer warmed. With impetuous haste he climbed the last dozen yards; when, as the anticipated summit was reached, he halted in abrupt, dismayed surprise; for with alarming suddenness the land broke off short, disclosing a deep gap or fissure, carpeted with heather and surrounded by natural protecting walls of rock, in the centre of which was set a miniature ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... a large number of other subcastes, and the tendency to fissure in a large caste, and to the formation of small local groups which marry among themselves, is nowhere more strikingly apparent than among the Brahmans. This is only natural, as they, more than any other caste, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... pirate swooped down in an unexpected dive. "Look out!" Preston yelled helplessly—but it was too late. Beams ripped into the hull of Mellors' ship, and a dark fissure line opened down the side of the ship. Preston smashed his hand against the control panel. Better to die in an honest dogfight than to ...
— Postmark Ganymede • Robert Silverberg
... towards the south-western portion of the rampart the indefatigable coral insect had thrown up, where an opening about double the width of the Silver Queen's beam was plainly discernible. Through this fissure in the reef, piloted by that power which had watched over us throughout all the perils of our voyage, the ship had been driven; and she had beached herself gradually on the shore of the little island, as ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... showed that the opening was so curiously hidden that a stranger might pass it a hundred times and not see it. So I helped her to climb up the cliff until I got to a small platform, and afterward passed along the fissure between the rocks and drew her after me, and then, when she had followed me a few steps, she saw how cunningly Nature had concealed the place, and fearful as she was, she uttered a low exclamation of pleased surprise. For from this place we could see without being ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... partly imbedded in a beach, and some conception of its dimensions may be gathered from the fact that from nose to tail it measures about two miles, while the center of its back is as high as the Woolworth Building in New York. Moreover, there is not a fissure in it; monoliths a thousand feet long have been quarried from it; it is as solid as ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... Cranium, that he lost his balance, and alighted in an ivy bush, which, giving way beneath him, transferred him to a tuft of hazel at its base, which consigned him to the boughs of an ash that had rooted itself in a fissure about halfway down the rock, which finally transmitted him to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... a stone fell through a fissure of the cave, and Luliban, who watched for the signal, dived outwards with the line of cinnet, and came behind Red-Hair and put the noose over his left foot, and Harry, who followed close, cast the stone he carried away and raised his hand and stabbed him in ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... have not been made by wearing back, like those of Niagara, but are of a fissure form. For many miles below, the river is confined in a narrow space of not more than one hundred yards wide. The water goes boiling along, and gives the idea of great masses of it rolling over and over, so that even the most expert swimmer would find it difficult to ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... lay over a dangerous portion of the frozen surface, and Frithiof warned the king that it would be prudent to avoid this. He would not listen to the counsel, however, and suddenly the sleigh sank in a deep fissure, which threatened to engulph it with the king and queen. But like falcon descending upon its quarry, Frithiof was at their side in a moment, and without apparent effort he dragged the steed and its burden on to the firm ice. "In ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... have been forgotten, desecrated, and buried under populous towns,—even in this extreme let an antiquary fall across a sheet of manuscript, and the name will be recalled, the old infamy will pop out into daylight like a toad out of a fissure in the rock, and the shadow of the shade of what was once a man will be heartily pilloried by his descendants. A little while ago and Villon was almost totally forgotten; then he was revived for the sake of his verses; and now he is being revived with a vengeance ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cerebro-spinal centre, includes the spinal cord, passing upward through the vertebrae of the spinal column and the brain. The brain consists of three parts: The cerebrum, or great brain, consisting of two hemispheres, which, though connected, are divided in great part by a longitudinal fissure; the cerebellum, or little brain; and the medulla oblongata, or bulb. The spinal nerves consist of thirty-one pairs, which branch out from the spinal cord. Each pair of nerves contains a right and left member, distributed ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... sandstones and limestones which constitute the platform of the great elevated region called the San Francisco Plateau. The escarpment is caused by a fault, the great block of the upper side being lifted several thousand feet above the valley region. Through the fissure lavas poured out, and in many places the escarpment is concealed by sheets of lava. The canyons in these lava beds ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... we journey on, and the sunken ledges more numerous, and the protruding rocks more dangerous, splinters of strata piercing the sea-surface from a depth of thirty fathoms. Then suddenly our boat makes a dash for the black cliff, and shoots into a tremendous cleft of it—an earthquake fissure with sides lofty and perpendicular as the walls of a canon-and lo! there is daylight ahead. This is a miniature strait, a short cut to the bay. We glide through it in ten minutes, reach open water again, and Hinomisaki is ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... river, and a little more than midway between it and the Connecticut and Massachusetts lines, as far as they extended. Into and through the strip of land the Quaker stream flowed, like a liquid injected into a fissure in the rocks. Each Quaker home as it settled became a resting place for those who followed, for it was a cardinal principle of Quaker hospitality to keep open house for all fellow members, ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... to be seen save the rocky walls of the cave, which was of peculiar shape, and more like a sort of fissure in the rock, riven open possibly by some volcanic shock, than if made by man. The roof was formed of lava, it seemed to me by the light of our impromptu torch, similar to the same substance we noticed on the arid plain near the shore ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... sweep of branches, having had time, twice over, to be a thousand years of age. On one of them stands a tower, which, though immemorially more modern than the tomb, was itself built by immemorial hands, and is now rifted quite from top to bottom by a vast fissure of decay; the tomb-hillock, its foundation, being still as firm as ever, and likely to endure until the last trump shall rend it wide asunder, and summon forth its ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... several narrow channels into which the stream was divided by its rocky bed, and down one of these we passed in devious turns until our new-found guide rose again in the boat and pointed to a jagged fissure which faced us. Denviers seized a pair of the rude oars and pulled the boat towards it, then leaping out he secured our frail conveyance, after which the woman handed to him a fresh torch, and we all advanced into the cave before us, vaguely wondering what ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the woods, betwixt Bolton and Barden the river suddenly contracts itself into a rocky channel, little more than four feet wide, and pours through the tremendous fissure, with a rapidity equal to its confinement. This place was then, as it now is, called the Strid, from a feat often exercised by persons of more agility than prudence, who stride from brink to brink, regardless of the destruction which awaits a faltering step. Such, according ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... the ravine, a few paces from the point where it starts as a narrow fissure in the earth, there stands a small square hut. It stands alone, apart from all the others. It is thatched, and has a chimney; one window keeps watch like a sharp eye over the ravine, and on winter evenings ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... bottom after a hundred tumbles. It cannot be better described than in Southey's verses, though it is worthy of better poetry than that. After all, I do not know that the cascade is anything more than a beautiful fringe to the grandeur of the scene; for it is very grand,—this fissure through the cliff,—with a steep, lofty precipice on the right hand, sheer up and down, and on the other hand, too, another lofty precipice, with a slope of its own ruin on which trees and shrubbery have grown. The right-hand ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the fissure, lean over the brink of the precipice, and look downward, a little to the left, on the belt of woods which covers the strand between the water and the base of the cliffs. Here a gang of axe-men are at work, and Point Levi and Orleans echo ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... showing as a rule clearly defined walls. It is much more rational to suppose that the increased hardness imparted to the slates and schists at or near their contact with the lode is due to an infiltration of silica from the silicated solution which at one time filled the fissure. Few scientists can now be found to advance the purely igneous theory of lode formation, though it must be admitted that volcanic action has probably had much influence not only in the formation of mineral veins, but also on ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... Causeway in appearance. But the noblest cliff of all on this western promontory is that of Tolpedn-Penwith, to reach which we have to pass Nanjisal Cove. Its name, the "holed headland of Penwith," refers to a deep cleft or fissure, which can be explored from the sea when tide and weather permit. Part of this fine bluff is known as the Chair Ladder, and has traditions of a witch, Madge Figgy, who used to take flight with her comrades from this magnificent point, ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... of which was cut into the shape here exactly copied (Fig. 55). The short end of the stick beyond the hole was purposely split, but not the opposite [page 75] end. As the wood was highly elastic, the split or fissure closed immediately after being made. After six days the stick and bean were dug out of the damp sand, and the radicle was found to be much enlarged above and beneath the hole. The fissure which was at first quite closed, was now open to a width of 4 mm.; as soon as the radicle was ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... watch informed me that the head of the main-mast was sprung: I immediately went up to look at it myself, and found it split almost in a straight line perpendicularly for a considerable length, but I could not discover exactly how far the fissure went, for the cheeks that were upon the mast. We imagined this to have happened in the very hard gale that had overtaken us some time before; but as it was of more importance to contrive how to repair ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... had come, when the ground on which they were making their last stand shook, there was a rending of rocks and a rush of imprisoned steam that drowned even the dragons' roar, and they were separated from them by a long fissure and a wall of smoke and vapour. Struggling back from the edge of the chasm, they fell upon the ground, and then for the first time fully realized that the earthquake had saved them, for the dragons could not come across the opening, and would not venture ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... opposite banks intermingled their leaves, and another cataract plunged from the pool into a chasm, on which the sunbeams never gleamed. High above, on both sides, the steep woody slopes of the dingle soared into the sky; and from a fissure in the rock, on which the little path terminated, a single gnarled and twisted oak stretched itself over the pool, forming a fork with its boughs at a short distance from the rock. Miss Susannah often sat on the rock, with her feet resting on this tree; in time, she ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... try to build the philosophy up out of the single phrases, taking first one and then another and seeking to make them fit, and of course you fail. You crawl over the thing like a myopic ant over a building, tumbling into every microscopic crack or fissure, finding nothing but inconsistencies, and never suspecting that a centre exists. I hope that some of the philosophers in this audience may occasionally have had something different from this intellectualist type of criticism applied ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... fissure right in front of the kitchen cabinet spoiled the appearance of the new linoleum. The damaged spot was removed with a sharp knife and from a left-over scrap a piece was cut of the same outline and size. The edges were varnished and then the patch was set in the open space. ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... Note.) left for the final cotton plug. Certainly no foe will break in through the double rampart; but he will make an insidious attack from the rear. The Leucopsis will come and, with her long probe, thanks to some imperceptible fissure in the tube, will insert her dread eggs and destroy every single inhabitant of the fortress. Thus are the Manicate ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... was that of the Pelasgian Zeus at Dodona, in Epirus, and that of Apollo at Delphi, in Phocis. At Dodona the priests listened in the dark forests for the voice of Zeus in the rustling leaves of the sacred oak. At Delphi there was a deep fissure in the ground, which emitted stupefying vapors, that were thought to be the inspiring breath of Apollo. Over the spot was erected a splendid temple, in honor of the oracle. The revelation was generally received by the Pythia, or priestess, seated upon a tripod placed over the ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... Dr. Palmer is situated on a granitic hill to the west of the bay, at an elevation of 30 ft. above sea level. Just below the mouth of the narrow fissure is a spring which supplies water to the little mining community. The cave itself measures 9 ft. in depth; it is 6 ft. wide and 5 ft. high at the mouth. Before Dr. Palmer's excavations, miners of the Gulf Gold Mining Company had removed ...
— A Burial Cave in Baja California - The Palmer Collection, 1887 • William C. Massey
... a deep and precipitous ravine, from the bottom of which rose a second slope, similar to the one they had just ascended. Down into this profound ravine they made their way by a rugged path, or rather fissure of the rocks, and then labored up the second slope. They gained the summit only to find themselves on another ravine, and now perceived that this vast mountain, which had presented such a sloping and even side to the distant beholder on the plain, was shagged by frightful ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... tree-tops, and the far-away cackle of an industrious hen. The road, at first very sunny, had now wound itself beside huge crags, which made a welcome shade, and Julie saw with delight a little water-fall come tumbling down a narrow fissure, plunging into a pool below, and crossing the path. Warm and thirsty, she stopped to refresh herself and listen to the gurgling of the brook. But she must not dawdle, or night might come on, and then it would be hard to find the old ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... same time to a small stream which trickled down a fissure in the rock, and formed a little well of clear water beneath. I bowed deeply, and murmuring something, I know not what, took the pitcher from her hand, and scaling the rocky cliff, mounted to the clear source above, where having filled the vessel, I descended. When I reached the ground beneath, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... necessary to keep up with his guide in a path so rugged, began to flag and fall behind, two or three very precarious steps placed him on the front of a precipice overhung with brushwood and copse. Here a cave, as narrow in its entrance as a fox-earth, was indicated by a small fissure in the rock, screened by the boughs of an aged oak, which, anchored by its thick and twisted roots in the upper part of the cleft, flung its branches almost straight outward from the cliff, concealing it effectually ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... base of the eastern ridge, just below the extreme summit, hot sulphurous gases and vapor escape with a hissing, bubbling noise from a fissure in the lava. Some of the many small vents cast up a spray of clear hot water, which falls back repeatedly until wasted in vapor. The steam and spray seem to be produced simply by melting snow coming in the way of the escaping gases, while the gases are evidently ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... one of the dens formerly occupied by the wild beasts, and disclosed to us a set of beings scarcely less savage. The sombre walls of the gloomy abode were illumined by a fire the smoke from which escaped through a deep fissure in the mossy roof; whilst the flickering flames threw a blood-red glare on the bronzed features of a group of children, of two men, and a decrepit old hag, who appeared busily engaged in some ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... shaft, with its cavernous hollows, where the smoke blundered about on its way to the square bit of sky at the top, from which the daylight struck down with a pallid glare upon the tatters of soot draping the flue as seaweed drapes a rocky fissure. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... sunset. He had been out all day, upon the higher table land where he had set rudely constructed traps for rabbits. He had returned in the early dusk, finding his way down the fissure from the rocks above to his cave. And as he made his fire and began the preparations for his evening meal, he heard a very discreet cough at ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... Killingworth mine. The pitmen used to expostulate with him on these occasions, believing his experiments to be fraught with danger. One of the sinkers, observing him holding up lighted candles to the windward of the "blower" or fissure from which the inflammable gas escaped, entreated him to desist; but Stephenson's answer was, that "he was busy with a plan by which he hoped to make his experiments useful for preserving men's lives." On these occasions the miners ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... at that hanging lower lip! what a huge sulk and pout is there! a sulk and pout, by carpenter's measurement, about twenty feet long and five feet deep; a sulk and pout that will yield you some 500 gallons of oil and more. A great pity, now, that this unfortunate whale should be hare-lipped. The fissure is about a foot across. Probably the mother during an important interval was sailing down the Peruvian coast, when earthquakes caused the beach to gape. Over this lip, as over a slippery threshold, we now slide into the mouth. Upon my word were I at Mackinaw, I should take this to ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... from Dr. A. J McDonald, physician to the Los Pinos Indian Agency, Colorado, a description is given of crevice or rock-fissure burial, which follows. ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... upon his chest staring anxiously down into the fissure where Wilson had disappeared when suddenly he felt a weight upon his back and another upon each of his outstretched arms. In spite of this, he reached his knees, but the powerful brown men still clung. He shook himself as a mad bull does at the sting of the darts. It was ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... of the lake Miss Goldthwaite turned aside to explore an opening between the trees. A moment more and Tom heard a crash, followed by a faint scream. He looked round, to see the edge of Miss Goldthwaite's fur cloak disappearing through a huge fissure in the ice! He had presence of mind to utter one wild, despairing cry, which re-echoed far off in the lonely pine wood, and then he plunged after her and caught her dress. Superhuman strength seemed to come ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... riven down the stem, in a very surprising manner, and the stem lay in two blighted shafts: one resting against the house, and one against a portion of the old red garden-wall in which its fall had made a gap. The fissure went down the tree to a little above the earth, and there stopped. There was great curiosity to see the tree, and, with most of his former fears revived, he sat in his arbour—grown quite an old man—watching the people who came ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... after the destructive earthquake of April 2, the ground south of Hilo burst open with a crash and roar which at once answered all questions concerning the volcano. The molten river, after travelling underground for twenty miles, emerged through a fissure two miles in length with a tremendous force and volume. It was in a pleasant pastoral region, supposed to be at rest for ever, at the top of a grass-covered plateau sprinkled with native and foreign houses, and rich in ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... gravel-beds, and which must therefore have produced iron after those gravel-beds were raised out of the sea. On the south side of the road between Cheadle and Okeymoor in Staffordshire, yellow stains of iron are seen to penetrate the gravel from a thin morass on its surface. There is a fissure eight or ten feet wide, in a gravel-bed on the eastern side of the hollow road ascending the hill about a mile from Trentham in Staffordshire, leading toward Drayton in Shropshire, which fissure is filled up ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... began to be thirsty, and was glad, presently, when her quick, rustic ear caught the tinkling of water. Yet it was not so easy to discover, and she was getting footsore and tired again before she found it, some distance away, in a gully coming from a fissure in a dislocated piece of outcrop. It was beautifully clear, cold, and sparkling, with a slightly sweetish taste, yet unlike the brackish "alkali" of the plains. It refreshed and soothed her greatly, so much that, reclining against a tree, but where she ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... work would ever be done, if those who co-operated were too minute in seeking for perfect accordance of opinions; and that boundless charity which was his great characteristic made him perhaps underrate the importance of the fissure which his sister even then perceived between the ways of thinking of himself and his Bishop. His next sister, Anne, whose health was too delicate for a northern climate, was to accompany him; and the entire party who went out with Bishop Colenso numbered thirty or forty persons, ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... one of the columns or piles of concrete poured into shafts in order to support the building could be seen. The gap, which the stone slab removed by Guillaume had covered, was by the very side of the pillar; it was either some natural surface flaw, or a deep fissure caused by some subsidence or settling of the soil. The heads of other pillars could be descried around, and these the cleft seemed to be reaching, for little slits branched out in all directions. Then, on seeing his brother leaning forward, like one who is for the last time examining ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... exhausted? It required a deliberate and conscious effort to keep my brain quite cool. I have not the reputation of being of an excitable temperament, but the contrary; yet I could at that moment see my way to a condition in which one might become insane in an instant. It was as if a fissure opened somewhere, and I saw my way into a mad-house; then it closed, and everything went on as before. Once in my life I had obtained a slight glimpse of the same sensation, and then, too, strangely enough, while swimming,—in the mightiest ocean-surge into ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... starting in the utmost secrecy to gain the first right for themselves and friends. A trifling hint induces these stampedes. A wink from one old miner to another, and hundreds mounted their horses to seek some inaccessible mountain fissure. The more remote the diggings, so much the greater the excitement. Half the people of Helena lately hurried, in the depth of winter, to diggings on Sun River, (where many and many a brave fellow perished in the snows,) to learn that far richer mines had lain unclaimed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... be no doubt. The dead brands in the centre were the remains of a fire that could not have been kindled by wild beasts, and the bones scattered about had been scientifically dissected and handled. There were also remnants of furniture and pieces of garments scattered about. At the farther end, in a fissure of the rock, were stones regularly built up, the rem Yins of a larger fire,—and what the hunter did not doubt was the smelting furnace of the Spaniards. He poked about in the ashes, but found no silver. That ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... by a narrow path, cut here and there into steps, and passing many rocks covered with inscriptions, broken walls of mendongs, and other remains of the via sacra between the village and temple. At one spot we found a fissure emitting hot vapour of the temperature of 65.5 degrees, that of the air being about 50 degrees. It was simply a hole amongst the rocks; and near the Rungeet a similar one is said to occur, whose temperature fluctuates considerably with the season. It is very remarkable that such an isolated ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... scenic artist, some Olympian Veronese with sea and sky for a palette. And then the city itself, huddled between bay and mountains, and seething and bubbling like a Titan's cauldron! Here was life at its source, not checked, directed, utilised, but gushing forth uncontrollably through every fissure of the brown walls and reeking streets—love and hatred, mirth and folly, impudence and greed, going naked and unashamed as the lazzaroni on the quays. The variegated surface of it all was fascinating to Odo. It set free his powers of purely physical enjoyment, ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... slight change could be an adequate cause for such far-reaching and important symptoms. This hypothesis explains certain gall-bladder phenomena likewise,— indigestion, loss of weight, disturbed functions, etc.,—and it may supply the explanation of the disturbance caused by an active anal fissure, which is a potent noci-associator, and the consequent disproportionate relief after the trivial operation for its cure. Noci-association would well explain also the great functional disturbances of the viscera which immediately follow ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... waters from which Bath gets its fame are believed to owe their origin to the surface drainage of the E. Mendips, which percolates through some vertical fissure, perhaps at Downhead, to the heart of the hills, and are conducted by some natural culvert beneath the intervening coal measures, washing out as they go the soluble mineral salts, and whilst still retaining their heat emerge again at the ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... sure that an outlet must be there through some cleft in the range. The lake itself was of an almost perfect crescent shape, and Dick reckoned its length at seven miles, with a greatest breadth, that is, at the center, of about two miles. He judged, too, from its color and its position in a fissure that its depth ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... if by the wind, we mount or descend at the will of the hollows and the earthy mounds in the gigantic fissure dug and blackened and burned by furious flames. The soil clings to the feet and we tear them out angrily. The accouterments and stuffs that cover the soft soil, the linen that is scattered about from sundered knapsacks, prevent us from sticking fast in it, and we are careful to ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... ascend the tree. Its inclination, and the aid offered by the broken stumps of branches, made this comparatively easy, and in a few moments he reached its top, and stood upon a little ledge in the wall. A swift glance around him revealed the whole waterway or fissure slanting upward along the mountain face. Then he turned quickly to look down the dizzy height. At first he could distinguish nothing but the top of the buckeyes and their white clustering blossoms. Then something fluttered,—the ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... pop. 5000. Inns: Cheval Blanc, La St. Marie. The vineyards in this neighbourhood produce a good white Macon. Afew miles distant is the Vallon de Vaux-Chignon, below cliffs 200 ft. high. In a deep fissure is the source of the Cusane. 3 m. E. are the ruins of the castle Rochepot, 15th cent. In the church of the village is a remarkable echo. 8 m. beyond is Epinac, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... Conard Fissure, a Pleistocene bone deposit in northern Arkansas: with description of two new genera and twenty new species and subspecies of mammals. Mem. Amer. Mus. Nat., ...
— Pleistocene Bats from San Josecito Cave, Nuevo Leon, Mexico • J. Knox Jones, Jr.
... to join his faithful children in the small fissure of the rock, in which they lay prostrate at the voice of the Lord, said to them: "Rise up now, and fear nothing, but as true soldiers of Jesus Christ put on the armor of God, in order to be on your guard against the snares which the devil will ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... name. At a point on the river about forty miles from the sea, where the first houses come into view, there can be seen rising above the level of the forests the summits of two steep hills very close together, and separated by what looks like a deep fissure, the cleavage of some mighty stroke. As a matter of fact, the valley between is nothing but a narrow ravine; the appearance from the settlement is of one irregularly conical hill split in two, and with the two halves leaning slightly apart. On the third day after ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... and civilisation has taught you its ultimate achievement in ignoble hideousness. You look off into narrow side-channels where unconscious degradation has made its inexpugnable home, and sits veiled with refuse. You pass above lines of railway, which cleave the region with black-breathing fissure. You see the pavements half occupied with the paltriest and most sordid wares; the sign of the pawnbroker is on every hand; the public-houses look and reek more intolerably than in other places. The population ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... line; these wedges are struck in succession with heavy hammers, till the mass splits down. Another method of detaching masses of rock, is by driving wooden wedges into a deep artificial or natural crack, or fissure; the wedges are then wet, and, in consequence of swelling, ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... be seen, and in the fissure made by the saint the flowers and ferns were still growing; but there did not appear to be any danger of the immediate ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... themselves at the mouth of a narrow rocky boulder- strewn gorge bounded on either side by titanic masses of volcanic rock, rugged and moss-grown, with little patches of herbage here and there, or an occasional stunted pine growing out of an almost imperceptible fissure. The only signs of life in this wild spot consisted of a diminutive musk-ox here and there cropping the scanty herbage half-way up the apparently inaccessible height in spots from which it appeared equally impossible for the creature to advance ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... mule Hercules, as he had been many a time while riding over the lonely trail. In truth, there was some foundation for his declaration that he could sleep more soundly on the back of his animal than while wrapped up in his blanket in some fissure among the rocks. Fortunately for him, however, these naps were of short duration, and, while indulging in them, he relied upon his animal, which had acquired a wonderful quickness in detecting danger. The slightest lagging in his gait, a halt, a turning to one side ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... leisure the torrent we have just braved; above, it is smooth water, and away ahead we see the foam of another rapid. The rock on which we stand has been worn smooth by the washing of the water during countless ages, and from a cleft or fissure there springs a pine-tree or a rustling aspen. We have crossed the Petit Roches, and ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... certain conditions already described in connection with oil (pp. 140-144). In some cases the asphaltic material is found as impregnations of sediments, and appears to have remained in place while the lighter organic materials were volatilized and migrated upward. In other cases it occurs in distinct fissure veins; the fissures and cavities apparently were once filled with liquid petroleum, which has subsequently undergone further distillation. The original liquid character of some of these bitumens is shown by occasional fragments of unworn ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... into their respective languages. Though a certain resemblance exists among all these fiords, each has its own characteristics. The sea has everywhere forced its way as through a breach, yet the rocks about each fissure are diversely rent, and their tumultuous precipices defy the rules of geometric law. Here the scarp is dentelled like a saw; there the narrow ledges barely allow the snow to lodge or the noble crests of ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... was wild beyond description, lying in the lap of mountains that had in some day of world infancy been riven into a mighty boulder-strewn fissure between walls of sheer and ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... copious stream which rushed forth from its recesses, and recruit our own exhausted strength with food and rest, was our first necessary resource. In tracing the rocky course of the current for a convenient watering place, Antonio discovered that it issued from a cavern, which, though a mere fissure exteriorly, was, within, of cathedral dimensions and solemnity; we all entered it and drank eagerly from a foaming basin, which it immediately presented to our fevered lips. Our first sensations were those of freedom and independence, and of that perfect security which is ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... run through the office. In the last blizzard they burst. The fire in the fireplace was a conflagration; the steam radiator was singing a credible song; and as the water trickled down the pipe from the little fissure, it froze solid before it was three inches on ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... excitement, caused by the recent change in his prison, and the growing imbecility of a mind that was gradually losing its powers for want of use; "dost thou see the rent in that bit of wood? It opens with the heat, from time to time, and since I have been an inhabitant here, that fissure has doubled in length—I sometimes fancy, that when it reaches the knot, the hearts of the senators will soften, and that my doors will open. There is a satisfaction in watching its increase, as it lengthens, inch by inch, year ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... unue. Firtree pinarbo. Fisc fisko. Fiscal fiska. Fish fisxo. Fish fisxkapti. Fisher fisxkaptisto. Fishery fisxkaptado, fisxkaptejo. Fish-hook fisxhoko. Fishing fisxkaptado. Fishing-line hokfadeno. Fish-market fisxvendejo. Fishmonger fisxvendisto. Fissure fendeto. Fist pugno. Fit (illness) atako. Fit for, to be tauxgi. Fitly alkonvena. Five kvin. Fix fiksi. Fixed fiksa. Fixity fikseco. Flabby mola. Flag standardo. Flag (navy) flago. Flagon botelego. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... superficially ulcerated, and the discharge then becomes abundant and may crust on the surface, forming yellow scabs. At the angle of the mouth the condylomatous patches may spread to the cheek, and when they ulcerate may leave fissure-like scars radiating from the mouth—an appearance best seen in inherited syphilis ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... but whether the smooth and sloping surface of this particular portion of the rock was natural or artificial, that is, whether it had been expressly made so to form a bed for the poor condemned criminal, or whether the rock had accidentally broken into that form by means of some natural fissure, and so had been appropriated by the governor of the castle to that use, ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott
... left a few yards, the emigrants found a deep fissure through which the animals stumbled one by one over mounds of crumbled adobes. Thurstane, entering last, looked around him in wonder. He was inside a quadrilateral enclosure, apparently four hundred yards in length by two hundred and fifty ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... period of time. If these mountain chains and river courses are followed back it is found that they all radiate from one stupendous mass, the center of which is Mt. Apo, the highest mountain in the Philippines and reputed to be an active volcano. Near to its summit is a deep fissure from which, on clear mornings, columns of smoke or steam can be seen ascending, while the first rays of the rising sun turn into gold, or sheets of white, the fields of sulphur which ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... for long years in some neglected vault with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... Astoria. On the Green River they had been attacked by a war-party of the Black-feet, who had killed all except them, thanks to the Irishman's presence of mind, who pushed his fat companion into a deep fissure of the earth, and jumped after him. Thus they saved their bacon, and had soon the consolation of hearing the savages carrying away the goods, leading the mules towards the north. For