"Volcanic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is still circled with the wall and gates built by the Sienese in 1366, and is a fair specimen of an intact mediaeval stronghold. Here we leave the main road, and break into a country-track across a bed of sandstone, with the delicate volcanic lines of Monte Amiata in front, and the aerial pile of Montalcino to our right. The pyracanthus bushes in the hedge yield their clusters of bright yellow berries, mingled with more glowing hues of red from haws and glossy hips. On the pale grey earthen slopes ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... extended view which may give a notion of the general lie of the country. Append, if you can, a note or two, saying whether a plain is rich or barren; whether the rock is sandstone, limestone, granitic, metamorphic, or volcanic lava; and if there be more rocks than one, which of them lies on the other; and send them to be exhibited at a meeting of the Geological Society. I doubt not that the learned gentlemen there will find in your photographs a valuable hint or two, for which ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... might conclude whether that active subterraneous power still subsists, and what may be the nature of that power. When first I conceived my theory, naturalists were far from suspecting that basaltic rocks were of volcanic origin; I could not then have employed an argument from these rocks as I may do now, for proving that the fires, which we see almost daily issuing with such force from volcanos, are a continuation of that active cause which has so evidently been exerted in all times, ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... and Viterbo (for its fountains): and after climbing up a long hill of eight or ten miles' extent, came suddenly upon the margin of a solitary lake: in one part very beautiful, with a luxuriant wood; in another, very barren, and shut in by bleak volcanic hills. Where this lake flows, there stood, of old, a city. It was swallowed up one day; and in its stead, this water rose. There are ancient traditions (common to many parts of the world) of the ruined ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... are exhibited by the Galapagos Islands, which contain little groups of plants and animals peculiar to themselves, but most nearly allied to those of South America, have not hitherto received any, even a conjectural explanation. The Galapagos are a volcanic group of high antiquity, and have probably never been more closely connected with the continent than they are at present. They must have been first peopled, like other newly-formed islands, by the action of winds and currents, ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... mountain range gives rise to no streams, and the foot of the range on that side is as dry and waterless as the valley itself. One may travel for 20 miles over this valley and not find a drop of water. Except at Sulphur springs, warm volcanic springs about 30 miles south of the San Juan, the ordinary traveler will not find sufficient water between the foot of the mountains and the river, a distance of over 50 miles. Such is the character ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... The great volcanic force which sends out flames and ashes from the tops of high mountains, or makes the solid earth tremble and crack, is at work also below the bed of the sea, and from time to time islands are raised there either slowly or by some sudden convulsion, just as we have also ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... the name, as they abound from sea-level to the top of the island. The higher up the bigger they were. The surface of the hills and valleys was covered with loose boulders, and the whole island being of volcanic origin, coarse grass is everywhere, and at about 1500 feet is an area of tree ferns and subtropical vegetation, extending up to nearly the highest parts. The withered trees of a former forest are everywhere and their existence unexplained, ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... the eruptions of volcanoes, is attributed to friction of the volcanic dust and to ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... artificial. Some practitioners of the toilet-table paint in the manner of Sargent; others follow the school of Cecilia Beaux; but this lady's color-scheme was unmistakably that of Turner in his most expansive mood of sunset, burning ships, and volcanic eruptions. ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... all this, and encased as it were in a frame, the landscape rose in a gentle slope to the summit of the thundering mountain. But indications were not wanting of the peril with which the city was threatened. The whole district is volcanic; and a few years before the final catastrophe, an earthquake had shaken Pompeii to its foundations; some of the buildings were much injured. On August 24, A.D. 79, the inhabitants were busily engaged in repairing the damage thus wrought, when suddenly and without any previous warning a vast column ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... adjoining plains with floods of fire. Lava has often poured from their destructive cones, and can be traced thence over a distance of thirty miles; proving that they once served as vents for the volcanic force which the thin crust of earth was vainly striving to confine. But their activity is apparently ended. The voices with which they formerly shouted to one another in the joy of devastation have been silenced. Conquered at last, their fires ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... certainly is always an uncommon advantage that certain kinds of soil, rich in kali and decayed vegetable matter, yield a long series of harvests without the addition of manure, provided, always, that a short interval is allowed to the process of decay to replace the exhausted plant-food. Thus in many volcanic regions. Compare on similar districts in the Deccan: ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... the motor-car penetrated, dodging trains of "flats," which moved sluggishly to afford them passage up and down over the volcanic furrows at the bottom of the gorge or along some shelf beneath which the foundations were being dug. At times a shovel reached out its five-yard steel jaw and gently cleared the rails of debris, or boosted some bowlder from the path with all the skill of a giant hand and fingers. Up ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... ancestors were mariners,) or perhaps drowned in the Deluge,—for Mr. F. quoted an eminent geologist who has visited the Vineyard, and who supposed these remains to have been brought here by that mighty Flood-tide. Another savant, however, supposes the island to have been thrown up from the sea by volcanic action; and that the fossils, now imbedded in cliffs a hundred feet high, were once deposited upon the bed of the ocean. There is certainly a great amount of conglomerate, which has evidently been fused by intense heat; and masses of rock, sea-pebbles, sand, and iron-ore ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... Southern army, Ray in the Northern. Both love the same woman whose heart is Beltran's. The brothers met[TN-117] in battle and Beltran falls. Ray is wounded and left for dead; recovers and makes his way homeward. There he lives—undergoing volcanic changes, now passionless lulls, and now rages and spasms of grief; "gradually out of them all he gathers his strength about him," and wins Vivia's hand.—Harriet ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... and Company straightway; shows, in a suppressed-volcanic manner, with questions and statements,—obliged to SUPPRESS oneself in foreign hospitable Serene Houses,—what atrocity of scandal and terror has been on the edge of happening: "And you three, Rochow, Waldau, Buddenbrock, mark it, you three are responsible; and shall answer, I now tell you, with ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... largish masses of stone, which are entirely different in character from the rocks found in the neighbourhood. The question arises, how did those stones get into that field? Three explanations are proposed. One: that they are the products of former volcanic action; two: that they were brought from a distance by human agency; three: that they were carried thither from some distant country by icebergs. Now each of those explanations involves certain consequences. If the stones are volcanic, then they were once in a state of ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... walked slowly the twilight shadows were deepening fast by the time we reached the further shore. Brande was in high spirits. Some new scientific experiment, I assumed, had come off successfully. He was beside himself. His conversation was volcanic. Now it rumbled and roared with suppressed fires. Anon, it burst forth in scintillating flashes and shot out streams of quickening wit. I have been his auditor in the three great epochs of his life, but I do not think that ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... Berlioz one of alternate exaltation and misery; of struggle, privation, disappointment; of all manner of torments inseparable from such a volcanic temperament and restless brain. But he had one consolation which gratified his vanity. He gained the Prix de Rome by his cantata of "Sardanapalus." This honor had a practical value also. It secured him an annuity of three thousand francs ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... look and low voice. And with this was associated a massive, almost Rabelaisian temperament (one may catch glimpses of it in her correspondence), a sane exuberant earthliness which delighted in every manifestation of the actual world. On the other hand, she bore within her a volcanic element of revolt, an immense disgust of law and custom. Throughout her life George Sand developed her strong and splendid individuality, not perhaps as harmoniously, but as courageously and as sincerely as ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... fighting in this insurrection has taken place on the island of Luzon. This island has been visited by a terrible disaster. One of its volcanic mountains has suddenly burst into activity, and thrown out streams of lava in such volume that they have travelled over twenty miles of country until they reached ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 46, September 23, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... procession along the white beach; now past hills where groups of bamboos swung back and forth in the warm breeze, and feathery palms and plantains, the sunlight flickering through their leaves, showed myriad tints of green and gold and misty gray; these in turn giving place to some volcanic mountain, bare and desolate. Then for hours there would be no land at all, only the wonderful horizonless blue of water and sky, the sunlight on the waves so dazzlingly bright as ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... food for us, not having expected so many people to arrive at once. His hunters were then absent on Smoke river (so called by some travellers who saw in the neighborhood a volcanic mountain belching smoke), in quest of game. We were therefore compelled to kill one of the horses for food. We found no birch bark either to make canoes, and set the men to work in constructing some of wood. For want of better materials, we were obliged ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... be out of mind. I know not how she gathered courage for her tremendous effort, but she took me, I recollect, into her counsels. We were to unite to oblige my Father to start to his feet and face the world. Alas! we might as well have attempted to rouse the summit of Yes Tor into volcanic action. To my mother's arguments, my Father—with that baffling smile of his—replied: 'I esteem the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt!' and that this answer was indirect made it none the less conclusive. My mother wished him to give lectures, to ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... stretched out was the beginning of a long, narrow defile, or gorge which ran back into the hills. Some of these hills were quite high and were covered with a growth of timber. Others consisted of big rocks piled in fantastic fashion as though there had been a volcanic eruption some time when the world was young. Between the hills were small valleys here and there, which made fine, sheltered places for the grazing ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... he laid the story during those later days of the great cardinal's life, when his power was beginning to wane, but while it was yet sufficiently strong to permit now and then of volcanic outbursts which overwhelmed foes and carried friends to the topmost wave of prosperity. One of the most striking portions of the story is that of Cinq Mar's conspiracy; the method of conducting criminal cases, and the political trickery resorted to by royal ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... of earth history, not as much by all the later formations, by most of the Mesozoic and Tertiary deposits. The vast series of sedimentary rocks since the Carboniferous age, to say nothing of the volcanic, that make up these periods, are largely wanting east of the Mississippi, except in New Jersey and in some of the Gulf States. They are recent. They are like the history of our own period compared with that of Egypt and Judea. It is mainly these later formations—the Permian, the Jurassic, the Triassic, ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... could much alter its most striking scenery, geological and general. I had some sense of awe and mystery as I gazed down into a sort of "Dead Sea" depths at the southern end of salt, salt Korangamite, and then up at the abruptly towering "Stony Rises," capped by volcanic Porndon in my near vicinity. I passed the Manifolds', where a sprinkling of fat cattle left hardly an impression on ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... annually, of which two thirds are exported. Little or no wine is produced on the southern slope of the island. The hills around Santa Cruz are little more than rugged peaks of naked rock. The scenery is wild and bold, but sterile; and scattered around are stupendous hills of lava, the products of former volcanic eruptions, but which have, for ages, been ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... Auckland is reached by means of a winding passage walled in by hills of volcanic origin, and the bay itself is second only to that of Sydney in beauty, the sides of the high hills that wall it in being dotted here and there by pretty residences of white stone, surrounded by broad porticos and handsomely arranged grounds. The town was as quiet as a country funeral and ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... again after squalls, and the strait showed violet, green, red, and bronze lines, melting and intermingling each changing second. Metallic lustres shone as if some volcanic fountain on the lake-bed were spraying the surface. Jules McCarty stood at his gate, noting this change in the weather with one eye. He was a small, old man, having the appearance of a mummied boy. His cheek-bones shone apple-red, ...
— The Mothers Of Honore - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... it was plain that he was worried. The Jews had got on his nerves. They were too volcanic, spasmodic, eruptive. And further, they were subtle. The Romans had a straight, forthright way of going about anything. The Jews never approached anything directly, save backwards, when they were driven by compulsion. Left to themselves, they always approached by ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... hand spread out, with the fingers northeast, the arm end down seventy miles long toward Oomnak Island. The entire broken coast probably reaches a circuit of over two hundred miles. Down the centre and out each spur are high volcanic mountains, two of them smoking volcanoes, all pitted with caves and hot springs whose course can be traced in winter by the runnels of steam {85} down the mountain side. On the south side, reefs line all approach. North, east, and west are countless abrupt inlets ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... me dead instead of alive you'll get no answer from me but such as I choose to give, you middle-aged villain!" retorted Tom, with a glare of his eyes which quite equalled that of the robber-chief in ferocity, for Tom's nature was what we may style volcanic, and he found it hard to restrain himself when roused to a certain point, so that he was prone to speak unadvisedly ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... continents. Darwin, in his Journal of Researches, published in 1845, called attention to the fact that all the small islands far from land in the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans are either of coralline or volcanic formation. He excepted, however, the Seychelles and St. Paul's rocks; but the former have since been shown to be no exception, as they consist entirely of coral rock; and although Darwin himself spent a few hours ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... called the pure mountain-peaks do not entail the same perils and difficulties as the members of the Alpine Club discover in Italy, France, Switzerland and Germany, the volcanic cones and canon-walls of the West have an unstable verticality which, when it is not absolutely insurmountable, is more difficult than the top of the Matterhorn itself; and though the various expeditions under Wheeler, Powell, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... proper care it might have been cured. After the departure of his f. his mother went to Aberdeen, where she lived on a small salvage from her fortune. She was a capricious woman of violent temper, with no fitness for guiding her volcanic son, and altogether the circumstances of his early life explain, if they do not excuse, the spirit of revolt which was his lifelong characteristic. In 1794, on the death of a cousin, he became heir-presumptive to the title and embarrassed estates of the family, to which, on the death of ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... stood, as it now stands, high above the level of the sea from a very remote period of the earth's history. The rocks of the Karroo region are more recent. Nowhere in South Africa has any area of modern volcanic action, much less any active volcano, been discovered. More ancient eruptive rocks, such as greenstones and porphyries, are of frequent occurrence, and are often spread out in level sheets above the sedimentary beds of the Karroo and ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... victory was a defiance to the German Reaction and 1914 was the attempted revenge for it. It is true that the French liberation of Italy was incomplete, the problem of the Papal States, for instance, being untouched by the Peace of Villafranca. The volcanic but fruitful spirit of Italy had already produced that wonderful, wandering, and almost omnipresent personality whose red shirt was to be a walking flag: Garibaldi. And many English Liberals sympathised with him and his ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... mountains, nearly thirteen thousand feet high, stand in the middle of the plateau which is, also, the center of an extensive extinct volcanic field. The whole country is covered with cinders which were thrown from active volcanoes centuries ago. The track of the Santa Fe Pacific railroad, clear across Arizona, is ballasted with cinders instead of gravel that were dug from pits on its own ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... the simplest methods of interpretation, that leaving out of view certain patches of metamorphosed rocks, and certain volcanic products, all that is now dry land has once been at the bottom of the waters. It is perfectly certain that, at a comparatively recent period of the world's history—the Cretaceous epoch—none of the great physical features which at present mark the surface ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... is a land of impermanence. Rivers shift their courses, coasts their outline, plains their level; volcanic peaks heighten or crumble; valleys are blocked by lava-floods or landslides; lakes appear and disappear. Even the matchless shape of Fuji, that snowy miracle which has been the inspiration of artists for ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... had never been able to trace any fire. As for the hot water springs to which he attributed the origin of the vapour he had noticed, Phina Island being in no way volcanic did not appear to contain any, and he had to content himself with thinking that he had twice been the victim ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... spirit produced both by the perfectibilitarians and the followers of Rousseau, and at the same time of the political degradation and material disorder of France, that so violent a contrast between the ideal and the actual led to a great volcanic outbreak. Alas, the crucial difficulty of political change is to summon new force without destroying the sound parts of a structure which it has taken so many generations to erect. The Social Contract is the formal denial of the possibility of ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... of August we saw land for the first time for twelve days. The sun was rising as the little island of Porto Santo greeted our sight. It is formed of peaked mountains, which, by their shape, betray their volcanic origin. A few miles in advance of the island stands the beautiful Falcon Rock, like a sentinel upon the look-out. We sailed past Madeira (23 miles from Porto Santo) the same day, but unluckily at such a distance that we could only perceive the long mountain ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... earthly machinery able to exclude the Quack. Ye shall be born thralls of the Quack, and suffer under him, till your hearts are near broken, and no French Revolution or Manchester Insurrection, or partial or universal volcanic combustions and explosions, never so many, can do more than 'change the figure of your Quack;' the essence of him remaining, for a time and times.—"How long, O Prophet?" say some, with a rather melancholy sneer. Alas, ye unprophetic, ever till this come about: Till deep misery, if nothing ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... side. From the white beach the palms ran in serried rows quarter of a mile inland, then began a jungle of bamboo, gum-tree, sandalwood, plantain, huge fern, and choking grasses. The south-east end of the island was hillocky, with volcanic subsoil. There was plenty of ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... you know, not like these. Coral. These are volcanic. We've got another ten days' ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... at others rising in turbulent eruption. The mere existence of a hot spring does not imply a 'geyser,' for, if such were the case, their number would be very great, hot springs in many parts of the world being frequent if not general accompaniments of volcanic action. Unquestionably, the Geysers of Iceland, the 'Strokr,' and the spring of the Devil's Canon, the 'Witches' Caldron', are the results of volcanic action; but that action differs essentially in its operation. The 'Strokr' and the 'Great Geyser' are intermittent, and are accounted ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... surged the red in an unstemmed tide—volcanic within him his love that he knew now possessed his very soul, jealousy that, blinding, robbed him of his senses, roused him ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... never seen except on the wet mud of salt marshes was of a glossy olive so exactly the colour of the mud as only to be distinguished when the sun shone, by its shadow! Where the sandy beach was coralline and nearly white, I found a very pale Cicindela; wherever it was volcanic and black, a dark species of the same genus was ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... yards. Their purpose was as enigmatical as their origin. For the most part they are to be found on steep, scarcely accessible, precipitous mountain-sides, but, without exception, only in a thick layer of breccia or agglomerate interposed between a trachytic and a volcanic stone. At that time they were inhabited by a race of a very low type, subsisting solely upon the chase and pasturage, and who were utterly incapable of making such dwellings, and declared that the caves had existed from the beginning. But who made them, and for what purpose were they originally ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... volcanic upset must Have rent the crust and blackened the crust; Wrenched and ribbed it beneath its dust Above earth's molten centre at seethe, Heaved and heaped it by huge ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... other hand, Boussingault has long since shown that volcanic regions give out through crevices and fumaroles enormous quantities of carbonic acid. The deposition of carbonate of lime that is continually taking place on the sea-bottom is, on the other hand, fixing carbonic acid in quantities which we may ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... ways of the limmers, and Maggy Ann was a jewel. But it had taken him a dozen years to bring her to this perfection, and well he knew that the curse of Eve, as he called the rage for the duster, slumbered in her rather than was extinguished. With the volcanic Grizel in the house, Maggy Ann would once more burst into flame, and the horrified doctor looked to right of him, to left of him, before him and behind him, and everywhere he seemed to see two new brooms bearing down. No, the brat, he would not have her; the ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... familiar with his vivid description of the fearful eruption of Vesuvius which overwhelmed the city in the year A.D. 79,—the darkness, the terror of the people, the hasty flight, the roar of explosions, the volcanic lightnings, the scorching ashes, the sulphurous fumes, and the hot rain. Very interesting to us were the places described by Bulwer in his novel; the dwelling of the magistrate Pansa, the villa of the wealthy Diomede where eighteen skeletons surrounded ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... rise from 60 to 100 miles still further to the eastward. To the north-east the country continued to improve in appearance until the view was intercepted by bold ranges of trap and granite—one of which bearing north 32 degrees east magnetic, distant nearly 100 miles, having a sharp volcanic outline, reared its summit above all the rest. To the south-east the country was not quite so promising, the ridges presenting naked stony outlines, upon which was only a little scanty grass or a few bushes; to the south ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... "the road no doubt ran right over the range and across the desert on the other side, but the sand there has covered it up, and above us it has been obliterated by some volcanic ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... surely pass to good things, by reason of the strenuous honesty and singleness of purpose that actuated him; he, on his side, admired the great calmness and self-possession of his mother. She was so steadfast, so strong, and wiser than any woman he had ever seen. With a fierce, volcanic affection Will Blanchard loved her. She and Phoebe alike ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... sign of any kind indicating human occupation had been descried. True, as we drew nearer, a faint wreath of smoke here and there was occasionally seen; but our telescopes showed us that these issued from the soil itself, and not from fires kindled by human agency, being, no doubt, the result of volcanic action; also there were a few goats dotted about, browsing in groups of two or three; and their perfect placidity of demeanour was convincing evidence of the absence of man on the island. Having satisfied ourselves ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... were flying in all directions, mowed down by the fire of Gatling and Maxim guns. The scrub of Little Big Horn Creek was strewn with the bodies of writhing braves. On the livid and volcanic heights of Mount Buncombe, the painted tents were blazing merrily. But on a mound above the creek, an ancient fortress of some long-forgotten people, a small group of Indian horsemen, might be observed, steady as rocks in the refluent tide of war. The fire from their Winchester repeaters ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... the small back yard. For several days thereafter he displayed himself in guilty freedom on the tops of adjacent walls and outhouses. The San Francisco suburb where his credulous protectors lived was still in a volcanic state of disruption, caused by the grading of new streets through rocks and sandhills. In consequence the roofs of some houses were on the level of the doorsteps of others, and were especially adapted to Billy's performances. One afternoon, to the admiring and perplexed ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... so closely knit with his own that to be present at his ecstasies was like assisting a high priest of elemental mysteries reserved for him and beyond his power to impart. And yet we are beating about the bush and missing the essential man, for he was imprehensible—"Volcanic," the Bishop of Hereford calls him, and must go to the Bay of Naples to fetch ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... while the other had never stopped running—at least, he had not returned to his usual haunts since "the thing" looked at him. Still, it is haunted country all about here. The souls of the Mojaves roam upon Ghost Mountain, and the "bad men's hunting-grounds" of the Yumas and Navajos are over in the volcanic country of Sonora. It is, therefore, no unusual thing to find signs and ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... differs from a tornado, and must symbolize a compact, organized body of invaders. Its being of a volcanic nature, renders it so much the more terrible ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... by most dreadful volcanic outbreaks in the interior of the island. Tremendous streams of lava carried all before them; great rivers were checked in their course, and formed lakes. For more than a year a thick cloud of smoke and volcanic ashes ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... certainty of this sifted to the animal. The pitches grew less volcanic, died presently into fitful mechanical rises and falls that foretold the finish. Its spirit broken, with that terrible incubus of a human clothes-pin still clamped to the saddle, Teddy gave up, and for the first time hung his head in ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... whole surface is water. Hence, we see that the materials of the interior of the earth must be either metallic or very compressible. To assign a metallic nucleus to the earth, is repugnant to analogy; and it is not rendered even probable by facts, as we find volcanic emissions to contain no heavier elements than the sedimentary layers. Besides, there are indications of a gradual increase of density downwards, such as would arise from the compressibility of the layers. Seeing, therefore, the equilibrium of the whole mass, and the consequent hydrostatic ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... the law directed. The entrance into the town affords an interesting picture of the private life of the Romans. We came next to the vestiges of Herculaneum, which is destroyed like Pompeii but by the lava or molten stone, which cannot be removed, whereas the tufa or volcanic ashes can be with ease removed from Pompeii, which it has filled up lightly. After having refreshed in a cottage in the desolate town, we proceed on our journey eastward, flanked by one set of heights stretching from Vesuvius, and forming a ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... unrequited, might make the bane of her life. And, lo! here was the same Geraldine discussing her engagement as coolly as if the match had been the veriest marriage of convenience ever planned by a designing dowager. She did not understand how much pride had to do with this reticence, or what volcanic depths may sometimes lie beneath the Alpine snows of such a nature ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... of the drill body itself. There was only a small volcano, spewing up gas and liquid from a hole in the rock. On the surface of a good-sized planet, the drill would have built up a little volcanic cone around the lip of the hole, but building a cone like that requires enough gravity to pull the hot matter back to the edge ...
— Anchorite • Randall Garrett
... conversation with him, and I came away deeply impressed. Having repeatedly had conversations of a similar kind with M. Witte, I could compare, or rather contrast, the two men. Both of them evidently possessed an exceptional amount of mental power and energy, but in the one it was volcanic, and in the other it was concentrated and thoroughly under control. In discussion, the one reminded me of the self-taught, slashing swordsman; the other of the dexterous fencer, carefully trained in the use of ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... the mouth of the next river spread acres of swamp 'twixt land and sea. Beyond the headland on which Mr. Selincourt had erected his fish-flakes there extended miles of broken ground, with split rocks and riven cliffs which might have been the result of volcanic upheaval, but were probably only the product of the intense frost of centuries. This was Mary's happy hunting ground, a place full of scientific surprises, and full of dangers too. For the rocks were slippery, the ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... islands scattered over the tropical ocean, especially, to which might well be given Herman Melville's name, "Las Encantadas," the Enchanted Islands. These islands, usually volcanic, have no vegetation but cactuses or wiry bushes with strange names; no inhabitants but insects and reptiles—lizards, spiders, snakes,—with vast tortoises which seem of immemorial age, and are coated with seaweed and the slime of the ocean. If there are any birds, it ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the mesa. The cliffs shimmered in the heat, their outlines fuzzy. Branched and pillared cactus showed in gray-green reptilian growths. The soft earth, through which here and there the volcanic cores of the range were thrust, seemed as if it could supply the paint shops of a nation with almost any hue desired, ready for mixing with oil or water. Waves of heat beat between the walls of the cleft. The floor was fairly ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... had passed, now extinguished, and our workmen were absent. Passing along, close to the rocks, the noise became more distinct, and I was truly alarmed. Could it be an earthquake? Or perhaps it announced some volcanic explosion. I stopped before that part of the rock where the noise was loudest; the surface was firm and level; but from time to time, blows and falling stones seemed to strike our ears. I was uncertain what to do; curiosity prompted me to stay, but a sort of terror urged ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... long-vanished day the Southern author had a passion for "eloquence"; it was his pet, his darling. He would be eloquent, or perish. And he recognized only one kind of eloquence—the lurid, the tempestuous, the volcanic. He liked words—big words, fine words, grand words, rumbling, thundering, reverberating words; with sense attaching if it could be got in without marring the sound, but not otherwise. He loved to stand up before a dazed world, ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... to the mouth of Kiel Fiord. It was during this stage that, crouching together aft, our pipe-bowls glowing sympathetically, we returned to the problem before us; for we had shot out on our quest with volcanic precipitation, leaving much to be discussed. I gleaned a few more facts, though I dispelled no doubts. Davies had only seen the Dollmanns on their yacht, where father and daughter were living for the time. Their villa at Norderney, and their home life there, were unknown to him, though ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... was right among the mountains. Her exact position was twenty-four degrees fifteen minutes east longitude, and four degrees forty-two minutes north latitude, and four degrees forty-two minutes north latitude. In front of her a volcanic crater was pouring forth torrents of melted lava, and hurling masses of rock to an enormous height. There were jets, too, of liquid fire that fell back in dazzling cascades—a superb but dangerous spectacle, for the wind with unswerving certainty was carrying the balloon directly toward ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... does not appear to have written any work with the title quoted by Hugo. The passage quoted occurs in his Nicaragua, its people, scenery, and monuments, published in 1852. He relates in this book an instance of a bishop being asked to baptize a volcanic vent which had suddenly ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... could give herself entirely and for all time; she dreamed of a united life full of ecstasy and love, such a love as poets presented in their plays; and then there would pass before her mind the figures of all the great lovers about whom she had read, passionate whispers, burning embraces, volcanic passions and that whole Titanic love life, the remembrance of which sent a ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... an alley Titanic Of cypress, I roamed with my soul— Of cypress, with Psyche, my soul. These were days when my heart was volcanic As the scoriac rivers that roll— As the lavas that restlessly roll Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek, In the ultimate climes of the pole— That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek, In the ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... mica-slate and contain veins of sulphuret of silver. Thus in the groups of detached mountains which rise abruptly from the plains the loftiest summits, such as Mowna-Roa, the Peak of Teneriffe, Etna and the Peak of the Azores, present only recent volcanic rocks. It would, however, be an error to extend that law to every other continent, and to admit, as a general rule, that, in every zone, the greatest elevations have produced trachytic domes: gneiss-granite and mica-slate constitute the summits of ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... months, the rebellion was quelled: all the prisoners taken up were severally disposed of by hanging, transportation, or acquittal, according to the nature and amount of the evidence brought against them; and the country became as peaceful as it is in the volcanic nature of our ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... the tolerableness of the Roman Catholic religion. Indeed, once she had hoped that Laurie and Maggie might come to an understanding that would prevent all possible difficulty as to the future of his house and estate; but the fourth volcanic storm had once more sent the world flying in pieces about Mrs. Baxter's delicate ears; and, during the last three months she had had to face the prospect of Laurie's bringing home as a bride the rather underbred, pretty, stammering, ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... the same question of Life itself," I said; "'something that worries us for a little while, then passes.' Perhaps the 'worry,' as you call it, has its uses. Volcanic upheavals are necessary to the making of a world. Without them the ground would remain rock-bound, unfitted for its purposes. That explosion of Youth's pent-up forces that we term Love serves to the making of man and woman. It does not die, it takes new shape. The blossom fades ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... her fair form were she to cross its path. But, ah! he rushes up the acclivity—he clears rugged rock and jutting crag with wondrous bounds;—just Heaven! will he pass those heights—will he cross the range of volcanic hills? ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... and well-greyed was the long, Viking moustache. His was the same eagle-like nose as his brother's, save that it was more eagle-like, while the blue eyes were pronouncedly so. The lines of the face were deeper, the cheek-bones higher, the hollows larger, the weather-beat darker. It was a volcanic face. There had been fire there, and the fire still lingered. Around the corners of the eyes were more laughter-wrinkles and in the eyes themselves a promise of deadlier seriousness than the younger brother ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... and widowhood, Blue Beard returned to Martinique with a second husband. It was said that this latter was killed, accidentally, while taking a walk with his wife; his foot slipped and he fell into one of those bottomless abysses which are so common in the volcanic soil of the Antilles. Such was, at least, the explanation that his wife gave ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... that every part of the world is inhabitable. Whether lakes of brine or those subterranean ones hidden beneath volcanic mountains—warm mineral springs—the wide expanse and depth of the ocean, the upper regions of the atmosphere, and even the surface of perpetual snow—all ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... on the island, he noted evidences that it was of volcanic origin, and his heart misgave him, for he knew that such islands, created suddenly by a submarine upheaval, might just as suddenly be destroyed by an earthquake, or by sinking into the ocean. It was not a pleasant thought—it was like living over a mine, that might explode at ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... said the other, with a quickened interest. He scooped up a pinch of the fine dust and looked at it. "It's volcanic, sure enough. There must be ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... he was back again, looking older and shakier than ever, his wet red eyes looking like plague spots in his ashy brown visage or like volcanic eruptions in a desert of dead lava, and in husky, clicking accents he told Billy to tell the Okimow that the pills were no good—not strong enough ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Iceland accepted Christianity by a vote of its Thing in 1000 A.D. "Blood" often fell in Iceland; after a volcanic eruption, ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... ice! That veteran had doubtless had his passions like other men. At moments, through his calm impassive exterior, a romantic vehemence would seem to burn, a poetic ardor, that politics had smothered, but which smouldered on as volcanic fires lie dormant rumbling from time to time under the mantle of snow on a mountain peak. But he had known how to adjust his life to duty; and without belief in God, with the support of philosophy only, his virtue had been strong enough to ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... volcanic peaks of the Auvergne were hiding from their Arian invaders the ruined gentry of Central France. Effeminate and luxurious slave-holders, as they are painted by Sidonius Appolineris, bishop of Clermont, in that same Auvergne, nothing was left for them when their wealth ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... about! Standing before the toilet-glass and looking at her bruises musingly, she tried to remember in what part of the room, and at which period of the long volcanic discussion, each one had been received. All the neck marks could be accounted for on the bed, when he was holding her down and shaking her; that graze above the knee, outside the right thigh had come when she rolled over by the chest of drawers. Raising ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... screaming to every passer-by, "What d'ye lack?" You know nothing of your own faculties or circumstances; you fancy that, among your damp, flat, fat fields of clay, you can have as quick art-fancy as the Frenchman among his bronzed vines, or the Italian under his volcanic cliffs;— that Art may be learned, as book-keeping is, and when learned, will give you more books to keep. You care for pictures, absolutely, no more than you do for the bills pasted on your dead walls. There is always room on the ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... there was what was known as "The Pit "; a circular hole in the plain; rock-walled, some forty or fifty yards in diameter and as many yards deep. Its bottom was covered with fine, loose sand, a strange circumstance in a country composed of tufa and volcanic rock. Legend had it that the Pit was an old Hopi tank, or water-hole—a huge cistern where that prehistoric tribe conserved the rain. Bits of broken pottery and scattered beads bore out this theory, and round the tank lay the low, crumbling mounds of what ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... Cook by both arms and searched his eyes for the truth. The younger man was amazed at the volcanic outburst of anger. ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... rotten piece between his fingers, "belongs probably to an older geological period than its position would indicate—a primitive sandstone level perhaps. Its position on that layer is no doubt due to volcanic upheavals—such disturbances, or rather the results of such disturbances, have been and are the cause of the greatest trouble to geologists—endless errors and controversy. You see we must study the country, not as it appears now, but as it would appear had the natural geological growth ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... view of so large a tract of country is the more interesting, in that there has not occurred the least appearance of volcanic matter, nor basaltic rock, in all that space, where so great manifestation is made of those internal operations of the globe by which strata had been consolidated in their substance, and erected into positions the most distant ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... Spa is a hot spring arising out of a small hillock, and proceeds from the fissures of volcanic rock. This water is medicinal, but not disagreeable to the taste: the damper made with it was very light, and ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... thrown up mountains of volcanic rock, which hold the winter's snow in everlasting supply to quench the thirst of plant, of animal and millions of humans in ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... fire,—have been in the day of trial? Into whose hands would the Capital, the archives, the glory, the name, the very life of the nation as a nation, have fallen, endangered as all of them were, in spite of the volcanic outburst of the startled North which answered the roar of the first gun at Sumter? Worse than all, are we permitted to doubt that in the very bosom of the North itself there was a serpent, coiled but not sleeping, ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire to it; they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives, and the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the country by assault. His objective point was the grave of Douglas, which became by the time he arrived the grave also of his own reputation and the hopes of his partisans. His speeches on the route were a volcanic outbreak of vulgarity, conceit, bombast, scurrility, ignorance, insolence, brutality, and balderdash. Screams of laughter, cries of disgust, flushings of shame, were the various responses of the nation he disgraced ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... Italy, to which it belongs, and from which it is separated by the narrow strait of Messina, 2 m. broad; the three extremities of its triangular configuration form Capes Faro (NE.), Passaro (S.), and Boco (W.); its mountainous interior culminates in the volcanic Etna, and numerous streams rush swiftly down the thickly-wooded valleys; the coast-lands are exceptionally fertile, growing (although agricultural methods are extremely primitive) excellent crops of wheat ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... galloped away to the other side of the plain, and, doubling the further horn of the semicircle, suddenly found ourselves in a district as unlike the cinder mountains we had quitted as they had differed from the volcanic scenery of the day before. On the left lay a long rampart of green hills, opening up every now and then into Scottish glens and gorges, while from their roots to the horizon stretched a vast breadth of meadowland, watered by two or three rivers, that wound, and twisted, and coiled about, like blue ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... actions, which produce a thousand other particles similar to themselves. These contagious particles diffused in the air must have consisted of animal matter, otherwise how could an animal body by being stimulated by them produce similar particles? Could they then have had a volcanic origin, or must they not rather have been blown from putrid marshes full of animal matter? But the greatest part of the solid earth has been made from animal and vegetable recrements, which may be dispersed by volcanos.—Future ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... night. Instinctively we all joined her, with the exception of Amy, and looked out also. The skies were very dark; a faint moaning wind stirred the tops of the leafless trees; but there was no rain. A dry volcanic heat pervaded the atmosphere—in fact we all felt the air so stifling, that Heliobas threw open the window altogether, saying, as ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... observation—the sensitive and high-strung Nietzsche would have regarded with shuddering horror these outrages which some ignorantly attribute to his influence. It is indeed probable that, if he still looked from his hill-top upon the fields of Europe, he would pour out his most volcanic scorn upon the warring nations, and especially upon Germany and Austria. In fine, it is necessary to remember that Nietzsche was violently anti-democratic. For the mass of the people he had only disdain, and it is folly to ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... A land of wrangling and of quarrels, Of brains that seethe, and hearts that burn, Where every emulous scholar hears, In every breath that comes to his ears, The rustling of another's laurels! The air of the place is called salubrious; The neighborhood of Vesuvius lends it An odor volcanic, that rather mends it, And the buildings have an aspect lugubrious, That inspires a feeling of awe and terror Into the heart of the beholder, And befits such an ancient homestead of error, Where the old falsehoods moulder and smoulder, And yearly by many hundred hands Are carried away, in the zeal ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Chimaera has given us 'chimerical,' Hermes 'hermetic,' Pan 'panic,' Paean, being a name of Apollo, the 'peony,' Tantalus 'to tantalize,' Hercules 'herculean,' Proteus 'protean,' Vulcan 'volcano' and 'volcanic,' and Daedalus 'dedal,' if this word, for which Spenser, Wordsworth, and Shelley have all stood godfathers, may find allowance with us. The demi-god Atlas figures with a world upon his shoulders in the title-page of some early works on geography; and has probably in this way ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... season, the whole Scottish banking system was to be changed, all paper currency under the five-pound note abolished, and a metallic circulation introduced and enforced. If Ben Nevis had burst forth at once in the full thunder of volcanic eruption, we could not have been more astonished. What! without complaint or enquiry—without the shadow of a cause shown, or a reason assigned, except it might be that reason—to a Scotsman the most unpalatable of all—the propriety of assimilating the institutions ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... her as she advances; and in the midst of the hall she stands still and smiles. Her eyes burn with a volcanic fire. A young man rushes forward and encircles her with his arm. A dance with Hanne! A ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... have been led to an explanation of the highly volcanic nature of the moon's surface. This seems to me absolutely to require some such origin as Sir George Darwin has given it, and thus furnishes corroborative proof of the accuracy of the hypothesis that our moon has had an unique origin among the known satellites, ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... as follows: "It is formed partly of stratified tufa of a dark chocolate color, and partly of lumps of black lava, porous, and each with a large cavity in the centre, which must have been ejected as volcanic bombs in a glorious display of fireworks at some period beyond the records of Acorean history, but late in the geological annals of the island" ("Voyage of the Challenger," vol. ii., p. 24). He also describes immense walls of black volcanic ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... shape of extra hard rock," replied the tunnel contractor. "Briefly, Paleozoic rocks make up the eastern part of the Andean Mountains in Peru, while the western range is formed of Mesozoic beds, volcanic ashes and lava of comparatively recent date. Near the coast the lower hills are composed of crystalline rocks, syenite and granite, with, here and there, a strata of sandstone or limestone. These are, undoubtedly, ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton |
