"Fissure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... worse spectacle than this—worse by far than fire and smoke, or even the rabble's unappeasable and maniac rage. The gutters of the street, and every crack and fissure in the stones, ran with scorching spirit, which being dammed up by busy hands, overflowed the road and pavement, and formed a great pool, into which the people dropped down dead by dozens. They lay in heaps all round this fearful pond, husbands and wives, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... fosse, that they suspected that he was a foe. Running to the walls they opened fire with arrows upon him, but by this time Archie had seen all that he required. Across the promontory ran a sort of fissure, some ten yards wide and as many deep. From the opposite edge of this the wall rose abruptly. Here assault would be difficult, and it was upon the gateway that an attack must be made. Several arrows had struck his armour and glanced off, and Archie now ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... 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 fulfilment of the ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... first second or two? He may have his eye on the mark at the discharge, but somehow the report always throws his ocular apparatus out of gear. In a moment I espied one of the bears scrambling over an ice-cake. The other had already disappeared; or else was killed, and had fallen down some fissure. ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... it was light enough for them to see what changes the night had brought, they found that all the creeks and channels were open far out to sea, but in the bay where they were frozen in not a fissure could be seen in the ice, which lay firm ...
— The Treasure • Selma Lagerlof
... 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 to their ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... opposite the Castle of Belfort (the modern Kulat-esh-Shukif), the river suddenly makes a turn at right angles, altering its course from nearly due south to nearly due west, and cuts through the remaining roots of Lebanon, still at the bottom of a tremendous fissure, and still raging and chafing for a distance of fifteen miles, until at length it debouches on the coast plain, and meanders slowly through meadows to the sea,[147] which it enters about five miles to the north of Tyre. The course of ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... gorgeous as the green mosses that be-ruff the roofs of farm and cottage, when the sunbeam slants on them and goes. The old road out towards the common, and the hoary dikes that might have been built in the reign of Alfred, have not been forgotten by the generous adorning season; for every fissure has its mossy cushion, and the old blocks themselves are washed by the loveliest gray-green lichens in the world, and the large loose stones lying on the ground have gathered to themselves the peacefulest mossy coverings. Some ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... verge of a tremendous chasm, which, opening at our feet, divided the barren ground on which we stood, from a lovely sunlit plain of many miles in extent. Winding our way down, we entered the Almannagya by a narrow fissure. The path leads for nearly a mile, the rocks rising as perpendicular walls on either side from 80 to 100 feet; so narrow was it in some places that there was little more than room for the path. In other places where it widened, patches ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... fissure some inches wide in the main wall from the ground to the roof, and a little more force would have effected the evident object of making the residence of the obnoxious agent a heap of ruins. The ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... 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, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... with a small caravan going from St. Louis to 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 south, in the hope of meeting with some trappers, and this very ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... 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 precipice, however, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... roaring continued for perhaps two minutes, during which time the castaways found it impossible to stand, for the island was shaking under their feet with a sickening motion. Off to one side there was a great fissure in the earth, and, frightened as he was, Tom looked to see if it ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... wall, and they immediately became ignited. Herr M. then threw in a cigar, which also burst into a flame. The heat proceeding from these clefts was so great, that we could not bear to hold our hands there for an instant. At one place, near a fissure, we laid our ears to the ground, and could hear a rushing bubbling sound as though water was boiling beneath us. There was really much to see in this hell, without the discomfort of being enveloped in the offensive sulphurous smoke of ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... 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 ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... adds the writer, "for persons to survive for a time the felling of the tree." The ordinary mode of effecting the cure is to split a young ash-sapling longitudinally for a few feet and pass the child, naked, either three times or three times three through the fissure at sunrise. In the West of England it is said that the passage should be "against the sun." As soon as the ceremony has been performed, the tree is bound tightly up and the fissure plastered over with mud ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Akiba said, "he may cut them as it is usual with an axe, or sickle, or saw, or with whatever he pleases." "A tree that is split?" "Men may bind it round in the Sabbatical year, not that it may cohere, but that its fissure may not extend." ...
— Hebrew Literature
... down the aperture, and at last managed to make a slight further fissure in the piping. The light that came up from beyond was very faint, and apparently indirect; it seemed to fall from some hole or window higher up. As he was screwing his eye to peer at this grey and greasy twilight he was ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... The reparation of a fissure of the length of 1 1/2 inches in the right side of his guest's jacket. A gift to his guest of one of the four lady's handkerchiefs, if and when ascertained to be in a ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... took the tears of balsam, Took the resin of the Fir-tree, Smeared therewith each seam and fissure, Made each ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... noticeable 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 her way was eased ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... one of the disposal customs and is not well remembered by Washo living today. The burning or burying of the personal possessions of the dead was common. Certain prized possessions were interred with the body, which was usually wrapped in a shroud of matting, deerskin, or bearhide and placed in a fissure or cave in the mountains. Although there are a number of locations known by both Indians and local whites as old burying grounds, all my informants agreed that in the "real old days" there was no special cemetery ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... is it?" mumbled Ta-Vwots. "I know a way out of this that you don't know." With a few puffs of his breath and a few kicks of his legs he reached a great fissure that led into the rock behind him, and along this passage he scrambled until he came to the edge of it in a niche, from which he could watch his enemies digging. When they had made the hole quite large he shouted, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... it, but found the light too feeble for him to distinguish surrounding objects by. It entered the cell through a small fissure in one of the walls, and after a few minutes was suddenly withdrawn. Frederick-Christian stumbled forward in the darkness and, after taking a few steps, his feet struck some object lying on the ground. Stooping down, he ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... morning of the 26th of October, 1822, a current was seen to flow from a lateral fissure of the crater of Vesuvius, and was loong supposed to have been boiling water; it was, however, shown, by Monticelli's accurate investigations, to consist of dry ashes, which fell like sand, and of lava pulverized by friction. The ashes, ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... and are 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
... its character, and comprehend its awfully impressive effects, it is necessary to see the bridge, the chasm, and the roaring water, from different projecting crags which impend over the river. At a little distance below the bridge, "the fissure gradually spreads its rocky jaws; the bottom opens; and, instead of the dark precipices which have hitherto overhung and obscured the struggling river, it now emerges into day, and rolls its murmuring current through ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... difficulty would not occur again they pushed on, but had not gone far when another, and still more impassable, fissure ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... not only very great acreage of coal measures, which have been producing coal for commercial purposes for local and foreign trade for thirty years and are scarcely scratched as yet, but also fissure veins of the precious metals—gold, silver, lead, [Page 63] copper, antimony, arsenic, and also iron, asbestos, fire clays, kaolin, granite, sandstones, ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... been said, rose to a height of three hundred feet, but the mass was unbroken throughout, and even at its base, scarcely washed by the sea, it did not offer the smallest fissure which would serve as a dwelling. It was a perpendicular wall of very hard granite, which even the waves had not worn away. Towards the summit fluttered myriads of sea-fowl, and especially those of the web-footed species with long, flat, pointed beaks—a clamorous ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... face of the rock-wall he saw what appeared to be a fissure in the stone; and, thinking it possible that an examination of this fissure might aid him, he, with some difficulty managed to scramble up to it. When he reached the spot he found, however, instead of a mere ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... fresh and cold. It contains muriatic acid, without any trace of sulphur or metallic salt. I think it is Humboldt who supposes that in this part of Mexico there exists, at a great depth in the interior of the earth, a fissure running from east to west, for one hundred and thirty-seven leagues, through which, bursting the external crust of the porphyritic rocks, the volcanic fire has opened itself a passage at different times, from the coasts of the Mexican Gulf, as far as the South Sea. The famous volcano of Jorullo ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... returned 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 ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... Amid the looser fragments of the rock, Rear'd boldly in the air its lofty head, While, struggling with the stone, the nervous roots Pursued their own direction, elbowing out, Their flinty neighbour; who, o'erspread with moss, Of varied hues, and deck'd with flow'ring heath, That from each fissure hung luxuriant down, Became a seat, where, king of all the scene, The harper sate, and, in sweet melodies, Now like the lark rejoicing at the dawn, Now soothing as the nightingale's sad note, Hail'd the departing sun, whose golden rays Glitter'd upon the surface of the wave, And, as ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... Buxton abounds in the most wild and romantic scenery—steep rocks, dark chasms, and wooded hills, mixed in delightful confusion. Among the favourite places of resort are Ashwood Dale, with its famous Lover's Leap rock; Shirbrook Dale, with its fissure and cascade; Diamond Hill, so called from the quartz crystals or "Buxton diamonds" found there; Chee Tor, a huge limestone rock 350 feet high, which rises sheer from the bed of the Wye, washing its base; ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... be able to answer you'; and she led the way down amongst the ruins, towards 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 ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... and inaccessible; 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 ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... one, but does not become quite as hard. This preparation is non-cohesive, and should be inserted by the wedge process. I use it in the grinding surface of molars and bicuspids, buccal cavities in molars and bicuspids, cervical fissure pits in superior incisors, proximal cavities in bicuspids and molars. If proximal cavities are opened from the occlusal surface, the last portion of the filling should be of cohesive gold to withstand mastication. In simple cavities I place as many pieces as can be easily ...
— Tin Foil and Its Combinations for Filling Teeth • Henry L. Ambler
... and below we mark at 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 our course is ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... had seen on several occasions the spray driven over to Le Palais, nearly five miles distant. Continuing our walk along the cliffs, we came to an enormous mass of rock, standing far out detached from the cliff, and covered with screaming sea-gulls. We again descended by another fissure into a pretty sandy cove, surrounded by the same wild granite rocks; but in most places there is no beach at all. It was now high water, so it was useless to attempt the Grotte des Apothecaires,—the finest, they ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... have developed, either from a fissure in the earth's crust, or otherwise. Other hypotheses are possible, but of what practical value are ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... to the suspicion of twins, such as being unusually large, and the fact that the increase in size has been more than ordinarily rapid. Sometimes also the abdomen is divided into two distinct portions by a perpendicular fissure. In other cases the movements of a child can be felt on each side at the same time. And in twin pregnancies the morning sickness is apt to be more distressing, and all the other discomforts incident to this condition increased. But these signs and ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... hope, that, when a glimmer weak Stole through a fissure somewhere in the cave, Thinning the clotted darkness on his cheek, She thought her own tired eyes the glimmer gave: He moved his head; she saw his eyes, love-meek, And knew that Death was dead and filled the Grave. Old age, convicted lie, had ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... the poles. He succeeded only after the seventh or eighth attempt, and was well pleased when the weight running over it swung down to our feet, as the position of the poles and the slope of the floor of the fissure did not allow it to rest in the cavern. 'Pull the cord,' shouted Armand. 'What for?' 'You will soon see. Pull'—and speedily the string drew after it one of our stout ropes. 'Now do you understand?' asked Armand. 'I have fastened my rope ladder to the cord ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... a mere coop of bamboos, was perched upon a level part of the rock, the ridge-pole resting at one end in a crotch of the "Aoa," and the other propped by a forked bough planted in a fissure. ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... good fortune to follow its trails and shimmering waters is already half a poet," wrote Professor Harris of the road that leads down from the verdant hills of the Alleghanies over picturesque gorge and crag and fissure into the quiet of the valley and brings us by exquisite stages to the beautiful town of Lexington, Virginia. Making that journey in taking my boy, fourteen years old, to the Virginia Military Institute, I entered at once two charming regions—Lexington ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... years the mutterings of rising war between the States had been growing louder. In June of 1856 he had written to Bridge, expressing great hope that all would yet turn out well. But so rapidly did the horizon blacken, that later in the same year he declared that "an actual fissure" seemed to him to be opening between the two sections of the ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... breast; then he is of brass far as to the fork. From there downward he is all of chosen iron, save that his right foot is of baked clay, and he stands erect on that more than on the other.[1] Every part except the gold is cleft with a fissure that trickles tears, which collected perforate that cavern. Their course falls from rock to rock into this valley; they form Acheron, Styx, and Phlegethon; then it goes down through this narrow channel far as where ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... 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 to the right and the left side of the body respectively. ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... even men such as Peter, Sogrange and Dory, whose nerves were of iron, faced one another, doubting and amazed. The floor beneath them rocked and billowed like the waves of a canvas sea. The windows were filled with flashes of red light, a great fissure parted the wall, the pictures and book-cases came crashing down beneath a shower of masonry. It was the affair of a second. Above them shone the stars and around them a noise like thunder. Bernadine, who alone understood, was the first to recover himself. He stood in the ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... jutted out about two feet from the bank, quite close to the vortex of the whirlpool. This rock was Martin's only hope. To miss it would be certain destruction. But if he should gain a footing on it he knew that he could climb by a narrow fissure into a wild, cavernous spot, which it was exceedingly difficult to reach from any other point. A bend in the river concealed this rock and the vortex from the place whereon he stood, so that he hoped to be able ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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, the ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott
... instance, a certain township, in which the minerals occur. And if they do succeed in finding this, it is seldom that the portion in which the mineral occurs, which is generally some small inconspicuous vein or fissure, is found; and even in this it is generally difficult to recognize and isolate the mineral from the extraneous matter holding it. As an instance of this I might cite thus: Dana, in his text book on mineralogy, will mention the locality for ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... as I yelled at him, pulled his starboard paddle and brought her (for these prams spin round easily) almost broadside on to a tall comber. As we slid up the side of it and hung there, I had a glimpse of a steep clean fissure straight through the wall of rock ahead; and in that instant O'Hara sprawled his arms and toppled overboard. The boat and I went by him with a rush. I saw a hand and wrist lifted above the foam, but when I looked back for them they were gone—gone ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and in The Expositor for May 1886, in which he shows that great beds of bituminous limestone extend below the Jordan valley and much of the Dead Sea, and that the escape of inflammable gag from these through the opening of a fissure along a great 'line of fault,' is capable of producing all the effects described. The 'brimstone' of the Authorised Version is probably rather some form of bituminous matter which would be carried into the air by such an ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 before us-a semicircle of houses clustering about a bay curve, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... 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 ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... that they threw their white foam over my coat as they sprang to seize me, and their teeth clashed together like the spring of a fox-trap. Had my skates failed for one instant, had I tripped on a stick, or had my foot been caught in a fissure, the story I am now telling would never have ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... The she-wolf was trotting wearily along, her mate well in advance, when she came upon the overhanging, high clay-bank. She turned aside and trotted over to it. The wear and tear of spring storms and melting snows had underwashed the bank and in one place had made a small cave out of a narrow fissure. ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... the bed with an attentive eye, Colwyn next looked for the small door in the wall. It was not apparent: the wall-paper appeared to cover the whole of the wall on that side of the room in unbroken continuity. But a closer inspection revealed a slight fissure or crack, barely noticeable in the dark green wall-paper, extending an inch or so beyond a small picture suspended near the door of the room. When the picture was taken down the crack was more apparent, for it ran nearly the whole length of the space. ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... manner, more than half way along the stick, without encountering anything but the edges of the rocks. An inch or two further on, however, my patience was rewarded. In a narrow little fissure, just within reach of my forefinger, I felt the chain. Attempting, next, to follow it, by touch, in the direction of the quicksand, I found my progress stopped by a thick growth of seaweed—which had fastened itself into the fissure, ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... blankets yielded before the outward pressure, and the branches settled in the fissure of the rock by their own weight, forming a compact body, Duncan once more breathed freely. With a light step and lighter heart, he returned to the center of the cave, and took the place he had left, where he could command a view of the opening next the river. While he was in the ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... The narrow fissure between its walls was aflow with the evening current of promenaders, crowding its scant breadth, and sending up a medley of laughter and musical sibilants. Grandees strolled stiffly erect with long capes thrown back across their left shoulders to show the ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... nearly a north and south line, parallel with the 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
... cleft," Wotan answered, pointing to the deep fissure in the rock. "Swing thyself down and I will follow thee." He no sooner ceased to speak than Loge swung himself into the black abyss, and a frightful, sulphurous vapour arose ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... 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 ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... made by the fairies. To prevent its falling into the hands of the enemy, when Roland was attacked in the valley of Roncesvall[^e]s, he smote a rock with it, and it made in the solid rock a fissure some 300 feet in depth, called to this ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... they only flew round me and past me, showing me the great black sweep of their wings as they went. But as I sat there, on that wild crag and that wild morning, I noticed a tuft of dog-violets, growing out of a fissure in the grey rock, and shaken and pounded by the bitter wind. How wonderful is the tenacity of nature. A few grains of dust blown into a crack of barren rock, a few seeds wind-carried also, and then germination in the rain and sun, and when ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... hidden to have escaped observation so long," Tom decided. "And it must be a natural shaft, or hole, for we are boring into native rock, and it isn't likely that these Indians ever tried to make a tunnel here. There must be some natural fissure communicating with the outside of the mountain, in a place where no one would ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... have mentioned the temple at Hierapolis in [671]Phrygia; and the chasm within its precincts, out of which there issued a pestilential vapour. There was a city of the same name in [672]Syria, where stood a temple of the highest antiquity; and in this temple was a fissure, through which, according to the tradition of the natives, the waters at the deluge retired. Innumerable instances might be produced to this purpose from Pausanias, Strabo, ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... its ascensional force, approached the ground; the anchors ran along until, at last, one of them caught in the fissure of a rock, and the balloon ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... for an instant. The monochrome of gold behind the gables was drifting into color. Here between the wooded heights where the river ran, already there was shadow. Twilight and afterglow! Kenny in poetic vein told of the Gray Man of the Path. The Path was in Ireland, a fissure in the cliff at Fairhead. If you climbed well you could use the Gray Man's Path and scale the cliff. Kenny himself had climbed it. Joan, busy with the single oar, lost nevertheless no single word of it. ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... and I felt he had spoken the truth. After this we took away several stones from the fissure which nature had formed at the ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... along the line of an old fissure previously formed, and the depth below the surface of the earth varies from one to twelve miles. Thus places situated near these old internal fissures are more likely to experience earthquakes than those farther away. It is a well known geological fact that the Pacific ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... comparatively speaking, except at one spot, where it was necessary to climb over a projecting angle of cliff and bear a little to the left. It was not a really difficult place, but what made it awkward was, that immediately beneath this projection gaped a deep fissure or donga, on the brink of which we now stood, originally dug out, no doubt, by the rush of water from the peak and cliff. This gulf beneath would be trying to the nerves of a weak-headed climber at the critical point, and so it proved in the result. The projecting ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... of so slightingly was what they needed from this time on, and nothing else would save them. Luke had that brawn; Fuller did not. The scientist slipped and nearly lost his balance at the edge of a fissure, but Luke made no move to help him. It was every man for himself at this ...
— Vulcan's Workshop • Harl Vincent
... observed this habit, I placed near them posts, which had been bored by beetles, or had become fissured by drying. The tendrils, by their own movement and by that of the internodes, slowly travelled over the surface of the wood, and when the apex came to a hole or fissure it inserted itself; in order to effect this the extremity for a length of half or quarter of an inch, would often bend itself at right angles to the basal part. I have watched this process between twenty and thirty times. The same tendril would ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... the brief intervals when this outside tumult subsided, strange murmurs came from the interior of the castle; the wainscoting gave forth dismal creakings;—there was not a crack in the partitions, nor a fissure in the ceiling from which did not issue a sigh, or hoarse groans. Then again all this became silent, and I heard only something like a low whispering in the far off corridors, as of phantoms murmuring ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... the private room of the down-town office. Across the littered, ink-stained desk a man and a woman faced each other. Threads of gray lightened the hair of each. Faint lines, delicate as pencillings, marked the forehead of the woman and radiated from the angles of her eyes. A deep fissure unequally separated the brows of the man, and on his shaven face another furrow added firmness to the mouth. Their eyes met squarely, without a motion from faces imperturbable in middle age ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... in the sunshine. To the right, between the largest rock and the main land, there is a chamber of about ten feet wide, and twenty feet long. The fragment, which forms one of its sides, leans towards the main rock, and touches it at top, forming a roof, with here and there a fissure, through which the light enters. At the bottom of the room there is a clear bed of water, which communicates with the sea by a small aperture under the rock. It is as placid as a summer pond, and is fitted with steps for a bathing place. Bathe, truly! with the sea ever dashing against the side, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... saw my companion an inanimate mass beside me, life utterly extinct. While I was bending over his corpse in grief and horror, I heard close at hand a strange sound between a snort and a hiss; and turning instinctively to the quarter from which it came, I saw emerging from a dark fissure in the rock a vast and terrible head, with open jaws and dull, ghastly, hungry eyes—the head of a monstrous reptile resembling that of the crocodile or alligator, but infinitely larger than the largest creature of ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... anchored in 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 ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... crags and gigantic trees seemed to contest dominion over the path, if path it could be called; where the traveller, if he would persist in going onwards, could only make his way by sometimes scrambling over rocks, whose close approach from opposite sides presented a mere fissure covered with flowers and brushwood, through which the slimmest figure would fail to penetrate; sometimes wading through rushing and brawling streams, whose rapid currents bore many a jagged branch and craggy fragment along with them; sometimes threading the intricacies of ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... can easily imagine themselves upon an inland lake. Beyond is Strancally Castle, beetling over the river, set firmly in a foundation of crags. The local tradition carriers will gladly point out "The Murdering Hole," a natural fissure in the rocks, and here they will tell you that the departed Desmonds destroyed their guests after robbing them! Above the confluence of the Bride with the Blackwater, Villierstown and Camphire villages are passed, then the Awbeg joins its little flood, and ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... would not reject a druidical temple, or time-hallowed ruin, as too modern and artificial for his purpose. He only familiarises himself or his readers with a stone, covered with lichens, which has slept in the same spot of ground from the creation of the world, or with the rocky fissure between two mountains, caused by thunder, or with a cavern scooped out by the sea. His mind is, as it were, coeval with the primary forms of things, holds immediately from nature; and his imagination "owes no allegiance" ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... Insensibly, while listening to the bandit, he had wound up a considerable ascent, and now he was upon a broad ledge of rock covered with mosses and dwarf shrubs. Between this eminence and another of equal height, upon which the castle was built, there was a deep but narrow fissure, overgrown with the most profuse foliage, so that the eye could not penetrate many yards below the rugged surface of the abyss; but the profoundness might well be conjectured by the hoarse, low, monotonous sound of waters unseen that rolled ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the original horizontality of strata are strictly applicable to mechanical deposits, and only partially to those of a mixed nature. Such as are purely chemical may be formed on a very steep slope, or may even incrust the vertical walls of a fissure, and be of equal thickness throughout; but such deposits are of small extent, and for the ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... of arduous labour in this direction enabled him to safely reach the top of the slope, where, to his great gratification, he discovered another platform of rock, about six feet wide. Passing along this, he came suddenly upon an irregular fissure in the rocky face of the precipice. This fissure was about four feet wide at the bottom, the walls sloping inwards, like a roof, until they met at a height of seven or eight feet from the ground. George at once unhesitatingly ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... high-perched on a crag that overlooked a glittering expanse of desert. More precious than its bulk in diamonds, a spring of clear, cold water from the rock-lined depths of mother earth gushed out through a fissure near the Summit, and round that spring had been built, in bygone centuries, a battlemented nest to breed and turn out warriors. Alwa's grandfather had come by it through complicated bargaining and dowry-contracts, and Alwa now held it as the rallying-point ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... to lock their granite feet, Heave their broad spines, expand each breathing lobe, And with their massy members rib the globe, Her cauldron'd floods of fire their blast prepare; Her wallowing womb of subterranean war Waits but the fissure that my wave shall find, To force the foldings of the rocky rind, Crash your curst continent, and whirl on high The vast avulsion vaulting thro the sky, Fling far the bursting fragments, scattering wide Rocks, mountains, nations o'er the swallowing ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... mingled together instead of 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
... bladder, fissure of the anus, local uncleanliness, and pruritis of the genital organs, will produce the habit in both males and females in the manner described. Sleeping on feather beds increases the local congestion, and thus favors the exciting influences of any ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... "The fissure ought to be drenched with lime water, and then filled up; but all really depends on what is the size of the supply and also the depth. It is an extremely heavy gas, and would lie at the bottom of a cutting like water. I think there is more here just ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... 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 bulwark of the vessel. The alley from the gate ran on between houses abutting the towers. A ball from one of Mahommed's largest guns had passed through the right-hand building, leaving a ragged fissure. Thither the Captain ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... Hebrus, and miraculously, as it passed along to the sea, it was still heard to exclaim in mournful accents, Eurydice, Eurydice! [29] At length it was carried ashore on the island of Lesbos. [30] Here, by some extraordinary concurrence of circumstances, it found a resting-place in a fissure of a rock over-arched by a cave, and, thus domiciliated, is said to have retained the power of speech, and to have uttered oracles. Not only the people of Lesbos resorted to it for guidance in difficult questions, but also the Asiatic Greeks from Ionia and Aetolia; and its fame and character for ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... old age, paralysis, lead poisoning and some troubles of local origin, like fissure of the rectum, ulceration, stricture ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... and beautiful as his Satanic Majesty!" declared Eleanor, but she anxiously watched Polly ride along the brink of the fissure. ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... 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, ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... drawn back swiftly into obscurity. I found that she had turned towards 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
... one 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 ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... difficult as it is dangerous. There is no trail and no guide, and many a step had to be retraced to get across or around some bottomless fissure. For some distance the ground seemed quite solid. Soon it was discovered that there was but a thin covering of dirt on the solid ice below; but anon in striking the ground with the end of an alpine stick it would prove to be but an inch of ice and dirt mixed, and a dark ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... a full half-hour before we neared the island, yet neither of us spoke during that time; then, as the "grey gull" shaped itself into rock and tree and crag, I noticed in the very centre a stupendous pile of stone lifting itself skyward, without fissure or cleft; but a peculiar haziness about the base made me peer narrowly to catch the ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... Half naked, and with his open knife between his teeth, he sprang from rock to rock. In hunting a crab he found himself once more in the mysterious grotto that glittered with jewel-like flowers. He noticed a fissure above the level of the water. The crab was probably there. He thrust in his hand as far as he was able, and groped about in that ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... was the hand that wreathed so daintily With flow'rs each fissure Circumstance had formed, And, by its touch, like snows by sunsets warmed, Each ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... special questions which have arisen about the localization of functions in the nervous system, that of the function of certain areas known as "motor centres" has been eagerly discussed. The region on both sides of the fissure of Rolando in Fig. 3 contains a number of areas which give, when stimulated with electricity, very definite and regular movements of certain muscles on the opposite side of the body. By careful exploration of these areas the principal muscular combinations—those for facial movements, ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... out a desert where the trails run red, Judah and Erin speed their camel pace, Sighting green palms. The flush on either face Is from the fissure where each wedged her head From sandstorms, that hurled heavens down, as they sped; It is no blush for thought, or conduct, base To the high trust to bring the Human Race, Truths, without which Time's ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... 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
... too precipitous to scale. Daw and Linday had to keep on; and they kept on till the disaster happened. With a loud explosion, the ice broke asunder midway under the team. The two animals in the middle of the string went into the fissure, and the grip of the current on their bodies dragged the lead-dog backward and in. Swept downstream under the ice, these three bodies began to drag to the edge the two whining dogs that remained. ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... interesting monastic establishment: ascending from our camp along the ridge 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 ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... dwarf not only promised the desired information, but gave Dietrich the magic sword Nagelring, which alone could pierce the giants' skin. Then he led both heroes to the cave, where Grim and Hilde were gloating over a magic helmet they had made and called Hildegrim. Peering through a fissure of the rock, Hildebrand was the first to gaze upon them, and in his eagerness to get at them he braced his shoulder against the huge mass of stone, forced it apart, and thus made a passage for himself and for his ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... fissure, breach, rent, split, rift, crack, slit, incision. dissection anatomy; decomposition &c. 49; cutting instrument &c (sharpness) 253; buzzsaw, circular saw, rip saw. separatist. V. be disjoined &c.; come off, fall off, come to pieces, fall to pieces; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... still watched. He saw one of the warriors raise his rifle and fire at the hidden mark. Then he heard two impacts of the bullet, first as it struck upon stone, and then as glancing, it fell among the leaves. Out of the mouth of the fissure came a great booming voice, speaking Shawnee and ridiculing their lack ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... frog is the division in the middle line of the frog. In healthy feet, it consists of only a slight depression. In a disease, called "thrush," of the sensitive part which secretes the frog, the cleft forms a deep, damp and foul-smelling fissure, and the frog becomes more or less shrivelled up. The frog similar to the skin of the palms of our hands, requires frequent pressure to make it thick and strong. The horn of the hoof is merely a modification of the ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... my knees tremble, my heart break, must note the rumbling, heed only the shuddering down in the fissure beneath the ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... be made of oak or hard wood from 25 to 30 millimetres thick, dry and joined with groves, so that there may be no fissure. ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various
... and saw a gleam of heaven's sunny blue, one bright dazzling gleam flashing between the rugged rock and the rushing waters. It was as if the veil of the temple of nature were rent, and the glory of God shone through the fissure. ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... forth they wrote to one another regularly every evening. Emma placed her letter at the end of the garden, by the river, in a fissure of the wall. Rodolphe came to fetch it, and put another there, that she always found fault with as ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... rounded globule, and almost entirely cellular. This small globule, the commencement of the receptacle, is not long in increasing, preserving its rounded form up to the development of the asci. At this period, under the influence of the rapid growth of these organs, it soon produces at its summit a fissure of the external membrane, which becomes a more marked depression in the marginate species. The receptacle thus formed increases rapidly, becomes plane, more convex, or more or less undulated at the margin, if at all of large size. Fixed to the place where it is generated ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... table's. However, it is not a bad illustration, Dora. When beds of rock are only interrupted by a fissure, but remain at the same level, like the two halves of the table, it is not called a fault, but only a fissure; but if one half of the table be either tilted higher than the other, or pushed to the side, so that the two parts will not fit, it is a fault. You had better read the chapter on faults ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... himself in a place which seemed like a fissure rent in a mountain side, by some extraordinary convulsion of nature. All around rose black, precipitous cliffs. On the side nearest was the precipice by whose base he had passed; while over opposite was a gigantic wall of dark rock, Which extended far out into the sea. Huge waves thundered ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... after fissure like a young roe, fled to the top of the Downfall and looked over. Did the light show through the tarpaulin? Alack!—there must be a rent somewhere—for he saw a dim glow-worm light beyond the cliff, on the dark rib of the mountain. It was invisible from below, but any roving ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... excavation, the current had found a vein of soft, brittle stone which, by its incessant force, it had ended in wearing away. It was a natural grotto formed by water, but which earth, in its turn, had undertaken to embellish. An enormous willow had taken root in a few inches of soil in a fissure of the rock, and its drooping branches fell into the stream, which drifted them along without ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... is called "Hudson's Cave," or "Hudson's Falls," the tradition being that a man by the name of Henry Hudson, many years ago, chasing a deer, the deer fell over the place, which then first became known to white men. It is not properly a cave, but a fissure in a huge ledge of marble, through which a stream has been for ages forcing its way, and has left marks of its gradually wearing power on the tall crags, having made curious hollows from the summit down to the level which it has reached at the present day. The depth of the fissure in some places ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... on a rock, with cliffs, either perpendicular and abrupt towards the river, or with broken craggs, whose jutting prominences, having a little soil, have been planted with orange and fig trees. A fissure in this rock, of great depth, surrounds the city on three sides, and at the bottom of the fissure the river rushes along with impetuous rapidity. Two bridges are constructed over the fissure; the first is a single arch, resting on the rocks on the two sides, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various |