three days they had wandered ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... different steps. In the first the bisecting membrane—i.e. the falx (menigx dichotomousa)—and the connecting blood-vessels are removed; and the dissector, commencing at the anterior extremity of the great fissure, separates the hemispheres gently as far as the torcular, and exposes a smooth surface (ten choran tulode pos ousan), the mesolobe of the moderns, or the middle band. In the second he exposes by successive sections the ventricles, the choroid ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... smitten on the head with a blow from her inverted wand; and charms are repeated, the converse of the charms that had been uttered. The longer she chaunts them, the more erect are we raised from the ground; and the bristles fall off, and the fissure leaves our cloven feet; our shoulders return; our arms become attached[27] to their upper parts. In tears, we embrace him {also} in tears; and we cling to the neck of our chief; nor do we utter any words before those that testify that ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... sprang down, regardless of the fumes. At the bottom of the steps he was conscious of treading on something soft, but did not stay to examine it, for a ray of light filtering in from a fissure in the roof showed him dark forms scurrying away in the distance along ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... but they, dreading the threat of their master, ran faster for a short time: but immediately then warlike Antilochus perceived the narrow of the hollow way. It was a fissure of the earth, where the wintry torrent collected, had broken away [part] of the road, and gullied the whole place; thither drove Menelaus, avoiding the clash of wheels. But Antilochus, deviating, guided ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... ascensional force, approached the ground; the anchors ran along until, at last, one of them caught in the fissure of a rock, and the ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... aid of a powerful telescope he had discovered an immense Fissure in the Moon. He was quite positive that he had also observed a Man in the Gap. Although unable to distinguish the features of this individual, he thought it might possibly be JAMES STEPHENS, the missing Fenian ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... given, but always sold. London is the town of closed doors. You feel yourself more a foreigner here than in any other country. On strolling along the spacious squares and magnificent streets in which civilization displays all its marvels, you seek in vain for some fissure by which to introduce yourself into English society, which is thickly steeped in individualism. With letters of recommendation, if of high authority, you may, it is true, gain access to a family of the middle ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... rapid, I ran over Parnes' ridge; Gully and gap I clambered and cleared till, sudden, a bar Jutted, a stoppage of stone against me, blocking the way. Right! for I minded the hollow to traverse, the fissure across: 60 "Where I could enter, there I depart by! Night in the fosse? Athens to aid? Though the dive were through Erebos, thus I obey— Out of the day dive, into the day as bravely arise! No bridge Better!"—when—ha! what was it I came ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... a fissure through the rock down into the cave. That's where the Germans that put in the radio plant made their hook-up. We can listen there, and maybe hear something to ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... slowly. It was a difficult matter. Here was a crevice that would hardly admit his eager fingers, and again a projection so narrow that it seemed to grudge him foothold. Some of the ledges, however, were wider, and occasionally a dwarfed huckleberry bush, nourished in a fissure, lifted him up like a helping hand. He quaked as he heard the roots strain and creak, for he was a pretty heavy fellow for sixteen years of age. They did not give way, however, and up and up he went, every moment increasing the depth below ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... Fissure and rent, where the intrusive dike's Creative and destructive agency Leaves many an enduring monument Of metamorphic and eruptive power; Of molten deluge, and volcanic flood; Fracture and break, the silent stories tell Of dire convulsion in the ages past; Of subterranean ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... of nitrous ingredients, spurted forth with a prodigious hissing noise at a temperature of boiling lead, from so inaccessible a fissure in the rocks that little had been done to investigate its peculiar properties. It was held none the less to be efficacious for the distemper known as PLICA POLONICA, and the peasant folk, mixing its spray ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... of Shanklin is the Chine. This is a natural fissure or cleft in the earth, running from the village to the sea in a circuitous direction and increasing in width and depth as it approaches the shore. It was most probably formed by the long continued running of a stream of water from the adjoining hills; this ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... pale, and die. Seek a cypress grove, whose moaning boughs will be harmony befitting; seek some cave, deep embowered in earth's dark entrails, where no light will penetrate, save that which struggles, red and flickering, through a single fissure, staining thy page ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley |
