"Basalt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... land-locked gulfs, which include some of the finest harbours in the world. About a third of its interior to the north and east is occupied by an elevated mountainous region, raised from 3,000 to 5,000 feet above the sea, and consisting of Primary rocks—granite, gneiss, and basalt—probably very ancient land, and forming during the Secondary geological epoch an island much smaller than the Madagascar of to-day. While our Oolitic and Chalk rocks were being slowly laid down under northern seas, the extensive coast ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... over rounded pebbles; the water was as clear as glass; in other places huge masses of rock impeded the flow of water, and caused dangerous rapids; then, as the river passed through a range of hills, perpendicular cliffs of sandstone and of basalt walled it within a narrow channel, through which it rushed with great impetuosity; issuing from these straits it calmed its fury in a deep and broad pool, from which it again commenced a gentle course over sands and pebbles. At ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... denuding agents, there can be no doubt that, to the land exposed to them, the waves of the sea are by far the most powerful. Think how they beat and tear, and drive and drag, until even the hardest rock, like basalt, becomes honeycombed into strange galleries and passages—Fingal's Cave, for instance—and the softer parts are crumbled away. But the area now exposed to the teeth of the waves is not great. The ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... the place of the words they seemed to be aching for. Above, a long monotonous sweep of waves, leaden-hued, anxious and jaded and sullen, if you can imagine such an expression in water. On one side an Alpine needle, as it were, of black basalt, girdled with snow. On the other a threaded waterfall. The red morning-tint that shone in the drops had a strange look,—one would say the cliff was bleeding;—perhaps she did not mean it. Below, a stretch of sand, and a solitary bird of prey, with his wings ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... fine a volcanic upheaval as one will find anywhere. Sheer walls of cloud-capped rock 6,000 feet high, some literally overhanging the crystal-clear water, and all embossed and engraved with strangely patterned basalt. There are pillars, battlements, and turrets; so that, with half-closed eyes, it seems you are approaching a temple, a medieval castle, or a mosque of the East. And the valleys—deep, choked with the most rampant growths of luxuriant vegetation, in the heart of which silvery streams gurgle ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... the gorge swept out into dreadful magnificences of height and depth, and glow and shadow. Cliffs of black basalt, scarred and riven by the accidents of thousands of years, frowned like eyeless giant faces. One height, with a supernal leap, had risen from the highest, and stood poised a mile aloft, as if it were a feat to stand so for a second, with a craggy head cut out of the sheet of blue. Mountain ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... with their wide-yawning gulfs, progress before and behind. Now far behind me is left the gardens' and hedges' sure escort, Every trace of man's hand also remains far behind. Only the matter I see piled up, whence life has its issue, And the raw mass of basalt waits for a fashioning hand. Down through its channel of rock the torrent roaringly rushes, Angrily forcing a path under the roots of the trees. All is here wild and fearfully desolate. Naught but the eagle Hangs in the lone realms of air, knitting the world to the clouds. Not one zephyr on soaring ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... let us take the black obelisk of Shalmaneser II., found by Layard at Nimroud. It is a column of basalt seven feet high and about two feet wide at the base, from which it narrows slightly, until near the top it is reduced by three steps. On the four sides is engraved in five rows of bas-reliefs, twenty in all, the pictured history of the royal conquests, the submission ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... love thee still in spite of it: Yet how should our Lord Love curtail one whit Thy perfect praise whom most he would exalt? Alas! he can but make my heart's low vault Even in men's sight unworthier, being lit By thee, who thereby show'st more exquisite Like fiery chrysoprase in deep basalt. ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... therefore should be received with caution. Six of the COOK AND AUSTRAL Islands (S.W. of the Society group), are fringed; of these, five were described to me by the Rev. J. Williams, as formed of coral-rock, associated with some basalt in Mangaia), and the sixth as lofty and basaltic. Mangaia is nearly three hundred feet high, with a level summit; and according to Mr. S. Wilson (Couthouy's "Remarks," page 34.) it is an upraised reef; "and there are in the central hollow, formerly the bed of the lagoon, ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... eye could reach, the blue mountains of Nevada. A narrow gorge, standing fairly on end, led down from the Pass. Without hesitation, like a sluggishly moving, viscid brown fluid, the sheep flowed over the edge. The dogs, their flanking duties relieved by the walls of dark basalt on either hand, fell to the rear with their masters. The mountain-bred horses dropped calmly down ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... of the Rheingau, glistened in the roll of Gottlieb's possessions; corn-acres below Cologne; basalt-quarries about Linz; mineral-springs in Nassau, a legacy of the Romans to the genius and enterprise of the first of German traders. He could have bought up every hawking crag, owner and all, from Hatto's Tower to Rheineck. Lore-ley, combing her yellow locks against the night-cloud, beheld ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... knows perfectly well that there is a great deal of necessity; and, therefore he builds them. Where? On rocks whose sides are one mass of buttresses, of precisely the same form; on rocks which are cut and cloven by basalt and lava dikes of every size, and which, being themselves secondary, wear away gradually by exposure to the atmosphere, leaving the intersecting dikes standing out in solid and vertical walls, from the faces of their precipices. The eye passes ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... the spot he and others familiar with the region knew as The Crater. Back about half a mile from the rim of Shoestring Canyon, which, itself, had originally been cut out of lava from extinct volcanoes of the range, rose a vast basalt peak, smooth and precipitous on the side toward the canyon. Its lower slopes had once been terraced down to the flat bench land which rimmed the canyon, but, unnumbered ages ago, the subterranean forces had burst their way through and formed a crater whose sides fell steeply away to the ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... his head was covered with a cap that had a projecting peak. The evening came, and darkness spread over the valley: the Black Forest had not received its name in vain. A few miles from Freiburg there stands a lonely hill, named the Emperor's Chair. Dark masses of basalt form the steps of this natural throne; tall evergreens stretch their branches protectingly over the hill. A fresh mountain air is cast about by the big trees, and the north wind is in eternal battle with this giant, which it bends but ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... the password was given. Entering, they beheld a great hall, surrounded by a colonnade of the Corinthian order, whereon had been lavished exquisite carving; in niches behind the columns stood statues in basalt, thrice the size of life, representing Roman emperors, and at the far end was a tribune with a marble throne. This, once the hall of audience, at present served as a sort of antechamber; here and there loitered a little group of citizens, ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... place worth all we have undergone. The crags are wonderful, chalk at the bottom, basalt above, and of course all round to the Giant's Causeway it is finer still. Well may we, as the Bishop is always doing, give thanks that we were taken, by the Divine Hand guiding tide and current, to this milder and ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... km Coastline: 965 km Maritime claims: measured from claimed archipelagic baselines exclusive economic zone: 200 nm territorial sea: 12 nm International disputes: none Climate: temperate; warm, dry, summer; precipitation very erratic Terrain: steep, rugged, rocky, volcanic Natural resources: salt, basalt rock, pozzolana, limestone, kaolin, fish Land use: arable land: 9% permanent crops: 0% meadows and pastures: 6% forest and woodland: 0% other: 85% Irrigated land: 20 km2 (1989 est.) Environment: subject to prolonged droughts; harmattan wind can obscure ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... sediment from our continent is carried into the seas of the New World. In short, we are still very little advanced towards the theory of the earth as it now exists." Guettard was the first to discover the volcanoes of Auvergne, but he was "hopelessly wrong" in regard to the origin of basalt, forestalling Werner in his mistakes as to its aqueous origin. He was thus the first Neptunist, while, as Geikie states, his "observations in Auvergne practically ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... northern hills begin with the basalt buttresses of Antrim and the granite ribs of Down, and pass through northern Ulster and Connacht to the headlands of Mayo and Galway. Their rear is held by the Donegal ranges, keeping guard against the blackness ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... erected at the charges of Don Antonio Escandon, to whose public spirit and enterprise the building of the Vera Cruz & Mexico Railway was due. The monument is the work of the French sculptor Cordier. The base is a large platform of basalt, surrounded by a balustrade of iron, above which are five lanterns. From this base rises a square mass of red marble, ornamented with four basso-relievos; the arms of Columbus, surrounded with garlands of laurels; the rebuilding of the monastery of Santa Maria de la Rabida; the discovery of ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... call them messengers and mediators, having their own saints in mind. But their forms were sometimes merely animal, a toad, a tortoise with a sun upon its back, and upon each side a star with the moon in her first change; another was a monstrous figure in basalt, representing a head surmounting a female bosom, diminishing to a ball; another was a human figure made ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... essential to the construction of the water-bound type of surface. Rocks vary considerably in the cementing properties of the dust, but usually the rocks classed as "trap," such as andesite, gabbro and rhyolite, and schist and basalt possess good cementing properties. Limestones usually possess good cementing properties, but some of the dolomitic limestones are of low cementing value. Quartz, sandstone and the granites ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... E. by N.) about twenty miles.] the road is most picturesque; always following the winding of the small river Ain, here and there compressed to only a few yards by perpendicular walls of trachyte, or basalt; further on expanding into miniature green plateaus, bordered by conical hills, covered to the very summit by mimosas and huge cactuses, alive with large hordes of antelopes (the agazin), which, bounding from rock ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... with the Black Guard, passed under a gateway, and were met by a shabbily dressed negress. Traversing a hot dazzle of polychrome tiles we reached another archway guarded by the chief eunuch, a towering black with the enamelled eyes of a basalt bust. The eunuch delivered us to other negresses, and we entered a labyrinth of inner passages and patios, all murmuring and dripping with water. Passing down long corridors where slaves in dim greyish garments flattened themselves against the walls, we caught glimpses of great ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... of the most precious portraits of antiquity, not merely because it confirms the testimony of the green basalt bust in the Capitol, but also because it supplies an even more emphatic and impressive illustration to ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... the older tertiary formations, with their abundant shells, and their relics of vegetable life buried under great sheets of basalt, led him to consider carefully the question of climate during these earlier periods. In opposition to prevalent views on this subject, Darwin points out that his observations are opposed to the conclusion that ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... of the hill was tree-covered, and they could see nothing beyond their immediate locality until the sailor found a point higher than the rest, where a rugged collection of hard basalt and the uprooting of some poon trees provided an open space elevated above ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... rivulets of water, ran through the thirsty fields, conveying the vivifying element which in this part of Usagara was so scarce and precious. Down to the river-bed sloped the Mpwapwa, roughened in some places by great boulders of basalt, or by rock masses, which had parted from a precipitous scarp, where clung the kolquall with a sure hold, drawing nourishment where every other green thing failed; clad in others by the hardy mimosa, which rose like a sloping ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... these small islands are very different according to their geological formation. The volcanoes, active or extinct, have steep black beaches of volcanic sand, or are fringed with rugged masses of lava and basalt. Coral is generally absent, occurring only in small patches in quiet bays, and rarely or never forming reefs. Ternate, Tidore, and Makian belong to this class. Islands of volcanic origin, not themselves ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... length of an average verse in the Bible, and is in pure Hebrew.[345] In a play of Plautus[346] a Carthaginian is made to speak a long passage in his native language, the Punic tongue; this is also very readable Hebrew. The black basalt stele, lately discovered in the land of Moab, contains an inscription of Mesha, king of Moab, addressed to his god, Chemosh, describing his victory over the Israelites. This is also in a Hebrew dialect. ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... the Barrier piles itself up against the mountain. It is here also that the great ice-cliff which runs for hundreds of miles to the east, with the Barrier behind it and the Ross Sea beating into its crevasses and caves, joins the basalt precipice which bounds the Knoll, as the two-knobbed saddle which forms Cape Crozier is called. Altogether it is the kind of place where giants have had a good time in their childhood, playing with ice instead of ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... eastern and the western. The principal point is the volcano Taal, located in the northeastern portion of the province of Batangas. It is situated on a small island in the center of the Bombon laguna, and has an altitude of 550 feet above sea level. Its form is conical, and the rock is composed of basalt feldspar with a small quantity of augite. The crater is supposed to be 232 feet deep. Its sides are almost vertical, and there are two steaming lagunas ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... of the finest works of art perhaps in the world! To navigate this river at the falls it has been necessary to cut a canal for one English mile at least through mountains of solid rock, and has eight locks. The mountains are granite and basalt. There is a cut through the rock also parallel with the river. This cut is useless, for there is in it a fall of sixty feet perpendicular, so that what it was made for it ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... unworthy of rest in the grave, unworthy of the resurrection, whereas the builder of the third and most beautiful pyramid, Menkera, who contented himself with a smaller monument, and reopened the gates of the temples, was allowed to rest in peace in his coffin of blue basalt. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... with instant eagerness, and every appearance of contentment, on forms of mountain which are rounded into banks above, and cut into precipices below, as is the case in most elevated table-lands; in the chalk coteaux of the Seine, the basalt borders of the Rhine, and the lower gorges of the Alps; so that while the most striking pieces of natural mountain scenery usually rise from the plain under some such outline as that at a, Fig. 82, Turner always ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... and his wife Parvati seated behind him; they have both snakes in their hands, and Siva has a large one round his loins as a waistband. There are several demons in human shape lying prostrate under the belly of the bull, and the whole are well cut out of one large slab of hard basalt from a dyke in the marble rock beneath. They call the whole group 'Gauri Sankar', and I found in the fair, exposed for sale, a brass model of a similar one from Jeypore (Jaipur), but not so well shaped and proportioned. On ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... of what had thus far been accomplished by the settlers. Small parties of prospectors had been sent out to ascertain the resources of the island; and, among many other valuable products, coal, iron, clay of exceptionally fine quality for the manufacture of bricks and tiles, marble, granite, basalt, limestone, pine, satinwood, teak, and sandalwood in exceedingly large quantities had been found. A brick and tile yard had been established over on the north-west side of the island, and large quantities of splendid bricks and tiles had already been made; a limekiln had been built, and was in full ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... is not only always possible to obtain continuities of this kind: it is, in drawing large forests or mountain forms, essential to truth. The towers of Ehrenbreitstein might or might not in reality fall into such a curve, but assuredly the basalt rock on which they stand did; for all mountain forms not cloven into absolute precipice, nor covered by straight slopes of shales, are more or less governed by these great curves, it being one of the aims of Nature in all her work to produce them. The reader must already know ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... recently visited was, as I have remarked, that they were covered with the same productions and the same stones as the plains below, of which they seemed to have formed a part. Milky quartz was scattered over them, although no similar formation was visible; of manganese, basalt, and ironstone, with other substances, there were now no indications. None of these fragments had been rounded by attrition, but still retained their sharp edges and seemed to be little ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... world—dim and dull and dusty and delightful, with nothing in it except at one end Donatello's colossal marble-headed wooden horse of Troy, stared at from the other end by the two dog-faced Egyptian women in basalt placed there ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... little black pebbles that they were cleared away by shoveling (La Sci. Pour Tous, 5-264); great number of small black stones that fell at Birmingham, England, August, 1858—violent storm—said to be similar to some basalt a few leagues from Birmingham (Rept. Brit. Assoc., 1864-37); pebbles described as "common water-worn pebbles" that fell at Palestine, Texas, July 6, 1888—"of a formation not found near Palestine" (W.H. Perry, ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... less silica and a larger proportion of the bases (lime, magnesia, soda, etc.) and therefore called BASIC. The acidic lavas, of which RHYOLITE and THRACHYTE are examples, are comparatively light in color and weight, and are difficult to melt. The basic lavas, of which BASALT is a type, are dark and heavy and melt ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... the most striking of the geological features of this region are immense gravel deposits displayed in sections on the walls of the river gorges. About two miles above the North Fork confluence there is a bluff of basalt three hundred and fifty feet high, and above this a bed of gravel four hundred feet thick, while beneath the basalt there is another bed ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... the gigantic windows in a row, each with curtains that fell in huge folds from the unseen into the seen. The ceiling probably existed. On every wall were gigantic paintings in thick ornate frames, and between the windows stood heroic busts of marble set upon columns of basalt. The chairs would have been immovable had they not run on castors of weight-resisting rock, yet against the tables they had the air of negligible toys. At one end of the room was a sideboard that would not have groaned under an ox whole, and at the ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... at Stradella, and then took his small block of basalt and a stoneware bottle of nitric acid from a leathern bag he carried, slung on his arm. The spotted cat seemed interested in these objects, and after having gazed at them placidly for half a minute, rose with deliberation, walked ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... the river here was due north and south. Perhaps a mile from the bank of the river to the west, rose a high tableland which terminated in precipitous and generally insurmountable bluffs of black basalt, extending above the general level of the valley about twelve hundred feet. Projecting eastward from the side of these lofty cliffs was a singular rocky plateau, the outer lines of which roughly formed a half circle. This elevation was bordered on the south by a deep and broken canon, ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... on the romantic coast of Northumberland, "over against" an obscure town of the same name. It stands upon a basalt rock, of a triangular shape, high, rugged, and abrupt on the land side; flanked by the German Ocean, and strong natural rampires of sand, matted together with sea rushes on the east; and only accessible to an enemy on the south-east, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... and by an entirely original ware was developed which has come down through history as one of the significant art contributions of the age. In addition to his Queen's ware, and Jasper ware, Wedgwood also made a black Egyptian-like ware called Basalt; another variety of cream-colored ware known as Bamboo; and a kind of terra-cotta that ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... tempestuous sea. Into the vast burning chasms, whence these ejections were thrown, two rivers plunged in cataracts; but the water only increased the violence of the eruption. It was thrown into steam with explosive force, and great quantities of mud and balls of basalt were ejected. On the surface of the swollen mound there were formed thousands of small cones, from six to ten feet in height, and sending forth steam to heights varying from twenty ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... basilica with its apsis, and near it a circular building evidently meant for the baptistery: this is covered with a cupola surmounted by the monogram of Christ; and over the gate are curtains drawn up on each side, See Raoul-Rochette-Tableau des Catacombs, p. 332. The font is an ancient urn of basalt the paintings above it, between the second order of columns, representing, the life of S. John Baptist, ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... associations of cryctognostically simple fossils. There are four phases in the formative condition; rocks of eruption, p 20 endogenous (granite, sienite, porphyry, greenstone, hyperathene, rock, euphotide, melaphyre, basalt, and phonolithe); sedimentary rocks (silurian schist, coal measures, limestone, travertino, infusorial deposit); metamorphosed rock, which contains also, together with the detritus mica schist, and more ancient metamorphic ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... range, extending nearly W. N. W., and consisting of black ferruginous sandstone. It was broad and of peculiar structure, so that it might well have been considered a dividing feature. Parallel to it on the south, a line of pointed hills of trap or basalt, extended so as to give birth, in the valley intervening, to the watercourse by which we were encamped. On one of these Mr. Kennedy afterwards found the Bottle tree, represented at page 154. I at length reached the gap in this range, ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... from ruins of the old temple have been preserved. Among them is the great Aztec calendar which belonged to it, on which are carved hieroglyphics representing the months of the year. This calendar was found in 1790 buried in the great square. It was carved from a mass of porous basalt, and made eleven feet eight inches in diameter. It was a fixture of the Aztec temple; it is now walled into one side of the cathedral. The "stone of sacrifice," another relic of the temple, nine feet in diameter, and covered with ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... in following up this belated clue that the pilgrims had come to the Ferry inn, crossing by team from valley to valley, cutting off a great bend of the Oregon Short Line as it traverses the Snake River desert; those bare high plains escarped with basalt bluffs that open every fifty miles or so to let a road crawl down to some little rope-ferry supported by sheep-herders, ditch contractors, miners, emigrants, ranchmen, all the wild industries of a country ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... the vale of Tempe, in his immense villa at Tibur, to enable him to celebrate his voluptuous feasts under the friendly eyes of Serapis. He extolled the merits of the deified Antinous in inscriptions couched in the ancient language of the Pharaohs, and set the fashion of statues hewn out of black basalt in the Egyptian style.[36] The amateurs of that period affected to prefer the hieratic rigidity of the barbarian idols to the elegant freedom of Alexandrian art. Those esthetic manifestations probably corresponded to religious prejudices, and the Latin worship always endeavored to imitate ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... to murder you," advised Saxham, facing the passionate emotion of the younger man as a basalt cliff might oppose a breaking wave, "you had ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the great marine glacial drift of the midland counties of England, and contains blocks, some of large size, not only of the Oolite of the neighbourhood, but of Chalk and other rocks transported from still greater distances, such as syenite, basalt, quartz, and New Red Sandstone. These erratic blocks of foreign origin are often polished and striated, having undergone what is called glaciation, of which more will be said by and by. Blocks of the same mineral character, embedded at Biddenham ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... away, the songs say, along the Mysian shore, and past the mouth of Rhindacus, till they found a pleasant bay, sheltered by the long ridges of Arganthus, and by high walls of basalt rock. And there they ran the ship ashore upon the yellow sand, and furled the sail, and took the mast down, and lashed it in its crutch. And next they let down the ladder, and went ashore ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... the opposite side of the sound, otherwise a short traverse might have saved us some days. The few eminences that are on this side were mistaken for islands when seen from the opposite shore; they are for the most part cliffs of basalt, and are not above one hundred feet high; the subjacent strata are of white sand-stone. The rocks are mostly confined to the capes and shores, the soil inland being flat, clayey, and barren. Most of the headlands shewed traces of visits from ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... Africans, as black as the basalt tablets in the museum, were seated on the floor of the white marble court. Some were eating their frugal meal; some were lying on their backs resting; while others were lost in prayer. Here and there a tall sheikh or a professor was standing talking to a group of students, seated on the ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... the largest is that of Borger, which contains forty-five blocks, of which ten are cap-stones. Several Huenenbetter have been excavated. In them are found pottery vases, flint celts, axes and hammers of grey granite, basalt, ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... to the Egyptian writing was discovered by means of the Rosetta Stone. This valuable relic, a heavy block of black basalt, is now in the British Museum. It holds an inscription, written in hieroglyphic, in demotic, and in Greek characters. Champollion, a French scholar, by comparing the characters composing the words Ptolemy, Alexander, and other names in the parallel ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... there, he found that the isle stood all on pillars, and that its roots were full of caves. There were pillars of black basalt, like Staffa; and pillars of green and crimson serpentine, like Kynance; and pillars ribboned with red and white and yellow sandstone, like Livermead; and there were blue grottoes like Capri, and white grottoes like Adelsberg; all curtained and draped with ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... far antedating the gravels of the Somme. It is therefore not a little interesting to learn from Prof. Whitney that he finds many proofs of the existence of man in the gravels of the Pliocene Age in California. Under the solid basalt of Table Mountain have been found many works of men's hands, as well as ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... use in Egypt were carved out of opaque or semi-transparent stones, and those cut in hard stone were usually made of some one of the following varieties: green basalt, diorite, granite, haematite, lapis lazuli, jasper, serpentine, verde antique, smalt, root of emerald, which is the same as plasma or prase[19] cornelian, amethyst, sardonyx, agate and onyx. Those of soft material were cut out of steatite, a soft limestone similar to chalk, ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer
... hours rummaging among the ruins of the Nile Delta. And behold! he found a stone which greatly puzzled him. Like everything else in Egypt it was covered with little figures. But this particular slab of black basalt was different from anything that had ever been discovered. It carried three inscriptions. One of these was in Greek. The Greek language was known. "All that is necessary," so he reasoned, "is to compare the Greek text with the Egyptian figures, ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... saw that they would be avoided by winding along the seashore. In fact, the great plutonic action is confined to the central portion of the island; there, rocks of the trappean and volcanic class, including trachyte, basalt, and tuffs and agglomerates associated with streams of lava, have made this a land of supernatural horrors. I had no idea of the spectacle which was awaiting us in the peninsula of Snfell, where these ruins of a fiery nature have ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... wrists and hands of the lady seated among the blue cushions in the Louvre are as illusive as any one of Mr. Whistler's "Nocturnes". The beautiful "Andromeda", head and throat leaned back almost out of nature, wild eyes and mass of heavy hair, long white arms uplifted, chained to the basalt,—how rare the simplifications, those arms, that body, the straight flanks and slender leg advancing,—are made of lines simple and beautiful as those which in the Venus of Milo realise the architectural ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... of the great, black pile, was the ancient habitat of these worthies, and the torture chamber, still extant, is a hall almost as big as the Dresden throne-room. In an inscription hewn in the basalt, the sovereign bishop, Johannes VI, poses as builder and seems proud of the damnable fact. Other princes of the Church let us know in high-sounding Latin script that they created the "Monk hole" and the "stairless ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... survived countless evolutions, countless universes. We know that through the Cosmos all is law. No chance decides what units shall form the planetary core, or what shall feel the sun; what shall be locked in granite and basalt, or shall multiply in plant and in animal. So far as reason can venture to infer from analogy, the cosmical history of every ultimate unit, psychological or physical, is determined just as surely and as exactly as in the Buddhist doctrine ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... Emma, Powell's party saw where vast floods of lava had flowed from it into the river. They declare that "a stream of molten rock has run up the Canyon three or four miles, and down, we know not how far. The whole north side, as far as we can see, is lined with the black basalt, and high up on the opposite wall are patches of the same material, resting on the benches, and filling old alcoves and caves, and giving to the wall a spotted appearance." All these volcanic mountains can be seen from Hopi or ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... and possibly the work of the same hand, being among the most interesting of our Norman fonts. The material of which they are made has never been settled, some authorities defining it as Tournai marble, others as basalt, and yet others as ...
— Winchester • Sidney Heath
... were shorter than hers, and his hands rested on the sensitive warmth of her upper arms. He peered at those dear gray-blue eyes of hers, but he could not calm himself enough to tell whether they were china-blue or basalt-black. ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... the lowlands with that untired rapidity of movement which had made Gaspar Ruiz' raids so famous. We followed the lower valleys up to their precipitous heads. The ride was not without its dangers. A cornice road on a perpendicular wall of basalt wound itself around a buttressing rock, and at last we emerged from the gloom of a deep gorge upon ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... "Owing to the peculiar and almost impassable nature of the country, Borneo has never been crossed by the white man. Travelling over some of the mountains seems to be an absolute impossibility. Many of them consist almost wholly of huge blocks of basalt, soft, moist, and too slippery to walk upon. I would rather attempt to cross the continent of Africa than the island of Borneo. The explorer must carry with him provisions enough to last both going and returning. The jungle affords nothing fit for human sustenance, and there ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... sensibility and fineness, not theirs, and for the like of which one must pass onward to the Antonines. Popular hatred had been careful to destroy its semblance wherever it was to be found; but one bust, in dark bronze-like basalt of a wonderful perfection of finish, preserved in the museum of the Capitol, may have seemed to some visitors there perhaps the finest extant relic of Roman art. Had the very seal of empire upon those sombre ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... a vein from one to three feet in thickness, of white quartz with specks of ore. Where did that quartz come from? From the limestone? But the limestone contains very little silica, and is apparently of normal composition quite up to the vein. From the trap? This is compact, sonorous basalt, apparently unchanged; and that could not have supplied the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... curious speculations on the origin of this island. It has long been decided that basaltic rocks are of igneous origin, in opposition to the theory of Werner—that they were deposited by the ocean on the summits of elevated mountains. May not the occurrence of these basalt rocks therefore illustrate the more immediate volcanic ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... it has been found that fresh basalt exposed to continually moving water will lose about 0.20 gramme per square metre of surface per year. The mineral orthoclase, which enters largely into the constitution of many granites, was found to lose under the same conditions 0.025 gramme. A glassy lava (obsidian) rich in silica ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... desecrate them, and gaze upward to their lofty, vaulted arches, to drink in the impression of architectual sublimity, which I can neither analyze nor express. Cathedrals do not seem to me to have been built. They seem, rather, stupendous growths of nature, like crystals, or cliffs of basalt. There is little ornament here. That roof looks plain and bare; yet I feel that the air is dense with sublimity. Onward I sped, crossing a bridge by the Hotel Dieu, and, leaving the river, plunged into narrow streets. Explored a quadrangular market; surveyed the old church of St Genevieve, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... three couplets are uncertain. In v. 18 Hebrew adds a basalt pillar and, after bronze, ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... vegetable palaeontology, a branch of knowledge to which our preceding Arctic expeditions yielded new additions of such importance through the fossil herbaria from luxuriant ancient forests which they brought to light from the ice-covered cliffs of Spitzbergen and from the basalt-covered sandstones and schists of the Noui-soak Peninsula in Greenland, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... is an immense shaft tapering gradually toward the top. It is built in stages, with a gallery round each. Each stage is different. In one it is fluted with round columns like a huge mass of basalt. In another the columns are angular; and in the next, round and angular alternately. The highest stage is plain. The height is very great, and the solidity of execution and the strength of the edifice are as striking as its ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... strikingly resembles that of the Rhine between Carlsruhe and Heidelberg. The same rock, the same aspect of country, and gres bigarre* (* Trias.) everywhere. The forest reminds one of Odenwald and of Baden-Baden. Nearer the coast are cones of basalt like those of Brissac and the Kaiserstuhl. The erratic phenomena are also very marked in this region; polished rocks everywhere, magnificent furrows on the sandstone and on the basalt, and parallel moraines defining themselves like ramparts upon ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... Princess; but the disproportion is too great; besides, our daughters must have husbands who will last, and you no longer know how to preserve yourselves. Of the last persons who were brought here, scarcely fifteen centuries ago, nothing now remains but a pinch of ashes. Look! my flesh is as hard as basalt, my bones are bars of steel. I shall be present on the last day, with the body and features I had in life. My daughter Hermonthis will last longer than a statue of bronze. But at that time the winds will have dissipated the last grains of your dust, and Isis herself, who ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... they had reached, and much of the range they had crossed, was formed of basalt in various stages of decomposition; but in the country before them, for several miles in advance, huge masses of granite and fragments of quartz indicated a change in the nature of the prevailing rock. The position of these ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... launch her again in blue water, where all around was bright and attractive; for though no large trees were growing near the shore, the land was covered with a glorious vegetation, and looked attractive right away to the slopes of the volcano, as soon as the crater bay, with its lowering black basalt, was left a quarter of a ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... was called the Ovifak meteorite, and large pieces of the iron were conveyed to our museums. There is, for instance, in the national collection a most interesting exhibit of the Ovifak substance. Close examination shows that this so-called meteorite lies in a bed of basalt which has been vomited from the interior of the earth. Those who believe in the meteoric origin of the Ovifak iron are constrained to admit that shortly after the eruption of the basalt, and while it was still soft, this stupendous iron meteorite of gigantic mass and bulk happened ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... at last the regions where its storied lapse, through so many ages, has been consecrated alike by nature and art-by poetry and eventful truth—flows reluctantly through the basalt portal of the Seven Mountains into the open fields which extend to the German sea. After entering this vast meadow, the stream divides itself into two branches, becoming thus the two-horned Rhine of Virgil, and holds in these two arms ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... water. Upon examination this white stratum is found to consist of calcareous matter with numerous shells embedded, most or all of which now exist on the neighbouring coast. It rests on ancient volcanic rocks, and has been covered by a stream of basalt, which must have entered the sea when the white shelly bed was lying at the bottom. It is interesting to trace the changes produced by the heat of the overlying lava, on the friable mass, which in parts has been converted into a crystalline limestone, and in other parts into ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... which is seldom altogether wanting, while the hornblende supplies both lime and magnesia. Dolerite, when composed entirely of augite and labradorite, produces rather inferior soils; but when it contains oligoclase and zeolites, and comes under the head of basalt, its disintegration is the source of soils remarkable for their fertility; for these latter substances undergoing rapid decomposition furnish the plants with abundant supplies of alkalies and lime, while ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... Basalt is a brown rock of igneous origin. It assumes regular forms, which astonish by their singular appearance. Here we found Nature proceeding geometrically, and working quite after a human fashion, as if she had employed the plummet line, the ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... within three-quarters of an hour's walk are found hereabout granite, sandstone, and basalt, a variety of ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... A few prowling sailors passed them. But for the most part the waterfront was deserted. The ships lay side by side—an intricate tangle of bowsprits and rigging, masts and chains. Around them the water was black as basalt, only that now and again a spark of light was struck by the faint lifting of the current against ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... western section varies from a deep black vegetable loam to a light brown loamy earth. The bills are generally basalt stone and slate. The surface is generally undulating, well watered, well wooded, and well adapted for agriculture and pasturage. The timber consists of pine, fir, spruce, oaks (white and red), ash, arbutus, cedar, arbor-vitae, poplar, maple, willow, cherry, ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... of Adone was flung, as the sunlit salt spray of the ocean is cast on a cliff of basalt, against the barrier of that weary and prostrate despair which the State dares to tell the poor is their duty and their ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... arms, jewels, and picture writings, these last relating to historic matters, both Toltec and Aztec. The great sacrificial stone of the aborigines, placed on the ground floor of the museum, is, in all its detail, a study to occupy one for days. It is of basalt, elaborately chiseled, measuring nine feet in diameter and three feet in height. On this stone the lives of thousands of human beings, we are told, were offered up annually. The municipal palace is on the south side of the plaza, nearly opposite to which is a block of buildings ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... same! Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence 20 One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side, And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats, And up into the aery dome where live The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk: And I shall fill my slab of basalt there, And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest, With those nine columns round me, two and two, The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands: Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse, 30 —Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone, deg. ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... plains; and as you travel from the south to the north, the older and harder they become. The highest mountains of Wales, and some of its hills, have crests of the very oldest and hardest rock—granite, porphyry, and basalt; and these rocks are given their form by fire. But the greater part of the country is made of rocks formed by water—still the oldest of their kind. In the north-west, centre, and west—about two-thirds of the whole country,—the rocks are chiefly slate and shale; ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards
... icy-white quartz project from the surface in dikes. These run for miles in tolerably direct lines, like walls, from west to east. Generally the rocks are granitic, consisting of syenite and gneiss, with micacious schist in the lower valleys. Occasionally, dikes of basalt break through the surface, which is generally much denuded, and the ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... Will to find another 'Old Blue' or a 'perfect treasure of a black basalt' by that ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... to-day, the port of Nubia. It is about 275 miles, or 25 days' camel-journey, from thence to Berber on the Nile. The road passes through Korib, and among fine red granite and black basalt mountains, 4,000 feet high. We left one of the firemen, Tom Dollar, behind at Aden by mistake, and only found out yesterday that we had done so. It appears that he has a brother living there, whom he was most anxious to go and see directly the anchor was ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... and leagues from the coast they were approaching, vast islands disclosed themselves suddenly through the sea haze, standing like giants waist deep in the ocean, whilst the coast itself with its cliffs and rocks of black basalt and dolerite shewed clear, extraordinarily clear, with every detail defined in the sunlight, from the rifts in the basalt to the gulls blowing about in legions and the ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... for me, swim the river, and push through the forest, around that steep, pyramid peak to the next canyon. You see it?—The Duckabush cuts through there to tide water. I left no trail in crossing the stony bed of the brook, and took advantage of a low basalt bluff in climbing the farther bank. It was while I was working my way over the rock into cover of the trees that the pleasant calling on the ridge behind me changed to the first terrible cry. The mother had found ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... the warm blue sky, indescribably blue, that appears almost to touch the feathery heads of them. And all things within and without the yellow vista are steeped in a sunshine electrically white, in a radiance so powerful that it lends even to the pavement of basalt the glitter ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... of Loch Foyle, one of the most beautiful bays in Ireland, gave us a fine return in fish. Especially I remember the magnificent turbot which we took off the wild shore between the frowning basalt cliffs of the Giant's Causeway, and the rough headlands of Loch Swilly. We sold our fish in the historic town of Londonderry, where we saw the old gun Mons Meg, which once so successfully roared ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... all things comes their hour. The black column of basalt quivers to its heart with one keen lightning thrill that vindicates its kin to the electric flash without; the granite cliff loses one atom from its bald front, and every other atom quails before the dumb shiver of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... basalt let us raise The bust of CAESAR; he has done Great things for Rome; but here is one Above the rest, o'ertopping praise. The elephants and kings are gone, But still the roaring tumult sways— Much for the Conqueror of the East, More ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... bone-caverns. Eruptive masses intrude in the Balkans and Sredna Gora, as well as in the Archean formation of the southern [v.04 p.0774] ranges, presenting granite, syenite, diorite, diabase, quartz-porphyry, melaphyre, liparite, trachyte, andesite, basalt, &c. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... water, earth, and fiery exhalations— And by what force they function and go on: The fact is founded in the void of things. But if the primal germs themselves be soft, Reason cannot be brought to bear to show The ways whereby may be created these Great crags of basalt and the during iron; For their whole nature will profoundly lack The first foundations of a solid frame. But powerful in old simplicity, Abide the solid, the primeval germs; And by their combinations more condensed, All objects can be tightly knit and bound And made to show unconquerable ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... mussulmans erected a mosque, that they might perform their devotions where, according to their belief, mohammed received from the angel gabriel the first chapter of the Koran."—Author. "In the kaaba at mecca, there is a celebrated block of volcanic basalt, which the mohammedans venerate as the gift of gabriel to abraham, but their ancestors once held it to be an image of remphan, or saturn; so 'the image which fell down from jupiter,' to share with diana the homage of the ephesians, was probably nothing more than a meteoric stone."—Id. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... but in this they entirely lost sight of their original meaning. This is strikingly the case with the Scarabaeus which, under the hands of the Etruscan cutter, lost at once all specific character. He might be Scarabaeus anything: he is not pilularius; and, instead of being made of basalt, porphyry, smalt, and very rarely of pietra dura, as in Egypt, he is engraved in carnelian, onyx, sardonyx, and all the rare and lovely varieties of pietra dura,—which, being essentially the same, change their names with their colors,—but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... with definite outlines, but only as lamellar masses in deep-seated igneous rocks, principally gabbro, of which it is an essential constituent. It occurs also in some peridotites and serpentines, and rarely in volcanic rocks (basalt) and crystalline schists. Masses of considerable size are found in the coarse-grained gabbros of the Island of Skye, Le Prese near Bornio in Valtellina, Lombardy, Prato near Florence, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... type to use, till Mel dragged out his rock book. Most, automatically, had wanted basalt. However, the moon's density being low, heavier rocks are probably scarce—one good reason not to expect radioactive ores there. We finally settled for rhyolite ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins
... present into the past. Simpkins found himself looking between a double row of pillars, covered with hieroglyphics in red and black, to an altar of polished black basalt, guarded on either side by stone sphinxes. Behind it, straight from the lofty ceiling, fell a veil of black velvet, embroidered with golden scarabaei, and fringed with violet. The approach, a hundred paces or more, was guarded by twoscore mummies ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... lofty rugged hills on each side; some were peaked. The black colour of almost all, with white streaks, gave them a sombre appearance. The external surface of this sandstone soon acquires a shining black, like basalt; so much so, that I have several times been deceived, till I took up the specimen. The white part is from a shining white aluminous schistus, that separates into minute flakes like snow. The ground had in many places the appearance of being ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... the Mountain is composed are mainly andesites of different classes and basalt. But the peak rests upon a platform of granite, into which the glaciers have cut in their progress. Fine exposures of the older and harder rock are seen on the Nisqually, just below the present end of its glacier, as well ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... Rotonda was found, under the apse of the church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, together with the one now in the Villa Mattei von Hoffman. In 1435, Eugenius IV. discovered the two lions of Nektaneb I. which are now in the Vatican, and the two of black basalt now in the Capitoline Museum. In 1440 the reclining figure of a river-god was found and buried again. The Tiber of the Louvre and the Nile of the Braccio Nuovo seem to have come to light during ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... equipment Colenso found he had not been supplied with an inking-table, composing-sticks, leads, galleys, cases, imposing-stone, or printing-paper. A clever catechist made him an imposing-stone out of two boulders of basalt found in a river-bed hard by. Leads he contrived by pasting bits of paper together, and with the help of various make-shifts, printed on February 21, 1835 the first tract published in New Zealand. It consisted of the Epistles to the Ephesians and Philippians in Maori, printed on sixteen pages of ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... side, the remains of the extensive necropolis of Gadara are still to be seen. Innumerable sepulchral chambers are excavated in the limestone cliffs, and many of them still contain sarcophaguses of basalt; while not a few are converted into dwellings by the inhabitants of the present village of Um Keis. The distance of Gadara from the south-eastern shore of the Lake of Tiberias is less than seven miles. The nearest of the other cities of the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... many-colored rocks-white and grey, sulphurous yellow, blood-red and ominous black. He recalled the sacred lake of Muth in Thebes, round which sat a hundred statues of the lion-headed Goddess in black basalt, each on a pedestal; and the rocky peaks, which surrounded the valley at his feet, seemed to put on a semblance of life and to move and open their yawning jaws; through the wild rush of blood in his ears he fancied he heard them roar, and the load beyond his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was placed a pavement of large stones, which were firmly set in cement. These stones were sometimes square, but more frequently irregular. They were, however, always accurately fitted to each other. Many varieties of stone were used, but the preference was given to basalt. Where large blocks could not be conveniently obtained, small stones of hard quality were sometimes cemented together with lime, forming a kind of concrete, of which masses extending to a depth of several feet are still in existence. The ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... do you not look eagerly for every opening to the north and south, which lets in the luster of the Firth of Forth, or the rugged outline of the Castle Rock? Take away the sea-waves, and the dark basalt, and I fear you would find little to interest you in George Street by itself. Now I remember a city, more nobly placed even than your Edinburgh, which, instead of the valley that you have now filled by lines of railroad, has a broad and rushing river of blue water sweeping through the heart ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... and in seven days' forced camel march we again reached the river Abou Hamed. The journey through that desert is most fatiguing, as the march averages fifteen hours a day through a wilderness of scorching sand and glowing basalt rocks. The simoom was in full force at that season (May), and the thermometer, placed in the shade by the water skins, ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... present. No hills farther, mere flat country, to eastward of that. But to the north, again, about Striegau, the hollow deepens, narrows; and certain Hills," much notable at present, "rise to west of Striegau, definite peaked Hills, with granite quarries in them and basalt blocks atop:—Striegau, it appears, is, in old Czech dialect, TRZIZA, which means TRIPLE HILL, the 'Town of the Three Hills.' [Lutzow, p. 28.] An ancient quaint little Town, of perhaps 2,000 souls: brown-gray, the stones of it venerably weathered; has its wide big market-place, piazza, plain-stones, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... carved from blocks of rough pink basalt, the entry guarded by two great caryatids enwrapped in chains of carved metal, set somehow into the surface of the basalt. The gilt had long ago worn away from the chains so that it alternately gleamed gold or smudged base metal. The caryatids were patient and blind, their jewel-eyes ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... title one chooses to give the thing, can look at its product with a certain degree of complacency and satisfaction. For it has your curved lines: it starts off into noticeable angles; it is jagged like corals; it darts forward like crystals; it agglomerates like basalt; nay, there is no conceivable line that does not hop, skip, and jump about our bodies. We, coz, are the spoilt, the cockered children of the formation: and this is why the common rabble of nature are so malicious and envious toward us. Their slim wretched fashion is next door to the slimy eel: ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... something to see," he promised. "These volcanoes have been dormant for, oh, maybe as long as a thousand years; there ought to be a pretty good head of gas down there. And the magma'll be thick, viscous stuff, like basalt on Terra. Of course, this won't be anything like basalt in composition—it'll be intensely compressed metallic fluorides, with a very high metal-content. The volcanoes we shot three months ago yielded a fine flow of lava ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... caverns, which the Indians call 'the mouths of hell.' In the district about the town of San Pablo, which is situated on the mountain, are found great numbers of little circular lakes and immense heaps of rotten stones, basalt, and different descriptions of lava, which show that all these lakes are nothing else than the craters of old volcanoes. Altogether the soil to the southward, in the province of Albai, is completely volcanic, and the frequent eruptions of the volcano bearing that name may, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... and a small mountain, but all the country in that direction seemed to be extremely arid and repellent. The bare basalt of volcanic origin showed everywhere, and, even at the distance, he could see many deep quarries in the stone, where races older, doubtless, than Aztecs and Toltecs, had obtained material for building. It was always Ned's feeling when in Mexico that he was in an old, old land, not ancient like ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... basalt, can be cut into slices of about 3/32 inch thick. A very loose rock is best boiled in Canada balsam, hard enough to set, before it is put against ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... the hand of man are found in great quantities in the bone beds of the Godavery. Some javelin heads in sandstone, basalt, and quartz, with scrapers and knives, most of them flat on one side and rounded on the other, appear to be even more ancient than the agate implements. Some of the celts resemble those of European type, others the ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... blowing dead on shore at Horta, and it was preferable to run for shelter under the lee of the island. As we closed the land, grand effects were produced by the clouds and mist driving before the gale down the green slopes of the mountains to the dark cliffs of lava and basalt, on which the mighty surges of the Atlantic were breaking into foam. Late in the afternoon of December 2nd the 'Sunbeam' gained the northern entrance to the channel which divides Fayal and Pico. An attempt was made to reach Horta, but it was found that a heavy sea was running into the anchorage. ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... mass of what seemed to be basalt polygons, similar to the Giants' Causeway of Ireland back on Earth. There was no softness anywhere. The stone which on other planets underlay soil, here showed harshly. There was no soil. There was ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... precipitous, both towards the main and the peninsula; but a natural terrace runs along under the cliff in the direction of Camden Sound, which I believe would form a good road to that harbour. The tract thus enclosed appears to be very fertile. Porphyry and basalt are the common rocks. The soil is rich vegetable mould, mixed with gravel and covered with the most luxuriant grass. The trees were in general small. We only found three springs here; these however were sufficient to prove that it was well supplied in this respect. A species ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... fine basalt hills through which the river passes during its course from Khartoum, I was surprised to see the great Nile contracted to a trifling width of from eighty to a hundred and twenty yards. Walled by high cliffs of basalt upon either side, the vast volume of the Nile flows grandly through this romantic ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... to enumerate them here. We must be satisfied with mentioning the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, before the palace; the Captive Kings, in the court; the columna rostrata; and within, the colossal statue of Pyrrhus; the tomb of Severus; the Centaurs, of basalt; the beautiful alabaster pillars; the masterpiece in mosaic, which once belonged to cardinal Furietti, representing three doves on the edge of a vessel filled with water, which is described by Pliny. The fountains are among the principal ornaments of the squares in Rome. The ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... the province of South Ilocos, where we left the animals. From there we took a guide, who conducted us on foot to the east, close to a small river called Abra (opening). This river is the only issue by which we could penetrate to the Tinguians. It winds around high mountains of basalt; its sides are steep; its bed is encumbered with immense blocks of rock, fallen from the sides of the mountains, which render it impossible to walk along its banks. To reach the Tinguians, it is necessary to have recourse ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... ship towards these, and when he came near them they were like two mighty mountains of wood burning far into heaven, and each was lofty as the pyre that blazes over men slain in some red war, and each pile roared and flared above a steep crag of smooth black basalt, and between the burning mounds of fire lay the flame-flecked ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... structure is ophitic in the finer varieties, and to some extent in the coarser kinds as well. They are holocrystalline in form and true glassy bases are rare, rendering the term diabase more appropriate than basalt. ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... example, the chalky cliffs may be discovered a little eastward from Portrush; after a short course, they are suddenly depressed to the water's edge, under Dunluce Castle, and, soon after, lost entirely in passing near the basalt-hill of Dunluce, whose craigs, near the sea, are all columnar. At the river Bush the lime-stone recovers, and skims a moment above the level of the sea, but immediately vanishes in approaching towards the great basalt ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... touched my lips, lo! the river vanished, and the flat country with its poppies and lilies, and I dreamed that I was in a boat by myself again, floating in an almost land-locked bay of the northern sea, under a cliff of dark basalt. I was lying on my back in the boat, looking up at the intensely blue sky, and a long low swell from the outer sea lifted the boat up and let it fall again and carried it gradually nearer and nearer towards ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... reigned in this strange valley, and the dim, uncertain light made the great, basalt rocks loom up vague and fantastic. There was no path, and the ground was most uneven, but I pushed on briskly, cautioning my fellows to have their fingers on their triggers, for I could see that we were nearing the point ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the river canon is built up in stories of basalt rock, each story defined by a horizontal fissure, out of which these mysterious waters gush, white and cold, taking glorious colors in the sunlight from the rich under-painting of the rock. There is an awfulness about it, too, as if that sheer front of rock ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... came to an immense barren plain, without a sign of vegetation. The air was dry and the sky unclouded blue. At this elevation rain is unknown, and vapors only condense into snow or hail. Here and there peaks of porphyry or basalt pierced through the white winding-sheet like the bones of a skeleton; and at intervals fragments of quartz or gneiss, loosened by the action of the air, fell down with a faint, dull sound, which in a denser atmosphere would have ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... the valley bordering on the cave, shaded by fir and other trees, was thoroughly explored, and on turning the point of the south-western spur, the colonists entered a narrower gorge similar to the picturesque columns of basalt on the coast. Here the trees were fewer. Stones took the place of grass. Goats and musmons gambolled among the rocks. Here began the barren part of the island. It could already be seen that, of the numerous valleys branching off at the base ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... from Sunrise Land the better. There were many such monuments of divinities in the north. They are met with all about the lakes and in the wooded wilderness, the most striking one being the magnificent spire of basalt in the Black Hills region of Wyoming. It is known as Devil's Tower, or Mateo's Tepee, and by the red men is held to be the wigwam of a were-animal that can become man at pleasure. This singular rock towers above the Belle Fourche River ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... and adjusted that no mortar was necessary; sometimes with a projecting part of the stone fitting exactly into a corresponding cavity of the stone immediately above or below it. Such huge stones are of hard granite or basalt, etc. The walls are often very massive and substantial, sometimes from thirty to forty feet in thickness. The only approach to the modern "arch" in the Peruvian structures is a device similar to that which was described under ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... soil forms from these materials it tends to not be acid. Most basic igneous rocks also contain a wide range of trace mineral nutrients. I have observed marked improvements in plant growth by incorporating ordinary basalt dust that I personally shoveled from below a conveyor belt roller at a local quarry where crushed rock was being prepared for road building. Basalt dust was an unintentional ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... who found the witch's habitat, but got only an indistinct view of her face. On a second trial he was successful.[2] One may add that treasure-seekers among the Huille-che 'look earnestly' for what they want to find 'into a smooth slab of black stone, which I suppose to be basalt.'[3] ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... of the window at the Square. It was Saturday, and all over the Square little stalls, with yellow linen roofs, were being erected for the principal market of the week. In those barbaric days Bursley had a majestic edifice, black as basalt, for the sale of dead animals by the limb and rib—it was entitled 'the Shambles'—but vegetables, fruit, cheese, eggs, and pikelets were still sold under canvas. Eggs are now offered at five farthings ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... down into the depths below. This was followed by a grinding sound and a rumble like thunder; then high above us shot a shower of red-hot lava and stones, while we crouched under a projecting shelf of black basalt, and forgot that we were prisoners in the midst of such an impressive scene. When the stream of fire which darted upwards had somewhat subsided, our captives urged us forward, and on we went, tumbling and ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Then tell me of your city in the sea, Paved with red basalt of the Paduan hills. Tell me of art in Venice. Three great names, Giorgione, Titian, and the Tintoretto, Illustrate your Venetian school, and send A challenge to the world. The first is ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... noticed if they are divided in irregular masses, tables or prisms, and what is their arrangement. It be must remarked if they contain the remains of organised bodies, and care must be taken to take samples in their different states, also of the matter on which the basalt rests. It must be certain above all that there is no intervention of scorified matter, or beds of an earthy appareance, to which the Germans give the name of Wakke, and which are proved to be of volcanic origin. ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various
... I have seen, and all of which I can obtain authentic accounts, are on thin gravelly soils; frequently, as is the case in the Rheingau, on decomposed granite, quartz, and sienite. Slate mixed with quartz on a clayish bottom, and with basalt, is esteemed a good soil, as is also marl and gravel. The Germans use rich manures, but I do not think this is ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... save the incessant angry murmur of the Nile as it raced round a basalt-walled bend and foamed across a rock-ridge half a mile upstream. It was as though the brown weight of the river would drive the white men back to their own country. The indescribable scent of Nile mud ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... great basaltic cliffs. 1m. from Le Puy the train passes the village of Espaly, and by the face of basaltic columns rising from the Borne and its little affluent the Riou-Pzeliou, in whose bed zircons and blue sapphires have been found. On the opposite side of the Borne is the great mass of basalt called the Croix de la Paille, with a display of prisms in three tiers, called les orgues d'Espaly. The village, pop. 2300, is built at the foot of a rock of volcanic breccia crowned by the scanty ruins of a castle built in 1260 by Guillaume de ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... the excessive hardness and durability of this kind of basalt, this monumental fortress will endure long after the corroding tooth of time shall have crumbled to dust the royal pyramids and their very memory shall have been lost ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... basalt rock, pozzuolana (a siliceous volcanic ash used to produce hydraulic cement), limestone, ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... humour had failed to move the brutal egoism of his brother, beating upon it like the lightest of sea-foam on a rock of basalt, he was made to fall back upon the alternative of heavy denunciation. And it was significant that this commonplace tirade drew more applause than all the pretty wit that had gone before it. Seldom have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... terrible temptation. They knew the walls of the citadel of morality, built alone on natural virtue and unaided by divine grace, would soon crumble before their powerful machinations. In moments of sober reflection our resolutions are like prisms of basalt, that will not be riven by the lightning, but which in the hour of real trial prove to be ice-crystals that a sunbeam can dissolve. The powers that wage war with frail humanity have hung on the portals of the infernal kingdom, as trophies of triumph over ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... which carried them in wild bounds across impassable chasms, their laboring lungs checked them in the ascent. The joyous inebriation was wearing off. Winslow met his companion's eyes sheepishly as they stopped where a sheer cliff of basalt above caught and held the warmth of the sun's rays. Behind them it rose a straight hundred feet, and before stretched a vast panorama. The sun was mounting now in the sky. It brought into strong relief the welter of volcanic waste ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... to the inorganic world. Unfortunately, Hutton's theory was linked to the extravagancies of what was known at that day as 'Vulcanism' or 'Plutonism,' in contradistinction to the 'Neptunism' of Werner. Hutton, while rejecting the Wernerian notion of "the aqueous precipitation of basalt," maintained the equally fanciful idea that the consolidation of all strata—clays, sandstones, conglomerates, limestones and even rock-salt—must be ascribed to the action of heat, and that even the formation of chalk-flints ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd |
