"Obsidian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lightly, joyously. Julia, at the head, moved with the frank, free, swinging gait of an Amazon. Peachy seemed to flit along the ground; there was in her progress something of the dipping, curving grace of her flight. Clara glided; her effect of motionless movement was almost obsidian. Chiquita kept the slow, languid gait, both swaying and pulsating, of a Spanish woman. Lulu trotted with the brisk, pleasing ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... which reproduces in a remarkable manner, the characters of the Canstadt race." Not the least interesting result of this discovery is the similarity of weapons and implements. "With Mr. Lartet, we see in the obsidian lances of New Caledonia the flint heads of the lower alluvium of the Somme. The hatchet of certain Australians reminds us, as it did Sir Charles Lyell, ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... attached little value to calico, although a gaudy pattern, or bright colour, especially red, was sure to arrest attention; but in such matters they are very capricious. Even glass bottles were prized, probably as a substitute for obsidian or volcanic glass, portions of which I saw among them, used in shaving, as was explained to me, and probably also ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... sparkling vapor. Again, cooled by an inrushing blast of air, it would subside into an angry scarlet, its surface crawling in a sluggish flow of lava. Occasionally a part of the wall might even go black, into pock-marked scoriae or into brilliant planes of obsidian. ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... month on their wedding trip, excavated and discovered a fine stone axe, numbers of pieces of pottery of three different kinds, several pieces with holes bored with the primitive drill of flint or obsidian, a fine spearhead of flint, and a ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... bows from the red and sweet-smelling wood like unto cedar. And I taught them to keep both eyes open, and to aim with the left eye, and to make blunt shafts for small game, and pronged shafts of bone for the fish in the clear water, and to flake arrow-heads from obsidian for the deer and the wild horse, the elk and old Sabre-Tooth. But the flaking of stone they laughed at, till I shot an elk through and through, the flaked stone standing out and beyond, the feathered shaft sunk in its vitals, the whole ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... That's an obsidian arrowhead. The Bannacks and Shoshonis got that black, glassy stuff at one place—the Obsidian Cliff, in Yellowstone Park! Those old trails that Lewis saw to the south were trails that crossed the Divide south of here. They put the Indians on Snake River waters. These tribes ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... Australian soil was so fruitful that it only needed to be thrown seed. Sir George satisfied himself that it contained gypsum, such as belongs to the fertile parts of Egypt. Thus gypsum reared wheat, under the foot-print of the black man, who shod his spear in obsidian. Things that began before history, were meeting from very different sides. Nature extended one hand to the inflow of civilisation, another to the rude holding of it back. There was a point of contact in the adventure of a settler, Turner by ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... association and friendship, I have never known him to do an unkind or dishonorable act. He is considerate of others, tender-hearted, sentimental. But, believe me, in "contrariwise," he is flinty obsidian when it comes to his convictions. Shams and hypocrites and parading egotists are his particular and especial abomination and when he gets on the editorial trail of one of that ilk, he turns him inside out and displays the very secrets ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... west, and presently Night came creeping up from the sea. 'What is this?' cried the brothers. 'It is Night,' said Qat; 'sit down, and when you feel something in your eyes, lie down and keep quiet.' So they went to sleep. 'When Night had lasted long enough, Qat took a piece of red obsidian, and cut the darkness, and the Dawn ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... Spain, save that there was greater beauty and subtlety of architecture. Turreted on all four corners, constructed of material which looked like blocks of natural glass, the fairylike structure was crowned by a gigantic tower of something which resembled obsidian. Up and up this tower soared until its gleaming black tip seemed almost to touch the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... Tysn-deh heard that, she went down from the terrace into her own dwelling, and made prayers to her own gods of her Apache people. With a blade of obsidian she made scars until the blood dripped from her braceletted arms. To the divinely created Woman Without Parents, she chanted a song of prayer, and to the Twin Gods who slew enemies, she let her blood ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... narrow and swampy, with frequent sloughs; and after crossing the Pannack, the road continued along the uplands, rendered very slippery by the soil of wet clay, and entirely covered with artemisia bushes, among which occur frequent fragments of obsidian. At noon we encamped in a grove of willows, at the upper end of a group of islands about half a mile above the American falls of Snake river. Among the willows here, were some bushes of Lewis and Clarke's currant, (ribes aureum.) The ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... poisoning their weapons.[17-2] Besides the bow and arrow, [c]ha, they used a lance, achcayupil,[18-1] and especially the blow-pipe, pub, a potent weapon in the hands of an expert, the knowledge of which was widely extended over tropical America. Their arrow points were of stone, especially obsidian, bone and metal. Other weapons were the wooden war club, [c]haibalche; the sling, ica[t]; the hand-axe, ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... foam, rising out of the nether darkness, it looks as if it could resist the hand; as if one might almost walk on it; so unlike any liquid, as seen near shore or inland, is this leaping, heaving plain, reminding one, by its innumerable conchoidal curves, not of water, not even of ice, but rather of obsidian. ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... oaks and cork trees, while the northern side of its declivity affords rich pasture. North-west from this place is the “Giara di Gestori,” of similar formation, proceeding from a crater at Ales, but strewed with numerous square masses of stone—principally fragments of obsidian, and trachytic and cellular lava—so as to resemble a city in ruins. At Monastir there is a distinct double crater, now well wooded; and a bridge constructed of fine red trap, with the bold outline of the neighbourhood, render the entrance to the village by the ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... the rocky plain on which he had landed the ship: Smooth and shiny as obsidian in places, again it was spongy gray, the color of volcanic rock, bubbling with imprisoned gases at the instant of hardening. It stretched out and down, that gently rolling plain, for a thousand yards or more, then ended in a welter of nightmare ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... peering about him, speaking in a most peculiar, rumbling tone, and with a strong accent. "I would not have missed such a chance. Where is this dagger? I have just returned from the Izamal temples of Yucatan. I have brought some fine specimens to Europe. Obsidian knives. ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... occupancy of greed and mischief left no mark on the field, but the Indians did, and the unthinking sheep. Round its corners children pick up chipped arrow points of obsidian, scattered through it are kitchen middens and pits of old sweat-houses. By the south corner, where the campoodie stood, is a single shrub of "hoopee" (Lycium andersonii), maintaining itself hardly among alien shrubs, ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... branches, but it changed little by little near four o'clock in the afternoon; it grew rockier and seemed to be strewn with pudding stones and a basaltic gravel called "tuff," together with bits of lava and sulfurous obsidian. I expected these long plains to change into mountain regions, and in fact, as the Nautilus was executing certain turns, I noticed that the southerly horizon was blocked by a high wall that seemed to close off every exit. Its summit obviously poked above the level ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... more nor less than a gigantic rock of obsidian, of a dark greenish hue, having its flanks irregularly furrowed by vertical fissures and ridges. This peculiar kind of rock, under the sun, or in a very bright moonlight, gives forth a sort of dull translucence, resembling the reflection of glass. ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... Zoraida he passed along a broad walk winding through low shrubs and lined on each side with uniform stones of various colors that were like jewels. These boundaries were no doubt of choice fragments of finely polished chalcedony and jasper and obsidian; they were red and yellow and black and, at regular intervals, a pale exquisite blue which in the rays of the lamps were as beautiful as turquoises. They passed about a screen of dwarf cedars and came upon a tiny lakelet across which a boy ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... got to Obsidian Mountain, Miss Hayes and I decided that we would like to go up a little distance and get a few specimens to carry home with us. Our camp for the night was supposed to be only one mile farther on, and the enlisted men and two wagons were ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe |
