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Stalactites   Listen
noun
Stalactites  n.  A stalactite. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Stalactites" Quotes from Famous Books



... agreeable. One of them was reading Tupper's "Proverbial Philosophy." On reaching Llandudno, S——- waited at the hotel, while O'Sullivan, U——, and I ascended the Great Orme's Head. There are copper-mines here, and we heard of a large cave, with stalactites, but did not go so far as that. We found the old shaft of a mine, however, and threw stones down it, and counted twenty before we heard them strike the bottom. At the base of the Head, on the side opposite the village, we saw a small church with a broken roof, and horizontal ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... either in the intensity of its own power, or in the nature of the materials submitted to it;—so that, at one time, gravity acts upon them, and disposes them in horizontal layers, or causes them to droop in stalactites; and at another, gravity is entirely defied, and the substances in solution are crystallised in bands of equal thickness on every side of the cell. It would require a course of lectures longer than these (I have a great mind,—you have ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... drips from the roof charged with bicarbonate of lime. Exposed to the air, the carbonic acid partially escapes, and the simple carbonate of lime, which is hardly at all soluble in water, deposits itself as a solid, forming stalactites and stalagmites. Even the exposure of chalk or limestone water to the open air partially softens it. A specimen of the Redbourne water exposed by Professors Graham, Miller, and Hofmann, in a shallow basin, fell from eighteen degrees to nine degrees of hardness. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... shook and wavered in a flaming and fantastic shower, distilled and dropping from the groin of the dark and rocky vault down the moist walls, as though it were along the bed of some rainbow grotto of sinuous stalactites that I was following my parents, who marched before me, their prayer-books clasped in their hands; a moment later the little lozenge windows had put on the deep transparence, the unbreakable hardness of sapphires clustered ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... penetrated into the land. As soon as their eyes got accustomed to the subdued light which existed at a distance of thirty or forty feet from the entrance, the beauties of the grotto began to dawn on their sight. Glittering stalactites, of a thousand fantastic forms, hung down from the high and vaulted roof, while at either side appeared columns and arches like those of some ancient temple, tinted with numberless delicate hues, the extreme points of the stalactites glittering like bright gems as they were reached by the reflected ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston

... contained fragments of stalactites apparently from the Grand canyon of the Colorado or from some other locality where water ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes

... mountains. Happily some projections of the granite, forming regular steps, made the descent less perilous. Drops, still hanging from the rocks, shone here and there under the light of the torches, and the explorers guessed that the sides were clothed with innumerable stalactites. The engineer examined this black granite. There was not a stratum, not a break in it. The mass was compact, and of an extremely close grain. The passage dated, then, from the very origin of the island. It was ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... acanthus, chiccory, ivy, vine, or any vegetable leaves; destined perhaps, under some circumstances, to become a puzzle to future geologists. The whole cut impressed me as if it were a cave with its stalactites laid open to the light. The various shades of the sand are singularly rich and agreeable, embracing the different iron colors, brown, gray, yellowish, and reddish. When the flowing mass reaches the drain at the foot of the bank it spreads out flatter into ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... mostly of fragments of wreck and driftwood, threw up its broad cheerful flame towards the roof; but so spacious was the cavern that, except where here and there a whiter mass of stalactites, or bolder projection of cliff stood out from the darkness, the light seemed lost in it. A dense body of smoke, which stretched its blue level surface from side to side, and concealed the roof, went rolling outwards ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... feet. After mounting, by a winding path, about half-way up toward the top, we arrived at the entrance of a cave, into which we descended through a hole. It is fifty or sixty feet long, and the far end is supported on a colonnade of stalactites, and opens on a sheer precipice of 100 or 150 feet. Hence the spectator can overlook the distant scene; the forest lies at his feet, and only a few trees growing from the rock reach nearly to the ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... condition that one might speedily form a cabinet of these, if they were taken when met with, and imagine it to be of great value. The first of these is calcite. It occurs as marble, limestone; calcspar, dogtooth spar, nail head spar, stalactites, and a number of other forms, which are only valuable when occurring in perfect crystals or uniquely set upon the rock holding it. The calcspar is extremely abundant at Bergen Hill, where it might be mistaken for many of the other minerals which I describe as occurring there, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various

... of the goldsmith's art. In one place, for example, rise pulpits finer than those of Pisa or Siena. Their edges seem to be of purest jasper. They are upheld by tapering shafts resembling richly decorated organ-pipes. From parapets of porphyry hang gold stalactites, side by side with icicles of silver. Moreover, all its marvelous fretwork is distinctly visible, for the light film of water pulsates over it so delicately that it can no more hide the filigree beneath than a thin veil ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard

... in width. At a considerable distance from the entrance light is admitted by two openings in the roof, the only ones throughout the whole extent of the cave, and when these are passed the full beauty of the scene breaks upon the view of the visitor. Stalactites of every form, hang like icicles from the roof; some presenting the appearance of inverted cones, others that of glistening semi-transparent tubes, about the thickness of a pipe stem, and several yards in length. In some parts, ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... the famous Calabash Tree, renowned in verse. Nor did he fail to visit the marvelous stalactite caves of which Bermuda has five beautiful examples, lighted with electricity to display their wonders. The boy was greatly interested in the most recently discovered one of all, where the stalactites branch like trees in a manner but little understood by geologists. But, greatly though he wished to investigate this problem, Colin's objective point was the Devil's Hole; and fish, not stalactites, were his ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... enhances the snug cheer within. The stillness of the morning is impressive. The floor creaks under our feet as we move toward the window to look abroad through some clear space over the fields. We see the roofs stand under their snow burden. From the eaves and fences hang stalactites of snow, and in the yard stand stalagmites covering some concealed core. The trees and shrubs rear white arms to the sky on every side; and where were walls and fences, we see fantastic forms stretching in frolic ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... by the erosive action of the water wearing out the softer portions of the rock beneath a harder roof or wall. This action is brought about by carbonic acid acting on the rock and producing what is called carbonate of lime, and the stalactites and stalagmites found in all these ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay

... there evidences of this progressive destruction. Not only do the caves wear out from above, but their roofs are constantly falling to their floors, a process which is greatly aided by the growth of stalactites. Forming in the crevices or joints between the stones, these rock growths sometimes prize off great blocks. In other cases the weight of the pendent stalactite drags the ill-supported masses of the roof ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... following the dip of the strata. A considerable stream, the outlet of the waters which dissolved these caves in the solid limestone, passes through. The wall decorations, and, in some of the chambers, the stalagmites and stalactites, are exceedingly fine. The vaults and passages are unusually large. There is one chamber twenty-five feet across whose ceiling is believed to be two ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... paper-mill, fed by the stream, and then through a sort of ante-grot, whence stepping-stones are laid in the brawling current through a succession of natural compartments with dome-like roofs. From the hill overhead hang stalactites of all grotesque and fairy shapes, and the rock underfoot is embroidered with fantastic designs wrought by the water in the silence and darkness of the endless night. At a considerable distance from the mouth of the cavern is a wide lake, with ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... The overhanging rushes and alder-sprays, weary of winter's sameness, have made for themselves playthings,—each dangling a crystal knob of ice, which sways gently in the water and gleams ruddy in the sunlight. As we approach the foaming cascade, the toys become larger and more glittering, movable stalactites, which the water tosses merrily upon their flexible stems. The torrent pours down beneath an enamelled mask of ice, wreathed and convoluted like a brain, and sparkling with gorgeous glow. Tremulous motions and glimmerings ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... stooping to enter. Cautiously peeping through some spaces between the rocks, the agent and his myrmidons gazed upon a scene Salvator would have loved to paint. The cavern here expanded into a semicircular hall, stalactites hanging from its roof nearly to the ground. Here and there a niche and recess which seemed done by human art, but which in fact was Nature's handiwork, was seen, and every point of spar, from the lofty roof to the stalagmites ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite

... fairly well, but when the first breath of warm air set the melted snow streaming down the roofs, which again the night's frost transformed into long stalactites of ice, Mavra felt a strange, vague aching in her heart. The house was overheated, and the close, nauseous air made her sick. What would she not give to run as of old over the moors, to see if the moss were beginning ...
— The Little Russian Servant • Henri Greville

... was full of hurrying people and of grooms who stood in knots beside doorways. They flattened themselves against the walls before the Lord Privy Seal's procession of gentlemen in black with white staves, and the ceilings seemed to send down moulded and gilded stalactites to touch his head. The beefeater before the door of the Lady Mary's lodgings spat upon the ground when he had passed. His hard glance travelled along the wall like a palpable ray, about the height of a man's head. It passed over faces and slipped back to the ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... of which we know so well. It is not a mere resemblance that should homologate different things; there should be a specific character in every thing that is to be generalised. It will be our business to show that, in the false stalactites, there is not the distinctive character of those water formed bodies to ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton

... eyes, in robe of trailing, snowy, sun-shot mist, with water lilies dropping from her hair, and the cave—Will could have provided for her such a cave, the water tinkling and trickling from the walls hung with silver spray, stalactites of purest barley sugar glittering, pillars of creamiest cream candy shimmering; and, to crown all and above all, the fairy would have had a daily diet of cream cakes ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.

... out until he could scarcely see them with his flashlight. Playing it upward he could only get a faint reflection from the stalactites hundreds ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam

... were of silver, manufactured in Venice; the lower part was of opal-tinted glass, exactly portraying some voluptuous couch, on which the beautiful Amphitrite might have reclined, as she hastened through beds of coral to crystal grot, starred with transparent stalactites. In the centre of this shell, were sockets, whence verged small hollow golden tubes, resembling in shape and size the stalks of a flower. At the drooping ends of these, were lamps shaped and coloured to imitate the most beauteous flowers of the parterre. This ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... influences, the gas which they formed blow up the yielding lime and mud around them into a long narrow cave, just as a glass-blower blows up a bottle, or as a little yeast blows up into similar but greatly smaller cavities a bit of leaven. And the stalactites and stalagmites which encrust the Kirkdale Cave are, Mr. Penn holds, simply the last runnings of the lime that exuded after the general mass had begun to set. Certainly any one disposed to take ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... Dantes' mind. If he closed his eyes, he saw Cardinal Spada's letter written on the wall in characters of flame—if he slept for a moment the wildest dreams haunted his brain. He ascended into grottos paved with emeralds, with panels of rubies, and the roof glowing with diamond stalactites. Pearls fell drop by drop, as subterranean waters filter in their caves. Edmond, amazed, wonderstruck, filled his pockets with the radiant gems and then returned to daylight, when he discovered that his prizes had all changed into common pebbles. He then ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... jolly, rollicking Italian, led us into the heart of the hill, up and down, right and left, from chamber to chamber more and more magnificent, all a-glitter like a glacier cave with icicle-like stalactites and stalagmites combined in forms of indescribable beauty. We were shown one large room that was occasionally used as a dancing-hall; another that was used as a chapel, with natural pulpit and crosses and pews, sermons in every stone, where a priest had said mass. Mass-saying is not ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir

... system. When very pure and transparent the substance is called Iceland spar. Calcite is a similar form, but somewhat opaque or clouded. Mexican onyx is a massive variety, streaked or banded with colors due to impurities. Marble when pure is made up of minute calcite crystals. Stalactites and stalagmites are icicle-like forms ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson

... of the grub asserts itself on the very day whereon these preparations are made. The undersurface, originally a bright red, turns brown and runs in every direction into a mass of dark stalactites. Soon, the flesh of the cap is attacked and, in a few days, becomes a gruel similar to liquid asphalt. It is almost as fluid as water. In this broth the maggots wallow, wriggling their bodies and, from time to time, sticking the breathing holes in their sterns above the water. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... out of which the calcareous sand had been washed or dissolved, and whose walls, still to a certain extent permeable, had been hardened and petrified by the constant percolation of water charged with carbonate of lime. From the roof innumerable stalactites, perfectly white, often several yards long and coming down to the delicacy of knitting-needles, hung in clusters; and wherever there was any continuous crack in the roof or wall, a graceful, soft-looking curtain of white stalactite fell, and often ended, much to our surprise. ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... ravenous Fiddle-ogre, who buys and sells everything that bears the Fiddle shape, from a Double-Bass to a dancing-master's pocketable Kit. His house is one vast warehouse, with Fiddles on the walls, Fiddles on the staircases, and Fiddles hanging like stalactites from the ceilings. To him the tyros resort when they first begin to scrape; he will set them up for ten shillings, and swop them up afterwards, step by step, to ten or twenty guineas, and to ten times ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... shoulders. "I used to be, but I've been so frozen by years of her silence that now I might better be classed among her stalactites. She has a number. I've been trying to get Judge Trent to send me to Boston on business to-morrow and to call on her. He wishes to ask ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... and made to join the Speyne by a new cut from the lake. The cut is made, and a fine bridge built over it. We went into the cut and under the bridge, which is very near the intended point of junction. The string-courses were encrusted with stalactites in a manner singularly beautiful. Under the arches a strong mound of solid masonry is built to keep the water in dry seasons at a certain height; But in that mound a gap is left for the salmon, and a way made through the rocks from ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... sick there. Even the mill was silent, and the gate shut down; and, instead of the ordinary roar of the water under the wheel, only a hissing sound was heard, where the imprisoned water spouted through the crevices of the flume. Vast stalactites of ice extended continuously along the whole face of the dam, like a frozen waterfall, behind which the water percolated curiously down into the foaming abyss, at the bottom of the fall. Jonas thought that all this, seen ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott

... sides by steep walls of rock, covered with clinging ivy in a most picturesque manner. On the left we find a little grotto containing an altar. In the foreground, on the right, a lofty gate, formed by nature and beautified by art, leads into a chapel wonderfully formed of pieces of rock and stalactites. A feeling of astonishment and admiration almost amounting to awe came upon me as I entered. The walls near the chief altar are overgrown with a kind of delicate moss of an emerald-green colour, with the white rock shining through ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer

... Little Pop Wilson, the well-known dialect novelist of the southeastern part of northern Kentucky, suggested that there was something to be said in favor of the Mammoth Cave—"always cool, you know. Artificial lights, pulpit rock, stalactites—all that sort of thing!" Even this was felt to be within the bounds of possibility. The one thing that was not open to doubt was that the wedding would certainly be celebrated in an original way and a romantic place, ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... through the winding galleries and clammy grottoes, their voices booming ever and anon against the silent walls with the roar of foghorns. Now they had come to what was known as "the Cathedral." This was a wide, lofty chamber, hung with dripping stalactites, far below the level at which they began the descent. The floor was almost as flat and even as that of a modern dwelling. Here the cavern branched off in three or four directions, like the tentacles of a monster devilfish, ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon

... to pierce the botanic chaos that crowded close up to the palace grounds. Banian and sacred waringhan trees covered great stretches of ground, and dropped their fantastic roots into the steaming earth like living stalactites. The fan-shaped, water-hoarding traveller's palm formed a background for the brilliant magenta-colored bougainvillea. The dim, translucent depths of an orchid-house lured us on, or a great pond covered with the sacred lotus, blue lilies, and the flush-colored cups ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman

... himself obliged either to utter a harsh and unreasonable refusal, or to organise an expedition which he personally disliked extremely, and moreover distrusted, for he did not in the least believe that Queen Mary would be so set upon gratifying her curiosity about stalactites without some ulterior motive. He tried to set on Dr. Jones to persuade Messieurs Gorion and Bourgoin, her medical attendants, that the cave would be fatal to her rheumatism, but it so happened that the Peak Cavern was Dr. Jones's favourite lion, ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... extended visit. The first cave is some three hundred feet long, and varies in height from ten to eighty or ninety feet. The second cave has about the same length, but is much higher and contains a far more diversified collection of stalactites, stalagmites and sheets of calcareous deposits, that hang like curtains before the more solid side walls. While appearing in the red-wall limestone, the rock of these caves is all of a creamy white, thus demonstrating that the formation itself is white, ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... Have sculptured the cliff, and the stern mountain wall; Have formed the bold turret, impressive and tall; Have cut the deep gorge with its wonderful caves, Sepulchral and gloomy; whose vast architraves Support the stalactites, both pendant and white, Which with the stalagmites beneath them unite; Where nestles a valley, sequestered and grand, Worn out of the rock by the same tireless hand, Surrounded by mountains, majestic and gray, Which smile from their heights ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... above and the spray of cascades below, offered a shelter from the storm. I entered,—scaring innumerable flocks of bats striking against me, blinded by the glare of the lightning that followed me into the cavern, and hastening to resettle themselves on the pendants of stalactites, or the ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... like water from the fountains, and the centuries passed like drops falling from the ends of stalactites. Hunters came to chase the bears upon the hills that covered the forgotten city; shepherds led their flocks upon them; labourers turned up the soil with their ploughs; gardeners cultivated their lettuces and grafted their pear trees. They were not rich, and they had no arts. The walls ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... me,—the face that drank up my heart in one long draught, begun across Alice dead, finished when I read that letter. The cup of my heart was empty,—so empty now! I looked down into it; it was fringed with stalactites, crystallized from the poison of the glass. Oh! what did I see there? A dead, dead crater, aching for the very fire that made it what it was, crying out of its fierce void for fiery fusion. Why did our God make us so,—us, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... at the Hutted Knoll. They had built three or four skiffs, one small batteau, and a couple of canoes. These were all in the water, in waiting for the disappearance of the ice; which was now reduced to a mass of stalactites in form, greenish and sombre in hue, as they floated in a body, but clear and bright when separated and exposed to the sun. The south winds began to prevail, and the shore was glittering with the fast-melting piles ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... Saracens, such as we may observe in the palaces of Moorish Spain and in the Necropolis of the Mamlouk Sultans at Cairo, deep recesses of honeycomb work, with every now and then pendants of daring grace hanging like stalactites from some sparry cavern. This roof is supported by columns of white marble, fashioned in the shape of palm trees, the work of Italian artists, and which forms arcades around the chamber. Beneath these ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... across, into which they were gradually settling. And, as they settled, the pale Earth light, white as that of the Moon on Earth, showed the gaunt masses of bare rock, on which nothing grew, and the long stalactites of glassy lava ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various

... tun of Heidelberg, or, better still, like what Jonah must have felt in the biblical belly of the whale. An entire and gigantic skeleton appeared enveloping them. Above, a long brown beam, whence started at regular distances, massive, arching ribs, represented the vertebral column with its sides, stalactites of plaster depended from them like entrails, and vast spiders' webs stretching from side to side, formed dirty diaphragms. Here and there, in the corners, were visible large blackish spots which had the appearance of being ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... Archbishop of Crete blessed the cavern, and the bones of the victims of Turkish barbarity were collected and buried in the outer hall, which has in its centre a lofty stalagmite reaching to the summit, and the walls on all sides are draped with stalactites. ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... with a sandy calcareous stone, having the appearance of concretions rising irregularly about a foot above the general surface, without any distinct ramifications. The specimens from this place have evidently the structure of stalactites, which seem to have been formed in sand; and the reddish carbonate of lime, by which the sand has been agglutinated, is of the same character with that of the west coast, where a similar concreted limestone occurs in ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... which I penetrated, did not present anything particular to my observation; they differed little from caves of a similar description into which I had penetrated in Europe. Large masses of stalactites hung from their roofs, and a corresponding formation encrusted their floors. They comprised various chambers or compartments, the most remote of which terminated at a deep chasm that was full of water. A close examination ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... from ten to thirty feet in depth. The smooth surface of these crystal waters, never ruffled by any air of heaven, and undisturbed save by the dip of our oars as we were ferried across, the utter darkness that hid the opposite shore from our straining sight, the huge rocks above, whose clustering stalactites, lighted by our glimmering lamps, sparkled like a starry sky, the sound of the far-off waterfall, softened by distance into a sad and solemn music, all united to recall with a vivid power, never before felt, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... and more like the vibrations of metal or glass than the human voice, but in perfect harmony, and although painful in some degree, yet very fine. In winter an immense accumulation of ice takes place at the foot of the Fall, sometimes as much as three hundred feet broad, with two enormous icy stalactites hanging down over it. When heat returns, the falling waters hollow out cavernous channels through the mass, the effect of which is said to be very fine; this, no doubt, is the proper season to see the Staubbach to most advantage." Six or eight miles further, the valley ends in glaciers scarcely ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various

... in their meshes the snow had been pressed through by its own weight, but held together by its curious ductility or tensile strength of which I was to find further evidence soon enough. It thus formed innumerable, blunted little stalactites, but without the corresponding stalagmites which you find in limestone caves or on the north side of buildings when the snow from the roof thaws and forms icicles and slender cones of ice growing up to meet them from the ground where the trickling ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove

... imagination to grasp at once and you are overwhelmed as much as you were on first seeing Niagara. Here is silence such as never came to the outer world, darkness that far exceeds the blackest midnight; glittering stalactites that gleam like diamonds from the ceiling above; massive artistic drapery which falls in graceful folds; cascades of rarest beauty formed by stone of marble whiteness, in place of falling water; ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... very various conditions. All sorts of limestones are composed of more or less pure carbonate of lime. The crust which is often deposited by waters which have drained through limestone rocks, in the form of what are called stalagmites and stalactites, is carbonate of lime. Or, to take a more familiar example, the fur on the inside of a tea-kettle is carbonate of lime; and, for anything chemistry tells us to the contrary, the chalk might be a kind of gigantic fur upon the bottom of the earth-kettle, ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... felspar or green patch of verdure.—and Valdemar Svensen stated that he knew of a sandy creek where, if the party chose, they could land and see a small cave of exquisite beauty, literally hung all over with stalactites. ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... stop in front of a wall of rock. I then perceived by the aid of a few fitful rays of suppressed light, which at intervals struggled successfully through a black bank of clouds, the yawning mouth of a big cavern, from the roof of which hung innumerable stalactites. I now suddenly realized that I was in a very lonely, isolated spot, and became immeasurably perturbed. The Unknown Something in the atmosphere which had inspired me with so much fear was here conglomerated—it was no longer ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... instead of raising him. The second cry was effectual, and he was drawn up, though not without great difficulty, from a depth of one hundred and twenty-five feet. The most serious peril of the ascent was caused by the huge stalactites of ice, between the points of which he had to steer his way. Any one of them, if detached by the friction of the rope, might have caused his death. He afterward said: "Had I known all its dangers, ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... one of the larger vesicles of the amygdaloid. He describes it as curiously illustrative of a various chemistry; the outer crust is composed of a pale-zoned agate, inclosing a cavity, from the upper side of which there depends a group of chalcedonic stalactites, some of them, as in ancient spar caves, reaching to the floor; and bearing on its under side a large crystal of carbonate of lime, that the longer stalactites pass through. In the vesicle in which this hollow pebble was formed three consecutive processes must have gone on. First, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... begrimed with smoke. At this point we were startled by the hollow tread of our feet, caused by the proximity of another large avenue underneath, which the guide assured us he had often visited. In this neighborhood too, there are a number of Stalactites, one of which was called the Bell, which on being struck, sounded like the deep bell of a cathedral; but it now no longer tolls, having been broken in twain by a visiter from Philadelphia some years ago. Further on our way, we passed Louisa's Bower and Vulcan's Furnace, ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt

... descend, till it spanned the moat; and at a word the men fresh from their homes marched across, to halt by the portcullis, which then began to rise slowly, the capstans creaking and cracking, till the row of spikes alone was visible as they hung like iron stalactites overhead. ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn

... cavern have been explored, and it may possibly be of still greater extent. To give an idea of the height of one of the chambers, we may add that the rocks from above have fallen, and a hill has been formed one hundred feet in elevation. Many of the halls are ornamented with the most magnificent stalactites. One of them is appropriately called Martha's Vineyard, in consequence of having its tops and sides covered with stalactites which ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... external parts became solid, and forming an arch prevented the internal parts from approaching each other so near as to become solid, and thus chalk was produced. I have specimens of chalk formed at the root of several stalactites, and in their central parts; and of other stalactites which are hollow like quills from a similar cause, viz. from the external part of the stalactite hardening first by its evaporation, and thus either ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... to attack unceasingly with relentless fury, as if bent on hurling it from its base. On the other side was a large cavern, into which the burning mass rushed with a loud roar, breaking down in its impetuous headlong career the gigantic stalactites that overhung the mouth of the cave, and flinging up the liquid material for the formation ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... entrance of her dwelling an advanced fortification, an earthy cylinder, wrought in open work, like that of the Odynerus,[2] and curved like it, but of the width and length of a man's finger. When the community is a populous one, we stand amazed at the rustic ornamentation formed by all these stalactites of clay hanging from the facade. The other, A. pilipes, who is very much more frequent, leaves the opening of her corridor bare. The chinks between the stones in old walls and abandoned hovels, the surfaces of excavations in soft ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... fountain; and this name comes from a clear and limpid spring, which rises in a grove in the park, on a slight elevation, around which has been built a little pavilion, carved on the inside to imitate stalactites. In this pavilion lies a sleeping Naiad, holding in her hand a shell, from which the water gushes and falls into a marble basin. This is a delicious ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... Huc's inimitable picture of the hairy Yaks of their caravan, after passing a river in the depth of winter, "walking with their legs wide apart, and bearing an enormous load of stalactites, which hung beneath their bellies quite to the ground. The monstrous beasts looked exactly as if they were preserved in sugar-candy." Or that other, even more striking, of a great troop of wild Yaks, caught in the upper waters of the Kin-sha Kiang, as they swam, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... which made the two Moslems quail, the pirate's daughter hastily entered the cavern with a blazing torch, the flashes of which awakened from slumber into life and glow the various tints of mosses, lichens, and stalactites innumerable that studded the ample vault. In this flitting and singular illumination, the appearance of the Uzcoque maiden was awful. Above the common stature of woman, and finely formed, she was attired in a white woollen garment, carelessly adjusted and confined at the waist by broad red girdle, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... he said to Mr. Ware and Mr. Upton, and other heads of the settlement, "that some of our hunters have reported the existence of great caves to the southwestward and that they have brought back from them wonderful stalactites and stalagmites and also dust from the cave floors. I find that this dust is strongly impregnated with niter; from niter we obtain saltpeter and from saltpeter we make gunpowder. We need not send to Virginia for our powder, we can make it here ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... were finally closed; a hard frost of many days' duration had almost hermetically sealed them, and the drip of Thames water through the sluices formed immediately into long, fantastic stalactites of clear ice. Rainham found it difficult to believe, at times, that the bustle of the wharves, the roar of maritime London, still went on at his elbows, the deserted yard cast such a panoply of silence round him. It was as though he ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... to spoil any beauty to gratify their vanity or their acquisitiveness, had cast stones into the midst of the fairy handicraft of the wizard water for the sake of a fragment; nor had the village boys amused themselves here at the expense of the stalactites, for happily they had been well trained in the horror of the supernatural. The cavern ran for a certain distance south-west; then the gallery turned at a sharp angle north-north-west, and continued in this direction. We followed the stream some three or four ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... the ventilators and chimneys, had fairly bathed the vessel. It was cold, too, and the Roland was continuing its obstinate, praiseworthy trip under a crust of ice and snow. Icicles were hanging from the rigging. Glassy stalactites formed about the chart-room and everywhere on the railings and edges of things. The deck was slippery, and it was a perilous venture to attempt to make one's way forward. But when Ingigerd's cabin door ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... had a fascination that never faded. Other localities and diversions might pall, but any mention of the cave found him always eager and ready for the three-mile walk or pull that brought them to its mystic door. With its long corridors, its royal chambers hung with stalactites, its remote hiding-places, its possibilities as the home of a gallant outlaw band, it contained everything that a romantic boy could love or long for. In Tom Sawyer Indian Joe dies in the cave. He did not die there in real life, but was lost there once, and was living on bats when they found him. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... stalactites, it seemed; the cloud-born vapors downward spiraling, till they met the whirlpool-column from the sea; then, uniting, over the waters stalked, like ghosts of gods. Or midway sundered—down, sullen, sunk the watery half; and far up into heaven, was drawn the vapory. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... revenue officers who might be seeking them. The place, chilly enough at best, was growing bitter cold. The strange subterranean beauty of the surroundings, the limestone wall and arches, scintillating wherever they caught the light; the shadowy, mysterious vaulted roof; the white stalactites that hung down thence to touch the stalagmites as they rose up from the floor, and formed with them endless vistas of stately colonnades, all were oddly incongruous with the drunken, bloated faces of the distillers. ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... northwest of Belfort, France. Some workmen, excavating in a quarry of Jurassic limestone, found the opening to the cave, the bottom of which was covered with stalagmites, while there were no corresponding stalactites hanging from the roof. Some of these calcareous columns appear to be artificial piles covered with the limestone sheeting. Between them, and also covered with stalagmite, were a quantity of human skeletons, with the ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... a cave, called Yordas Cave, four and a half miles from Ingleton in Lonsdale, Yorkshire. It is a limestone cavern, rich in stalactites, like the grotto of Antiparos; and is at the foot of the slopes of Gragreth, formerly called Greg-roof. It gets its name from a traditional giant 'Yordas'; some of its recesses being called "Yordas' bed-chamber," "Yordas' oven," etc. See Allen's 'County of York', iii. p. 359; also ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... bower, and thickly clustering with mimic grapes. Through all the East of this foliage, you spied in a crimson dawn, Guide's ever youthful Apollo, driving forth the horses of the sun. From sculptured stalactites of vine-boughs, here and there pendent hung galaxies of gas lights, whose vivid glare was softened by pale, cream-colored, porcelain spheres, shedding over the place a serene, silver flood; as if every porcelain sphere were a moon; and this superb apartment was the moon-lit garden ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... two sets of stones, and space for two wheels. Only one was at work, and that was grinding barley-meal—meal from nasty, foreign barley full of dirt; but the miller had English barley-meal too, soft as velvet and sweet as a new-baked loaf. Stalactites of finest meal dust hung from every nail, peg, cobweb, and rope end on the walls, fine meal strewed the floor, coarse meal poured from the polished shoots, to which the sacks hung by bright steel hooks, and on both floors ancient grindstones ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

... just your way. The place will be wonderful. There are sure to be plenty of crystals and stalactites and wonderful caverns and places. Oh, I do wish we were ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn

... woman, you're always seeing slights and insults. I tell you he's taken a shine to Phemie; and he's as good as four seats and a bouquet to that child next Wednesday evening, to say nothing of the eclat of getting this St. Simeon—what do you call him?—Stalactites?" ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... museum primitive implements should be observed, and specimens of animals and birds. Pictures of caves, pieces of stalactites, stalagmites, of limestone, quartz, and flint would be of value, either seen in the museum or, better still, looked at and handled in the classroom as the story is read. A tendon procured from the butcher and dried for a few weeks ...
— The Cave Boy of the Age of Stone • Margaret A. McIntyre

... perhaps foot of white man has never trod—interminable vistas where the eucalyptus trees rear their lofty trunks and spread forth their lanky limbs, from which the red gum oozes and hangs in fantastic pendants like crimson stalactites; ravines along the sides of which the long-bladed grass grows rankly; level untimbered plains alternating with undulating tracts of pasture, here and there broken by a stony ridge, steep gully, or dried-up creek. All wild, vast and desolate; all the same monotonous ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... doubt, it is the most original building in the world; it recalls nothing that you have ever seen and it belongs to no style whatever: you might call it a gigantic madrepore, a colossal formation of crystals, or a grotto of stalactites inverted. ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... brief, for, though the palace of Jonah had a sepulchral grandeur about it—a mighty cavern beneath the waves—yet the glittering stalactites which studded the roof, and the cold columns of ice supporting its halls, nearly froze me, and at length I made ready ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... lightning was now forked and intensely blue. It flashed into every cranny in the cave, showing the barnacles on the roof, the little bits of fern, the strange stalactites. After the flash had passed, the darkness which followed was so intense that the light of the dim candle could scarcely be seen. Presently the rain thundered down upon the bare rock above with a tremendous sound; there were great ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade

... and runners. After listening a moment, he nodded to himself, like a figure in a pantomime, ran into the kitchen, did something to the stove, then lighted a lantern and pattered out along the tunnel dodging the icicle stalactites. Between the firs he stopped and held his lantern high so that it touched a moving radius of flakes to silver stars. Back of him through the open door streamed the glow of lamp and fire filling the icicles with blood and flushing the walls and ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt

... two of the windows, half a dozen chairs, a stand or two, and in a corner the grand piano. There were no rugs—the bare floor stretched bleakly into dim corners and was lost. The crystal pendants of the great chandelier looked like stalactites in a cave. The girl touched the piano keys; they were ice ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... from New Zealand here has been upon the whole favourable; no gales—quite the reverse—but light variable winds and calms. The latter part of our voyage has, however, been very cold, snow falling in abundance, and the ice forming great stalactites about our bows. We have seen no icebergs nor anything remarkable. From all I can learn it is most probable that we shall leave in about a week and shall go direct to England without stopping at any other port. I wish it may ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... fern. Rustic cottages, half hidden by the luxuriant foliage, crowned each prominent eminence, and little by-ways branched off into cool, umbrageous recesses, where caves, glittering with sea-shells and illuminated stalactites, invited the wayfarer to linger a while and rest. Far down in deep glens and grottoes were retired nooks, where lovers, hidden from the busy throng, might mingle their vows to the harmony of falling waters; where the ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... reproduction of seven of them rooms. Two men of Deadwood of Dakota wuz over a year a-gittin' specimens of the stalactites and stalagmites which they have ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... has popularized the Vierge aux Rochers,[26] that composition that exhales the strange and mysterious grace of the master. In a strange spot, a kind of grotto bristling with stalactites and sharply pointed rocks, the holy Virgin presents the little Saint John to the Infant Jesus, who blesses him with uplifted finger. An angel with a proud and charming face,—a celestial hermaphrodite having something of the young maiden and the youth but superior to either in his ideal ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... One of these latter is a work of some art—a long sunken vault, with a pointed arch projecting a few feet above the surface of the ground; outside it is of rough stone, the interior is carefully coated with fine lime, and from the roof long stalactites depend. Near it is a cemetery: the graves are, for the most part, provided with large slabs of close black basalt, planted in the ground edgeways, and in the shape of a small oblong. The material was most probably brought from the mountains near Tajurrah: ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... to tramp in time to it, and the rock shook. They deployed to left and right into a space so vast that the eye at first refused to try to measure it. It was the hollow core of a mountain, filled by the sea-sound of a human crowd and hung with huge stalactites that danced and shifted and flung back a thousand colors at the ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... over the rugged mound, they again embarked, encountering a couple of reefs. They then proceeded on between steep walls with a free navigation, for upwards of four miles. In many places the roof was adorned with draperies formed of snow-white stalactites, but generally the black walls alone appeared. In some parts the roof descended so low that they were compelled to lie down, and shove the boat along by holding to the roof above their heads, until at length they found that they could proceed ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston

... the slippers hang in long threads of red, festooning from the ceiling like stalactites of blood, flooding the eyes of passers-by with dripping colour, jamming their crimson reflections against the windows of cabs and tram-cars, screaming their claret and salmon into the teeth of the sleet, plopping ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... fascinating recollections of my life. During three hours, the bank of lava which almost divided the lakes rose considerably, owing to the cooling of the spray as it dashed over it, and a cavern of considerable size was formed within it, the roof of which was hung with fiery stalactites, more than a foot long. Nearly the whole time the surges of the further lake taking a southerly direction, broke with a tremendous noise on the bold craggy cliffs which are its southern boundary, throwing their gory spray to a height of fully forty feet. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... mountains are all in delicious keeping with all of what the imagination in love with the fantastic, attracted by their more distant forms, could dream. Valleys, gorges, somber gaps, walls cut perpendicularly, rough or polished by water, cavities festooned with hanging stalactites and notched like Gothic sculptures—all make up a strange sight which cannot ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... Stalactites may be represented by rough pieces of wood, which must be smeared with glue, and sprinkled with ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... along narrow passages and through large rooms for about two hundred yards, part of the distance being under the road we had just walked over. We had never been in a cave like this before. The stalactites which hung from the roof of the cavern, and which at first we thought were long icicles, were formed by the rain-water as it slowly filtered through the limestone rock above, all that could not be retained by the stalactite dropping from the end of ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... times. It is needless to say that the proprietor of each cave affirms his to be the better—as a matter of fact, both are well worth seeing. One looks with something like awe on the fantastic shapes of the stalagmites and stalactites in these huge caverns, where the moisture, percolating through the earth, has been dripping in the darkness for countless centuries, each lime-laden drop lengthening imperceptibly the stalactite overhead and the stalagmite beneath, while the consequent ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home

... laid one upon the other, of whimsical shape. Across them huge roots had glided, like monstrous serpents, seeking from afar the juicy nourishment enjoyed by a few beeches. The two sides of the road resembled the subterranean grottos that are famous for stalactites. Immense festoons of stone, where the darkling verdure of ivy and holly allied itself to the green-gray patches of the moss and lichen, hid the precipices and the openings into several caves. When the three travellers had gone ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... these marbles; there is no end to them; the walls and floor of the great, many-arched, thousand-pillared, sky-lifted cavern are crusted all over with them, like stalactites and stalagmites. The vast temple is alive with the images of the dead. Kings and queens, nobles, statesmen, soldiers, admirals, the great men whose deeds we all know, the great writers whose words are in all our memories, the brave and the beautiful whose ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... President's room, after a fashion that would be too free and easy for the villa of Lucullus, but which is not altogether discordant with the splendid leprosy of gilding with which the whole interior is infected; which is to be seen oozing from the caissons overhead in huge stalactites, damasked in broad sheets on the paneling, glaring in lattice-work, bosses, scrolls and frets, and trickling everywhere over the efflorescence of the plaster decorations. There are two or three committee-rooms, likewise, very elaborately, though very questionably, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... Queen ever realized the full size of those tanks, or even saw the lids which Mr. Phillips had mentioned. The light was very dim. The situation, in spite of the grotesque appearance of the tanks, was exceedingly romantic. Long stalactites hung, faintly gleaming, from the roof. The water, strangely blue, mourned against the stones of the beach, sighed through the deep recesses of the cave. The world and all ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham

... looked, and saw a very wonderful and terrible sight. Below us was a stream of lava, rolling and surging and beating against huge, precipitous, red-hot cliffs; and, higher up, suspended from other, also red or white hot overhanging cliffs, depended huge stalactites, like masses of fiercely glowing fern leaves waving about in the subterraneous wind; and here we saw how thin was in some such places the crust over which we walked, and how near the melting-point ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff

... wide as at the entrance, the magnificence of the cavern was greatly increased by the countless stalactites which hung from the roof; some reaching to the ground, and forming pillars with arches of the most delicate tracery, which often shone brilliantly as the light of our torches fell on them. The farther we got, the more fantastic ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston

... width, any large London tailor's or linendraper's plate-glass window reaching to the ground; within the window, on two rows of inclined plane, what the coach-house has to show; hanging above, like irregular stalactites from the roof of a cave, a quantity of clothes—the clothes of the dead and ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... shone with a thousand lights, which had not been hitherto observed. The sparkling stalactites projecting downward from the roof, with here and there the drops of clear filtered water, gave back the glare from the torches in a thousand coruscations. It seemed to our young hunters as though they were treading the famed halls of ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... which describes the visits of enthusiastic persons to big caves underground, very dark, damp, dreary, ugly, funereal—with winding ways and huge holes, water with eyeless fish, and certain drippings called stalagmites and stalactites. The enthusiasts, who always possess that priceless treasure self-satisfaction, and a boundless capacity for wonder (which is always ready to exercise itself with anything that is big, however ugly), and the "Palaces," and "Halls," ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various

... cavern, very curious and not unskilful outline drawings on the rock, sometimes touched up with color, of now extinct animals,—the extreme age of these works of art being demonstrated by the fact that they are in many cases partially covered with stalactites. The learned scientists who have uncovered and photographed these incised drawings conclude, from their appearance and from the fragments of animals' bones found in the cavern, that they are the work of men of the Neolithic age and the Palaeolithic, which preceded it. ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton

... nearly seven o'clock. He saw Cynthia and her companions come out of Gough's Cave and enter Cox's. These fairy grottoes of nature's own contriving were well worthy of close inspection, he knew. Nowhere else in the world can stalactites that droop from the roof, stalagmites that spring from the floor, be seen in such perfection of form and tint. But he fretted and fumed because Cynthia was immured too long in their ice-cold recesses, and when, at last, she reappeared from the second cavern and ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... died. The others dispersed among the villages of Malo. In Aore, I had the rare sensation of witnessing an earthquake below the surface. I was exploring a deep cave in the coral banks when I heard the well-known rumbling, felt the shock, and heard some great stalactites fall from the ceiling. This accumulation of effects seemed then to me ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... however, we suddenly entered a great cavern, quite dry. From its roof hung great stalactites that glittered and sparkled in the torch's uncertain light, while around the rough walls of this natural chamber were heaped in profusion great heavy ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... stooping, Often even well-nigh creeping, For the rocks were nearly meeting. Soon, however, widely opened At the passage end a cavern Of gigantic height and grandeur. Slender columns there supported Lofty arches of the ceiling; From the walls the gray stalactites Hung in various patterns twining, Marvellous, yet graceful textures; Some like tears which from the walls dropped, Others like the richly twisted Branches of gigantic corals. An unearthly bluish colour All throughout the space was glowing, Mingled with the glaring torch-light From ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel

... told of himself, of his family, of his native land, of the curiosities of the island, of the cavern of Arta, tragically grand, chaotic as an ante-chamber of the inferno; of the Dragon's caves with their forests of stalactites, glistening like an ice palace, of its thousand placid lakes, from the deep crystal depths of which it seemed as if nude sirens would arise like those Rhine maidens who guarded the treasure of the Niebelungs. ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... glittering crystal; the candles reflected on the wall a golden light, bright as the stars of heaven, while great crystal pillars rose from the floor like mighty trees, mingling their branches high above us and drooping in hundreds of stalactites, which sparkled and glittered with all ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... funny little people, busily at work with picks and shovels, taking out wooden dishes from the bottom of the cave, and china and glass from the top and sides, for the dishes hung down just like stalactites in ...
— Lill's Travels in Santa Claus Land and other Stories • Ellis Towne, Sophie May and Ella Farman

... opened the chasm, and bade the river pour down the gorge—the water lashed with ceaseless rage, throwing the spray high into the air. This, freezing as it fell, encrusted the rough sides of the beetling crags with icy layers, covering them all over with plates like silver, and hanging them with stalactites. Right in front, and separated only by the narrow pass from the ledge on which they stood, still higher than which it rose, towered a huge rock, perpendicularly, to a height of ninety or one hundred feet above the cataract. Its foam-beaten base, just above the water, was ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... passing stranger. I might fill a page with accounts of Turks' tents, beehives, judges' wigs, harps, handkerchiefs, and flitches of bacon, but I rather choose to speak of these subterranean palaces with none of such vulgar similarities. No one ever saw such magnificence in stalactites; from the black fissured roofs of antres vast and low-browed caves they are hanging, of all conceivable shapes and sizes and descriptions. Now a tall-fluted column, now a fringed canopy, now like a large white sheet flung over a beetling rock in the elegant folds and easy drapery of a curtain, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... the pools containing the inflammable materia, all the medical uses of which, as applied to the nerves of organic life, modern science has not yet perhaps explored. Yet more often would he pass his hours in a cavern, by the loneliest part of the beach, where the stalactites seem almost arranged by the hand of art, and which the superstition of the peasants associates, in some ancient legends, with the numerous and almost incessant earthquakes to which the island is ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... of the Les Troyens a Troie, the last scene with Aeneas in Les Troyens a Carthage.[64] The empty pomposities of Spontini mingle with the loftiest conceptions. One might say that his genius became a stranger to him: it was the mechanical work of an unconscious force, like "stalactites in a dripping grotto." He had no impetus. It was only a matter of time before the roof of the grotto would give way. One is struck with the mournful despair with which he works; it is his last will and testament that he is ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... his mane, were widely spread apart, like a bird's wings in flight; under the tightly drawn skin, his ribs severally protruded and his hind legs were nailed together, but were slightly drawn up; black blood had trickled through the hairs, and collected in stalactites at the end of his tail, which hung straight down the length of the cross. The soldiers crowded around the beast, diverting themselves by calling him 'Consul!' and 'Citizen of Rome!' and threw pebbles into his eyes to scatter the ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... occur, with the tissues well-preserved by impregnation with the resin; while leaves, flowers and fruits are occasionally found in marvellous perfection. Sometimes the amber retains the form of drops and stalactites, just as it exuded from the ducts and receptacles of the injured trees. The abnormal development of resin has been called "succinosis.'' Impurities are often present, especially when the resin dropped on to the ground, so that the material ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... leading into the darkness of the underground. At the foot of this a room, if room it can be called, some thirteen feet by ten by seven high, the walls of tree trunks and railway sleepers, the roof of corrugated iron resting on railway lines; from this hang stalactites of rust, and large and loathsome insects creep about; above lives a colony of rats: such is our living-room, damp with a dampness that reaches one's bones and makes all things clammy to the touch. A couple of tables, a chair, and some boxes, such is our dining-room ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... stalactites reaching to the bottom and forming fluted pillars. In one of those caves where the water runs, the admiral floored over the bottom and gave a ball in it, and it was the most Arabian Night's entertainment kind of thing that I ever saw. It looked like a diamond hall, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... natural and others artificial. We enter the largest of these natural caves, St. Michael's, and as we stand in the main hall, a spacious chamber two hundred feet in length and seventy feet in height, we are amazed at its beauty and grandeur. Colossal columns of stalactites seem to support its ornamental roof and all around are fantastic figures—foliage of many forms, beautiful statuettes, pillars, pendants, and shapes of picturesque beauty rivalling those of Mammoth Cave. St. Michael's Cave is eleven hundred feet above sea level and is connected ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson

... foreign stone. But there were some who said It moved its lips; And when they went away, the earth stirred And they heard it moan. Now it comes leaping down the tunnel roads Where the moss hangs like stalactites, Screaming out curses, snapping at the toads; Negroes who pass there on the moonless nights Behind them hear a sound that stops their breath. The keen wind whistles through its teeth, And the white skull goes bounding ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen

... was in the innumerable caves found along the Canyon. In these were to be seen flowers fashioned out of the limestone, possessing wonderful colors, scintillating in the light of the torches, reds that glowed like points of fire, stalactites that glistened like the long, pointed icicles they had seen hanging from the eaves of their homes in Chillicothe. They discovered lace-work in most delicate tints, masses and masses of coral and festoons of stone sponges in all the caves they visited. There were ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin

... in a long queue, according to the fashion of the day, he wore his own short grey locks; his address was plain, frank, and hearty, but by no means coarse or vulgar. He was of an ancient family, but of a moderate fortune.' Here Edgeworth adds a long description of the grotto and its stalactites. They returned to dine with the ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth

... footing grew firmer, and the walls and ceiling drier; as they went on, the passage, too, grew wider and higher, until they found themselves in a large underground hallway that echoed loudly as they walked. Overhead, pure white stalactites and frost-like formations glittered in the light, and the walls were broken by dark nooks and shelf-like ledges with here and there openings ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright

... in a dome-like chamber, from which hung suspended hundreds of stalactites that threw back the rays of the torches in a thousand ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin

... was a labor of twenty-five years. The stone walls rose to the height of thirty-six feet. In those broken arches, studded with stalactites, those casemates, or vaults of the citadel, you still see some evidence of its former strength. You will know the citadel by them, and by the greater height of the mounds which mark the walls that once encompassed it. Within these stood the smaller military chapel. Think of ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... aphrite (German Schaumspath); soft, earthy and dull white varieties as agaric mineral, rock-milk, rock-meal, &c.—these form a transition to marls, chalk, &c. Of the granular and compact forms numerous varieties are distinguished (see LIMESTONE and MARBLE). In the form of stalactites calcite is of extremely common occurrence. Each stalactite usually consists of an aggregate of radially arranged crystalline individuals, though sometimes it may consist of a single individual with crystal faces developed at the free end. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... caught the word. In vibratory jubilance they repeated it. "Chrismus!" rang from the roof, scintillating with calcspar; "Chrismus!" sounded from the colonnade of stalactites that hung down to meet the uprising stalagmites; "Chrismus!" repeated the walls incrusted with roses that, shut in from the light and the fresh air of heaven, bloomed forever in the stone. Was ever ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... Fair" would take place on the 10th of September, 1841. There was no other furniture or decoration in this dismal apartment, except the cobwebs which festooned the ceiling, hanging down here and there like stalactites. ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... nature asserted itself. Pale green ferns seemed to hold out beseeching arms toward the light; moss crept upward hopefully, softening the rough ledges with its velvet touch. Great stalagmites and stalactites, smothered in the embrace of lichen and creepers, accepted the homage of the plant life indifferently. Piang was blind to the sublimity of his surroundings, as he hurried on. Carefully he stepped on the ledge; ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart

... botanical explorations. Beautifully romantic scenes are to be found among the high crags on the Bakewell road, overhanging the river Wye. Among the natural curiosities is a cave called Poole's Hole, five hundred and sixty yards in length, with a ceiling in one part very lofty, and adorned with stalactites, which have a beautiful appearance when lighted up by Roman candles or other fireworks. As Buxton is only twenty-two miles from Manchester, travellers who have the time to spare should on no account omit to visit ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... around back, and you'd have been disappointed. I couldn't stand for your being disappointed. Say——" The man paused. His eyes were searching the sunlit avenue ahead, where the drooping willow branches hung like floral stalactites in a cavern of ripe foliage. "It's queer how folks'll cut out the things they're yearning for because other folks are yearning to hand 'em on ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... the kitchen with Mis' Persis, by the side of a caldron of melted tallow, kept in a fluid state by the heat of a portable furnace on which it stood. A long train of half-dipped candles hung like so many stalactites from the frames on which the rods rested, and the two were patiently dipping set after set and replacing them ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... portico of a church, with a full arch, adorned with verdant festoons, composed of creeping plants and bind-weeds. When the visitor has once passed under the portico he enters into a large and spacious hall, studded with stalactites of a very yellowish colour, and there a dense crowd of bats, frightened by the light of the torches, fly out with great noise and precipitation. For about a hundred paces, in advancing towards the interior, the vault continues to be very lofty, and the gallery is spacious; ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere

... she began to draw her silver feather down the cascade, and immediately the same effect was produced which I had observed upon the water. The noise of the waterfall was immediately hushed. Beautiful stalactites and icicles were formed in the place of the pouring and foaming water. I should have thought that the cascade had been wholly congealed were it not that I could see in some places by the moonlight that the water was still ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas



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