"Slaty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with gaping valves, it may increase in bulk, but its apartment in the limestone never seems too large—just a neat fit In its abiding-place it presents an irregular strip of silk, green as polished malachite, or dark green and grey, or blue and slaty green, mottled and marbled, with crimped edges and graceful folds—an attractive ornament in the drab rock. Touch any part—there is a slow suspensory withdrawal, and then a snap and spurt of water as the last remnant of ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... hidden from sight. What a lovely subject for a picture! I was tempted to halt and get out my paint-box and sketch-book; and abandoning my lunch, which was being cooked, I climbed to the summit of a high peak in order to obtain a more extensive view. The ascent, first on slippery grass, then over slaty rocks, was by no means easy, nor devoid of a certain amount of danger; but so keen was I to get to the top that I reached the summit very quickly, leaving half-way down the mountain slope the two men who had followed me. In places near the top there were rocks ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Through slaty hills whose sides are shagged with thorn, Where springs, in scattered tufts, the dark green corn, Towers wood-girt Harden ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... Khyber ghat the ridges are either of limestone or slaty rocks, between which conglomerate occurs of various thicknesses; this being dependent on the angle of the mountains forming the sides of the ghat: it is from this conglomerate in such places consisting usually of a loose texture that the very excellent roads (for mountainous passes) ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... wolves licked their cruel lips and their eyes gleamed hungrily—but the eyes of the cow answered them, gleam for gleam. If it could be put upon canvas just as he had seen it, with the bitter, biting cold of a frozen chinook showing gray and sinister in the slaty sky— ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... the bunk house opened suddenly and a cowboy stalked in, a lean, dark man, rather short and slim, with eyes of that peculiar light, slaty gray that have a staring effect; apparently no depth to them. These, with heavy overhanging brows and an inclination to sneer, gave him a forbidding appearance. His hat and slicker glistened with water. At his ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... groves of walnut and cherry. Scenes of this kind, and of that just described, so singularly opposed, and apparently brought together as foils to each other, are however peculiar to certain beds of the slaty coherents, which are both vast in elevation, and easy of destruction. In Wales and Scotland the same groups of rocks possess far greater hardness, while they attain less elevation; and the result is a totally different aspect of scenery. ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... less than engaging. He still bore the traces of last night's debauch and of his sojourn in the police-cell. There was dry mud on the back of his coat, his shirt-cuffs and collar were of a slaty hue, his hands and face filthy. He began to eat bread and butter, washing down each morsel with a gulp of tea. The spoon remained in the cup whilst he drank. To 'Arry it was a vast relief to be free from ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... Cecilia which has been ascribed to Donatello. This wonderful thing is not well known: it has been seldom exhibited, and the photograph by which it is usually judged is taken from a reproduction moulded a generation ago. The original, of rather slaty Lavagna stone, has never been photographed, and the cast, many thousands of which exist, entirely fails to show the intangible and diaphanous qualities of the original. The widespread popularity of the St. Cecilia would (if possible) be enhanced ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... column-shape astern of us. Its swaying had become perceptible. For a moment she remained dazzlingly white, then faded away slowly to nothing in a squall, only to reappear again, nearly black, resembling a post stuck upright against the slaty background of solid cloud. Since first noticed she had not gained on ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... out its nest for the sake of the young. This, and a most lovely little blue and orange kingfisher, are seen every where along the banks, dashing down like a shot into the water for their prey. A third, seen more rarely, is as large as a pigeon, and is of a slaty color. ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... effect of the haze had gathered about the island; its lofty cliffs seemed to tower on high more majestically, and to lean over more frowningly; its fringe of black sea-weed below seemed blacker, while the general hue of the island had changed from a reddish color to one of a dull slaty blue. ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... years older than Rosemary, and so different from her that it was hard to believe they were sisters. She was dark and massive, with black hair, thick, black eyebrows and eyes of the clear, slaty blue of the gulf water in a north wind. She had a rather stern, forbidding look, but she was in reality very jolly, with a hearty, gurgling laugh and a deep, mellow, pleasant voice with a suggestion of masculinity ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... two dogs. George, the elder, exhibited an ebony-tipped nose, surrounded by a narrow margin of pink flesh, and a coat marked in random splotches approximating in colour to white and slaty grey; but the grey, after years of sun and rain, had been scorched and washed out of the more prominent locks, leaving them of a reddish-brown, as if the blue component of the grey had faded, like the indigo from the same kind of colour in Turner's pictures. In ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... which have yielded to pressure often split easily in a certain direction across the bedding planes. This cleavage is known as slaty cleavage, since it is most perfectly developed in fine-grained, homogeneous rocks, such as slates, which cleave to the thin, smooth-surfaced plates with which we are familiar in the slates used in roofing and for ciphering and ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... bamboo chairs slung on four men's shoulders, in which I put my papers and boxes, we next morning commenced the ascent; at first through woods of the common trees, with large clumps of bamboo, over slaty rocks of gneiss, much inclined and sloping away from the mountain. The view from a ridge 500 feet high was superb, of the village, and its white domes half buried in the forest below, the latter of which continued in sight for many miles to the northward. Descending to a valley some ferns ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... visited different parts of the globe at successive periods is inferred chiefly from the unconformability of strata belonging to groups of different ages. Thus, for example, on the borders of Wales and Shropshire, we find the slaty beds of the ancient Silurian system inclined and vertical, while the beds of the overlying carboniferous shale and sandstone are horizontal. All are agreed that in such a case the older set of strata ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... could, its progress was painfully slow. The column advancing in single file extended over a distance of nearly three miles, and as the sun rose high in the heavens the reflected heat from the bare slaty rocks became almost insupportable. There were no trees to give the men shade, or springs to slake their thirst. For the first four miles the road continued to ascend the Lashora ravine between hills on the right hand and rocky, overhanging spurs a thousand ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... was, there was a limit to what it could endure. The incident made it think, apparently, that the neighborhood was dangerous, for it slowly lurched off through the wood, followed by its mate and its three enormous infants. We saw the shimmering slaty gleam of their skins between the tree-trunks, and their heads undulating high above the brush-wood. Then ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle |
