"Basalt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ejections were thrown, two rivers plunged in cataracts; but the water only increased the violence of the eruption. It was thrown into steam with explosive force, and great quantities of mud and balls of basalt were ejected. On the surface of the swollen mound there were formed thousands of small cones, from six to ten feet in height, and sending forth steam to heights varying from twenty to ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... the present into the past. Simpkins found himself looking between a double row of pillars, covered with hieroglyphics in red and black, to an altar of polished black basalt, guarded on either side by stone sphinxes. Behind it, straight from the lofty ceiling, fell a veil of black velvet, embroidered with golden scarabaei, and fringed with violet. The approach, a hundred paces or more, was guarded by twoscore mummies in black ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... plain," he said, "that the basalt monadnock on which we stand is a carboniferous upthrust of metamorphosed schists, shales and conglomerate, probably Mesozoic or at ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... reached, and much of the range they had crossed, was formed of basalt in various stages of decomposition; but in the country before them, for several miles in advance, huge masses of granite and fragments of quartz indicated a change in the nature of the prevailing rock. The position of these masses, as well as their size, gave a wild ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... blue sky, indescribably blue, that appears almost to touch the feathery heads of them. And all things within and without the yellow vista are steeped in a sunshine electrically white, in a radiance so powerful that it lends even to the pavement of basalt the glitter ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... salt, basalt rock, pozzuolana (a siliceous volcanic ash used to produce hydraulic ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the village—which then had been wrapped in a dark haze—now towered directly above us, rocky and enormous, with black sea-crags at its feet. The rocks were drenched with spray from the breakers, and the booming of the sea as it crashed into the basalt caves resounded like the ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... Oceans, as it does not often rest on specific determinations, and therefore should be received with caution. Six of the COOK AND AUSTRAL Islands (S.W. of the Society group), are fringed; of these, five were described to me by the Rev. J. Williams, as formed of coral-rock, associated with some basalt in Mangaia), and the sixth as lofty and basaltic. Mangaia is nearly three hundred feet high, with a level summit; and according to Mr. S. Wilson (Couthouy's "Remarks," page 34.) it is an upraised reef; "and there are in the central hollow, formerly the bed of the lagoon, many scattered ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... natures, sharp and slimy, Salt and basalt, wild and tame: Tree and lichen, ape, sea-lion, Bird, and ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... preceding Arctic expeditions yielded new additions of such importance through the fossil herbaria from luxuriant ancient forests which they brought to light from the ice-covered cliffs of Spitzbergen and from the basalt-covered sandstones and schists of the Noui-soak Peninsula in Greenland, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... more tonnage than all the legitimate commerce of the empire, with the possible exception of wheat. Independently of the direct testimony of Latin authors, the Greek statuary, the Egyptian obelisks, and the vast quantities of foreign marbles, granite, parphyry, basalt, and other stones used in sculpture and in architecture, which have been found in the remains of ancient Rome, show that the Imperial capital must have employed an immense amount of tonnage in the importation of heavy articles for which there could have been no return freight, unless in the ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... behind him; they have both snakes in their hands, and Siva has a large one round his loins as a waistband. There are several demons in human shape lying prostrate under the belly of the bull, and the whole are well cut out of one large slab of hard basalt from a dyke in the marble rock beneath. They call the whole group 'Gauri Sankar', and I found in the fair, exposed for sale, a brass model of a similar one from Jeypore (Jaipur), but not so well shaped ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... of Goree is cool during the evening, the night and the morning; but during the day, there prevails in the island an unsupportable heat, produced by the reflection of the sun's rays, which fall perpendicularly on the Basalt rocks which surround it. If we add to this the stagnation of the air, the circulation of which is interrupted by the houses, being very closely built, a considerable population, which continually fills the streets, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... souls, and it was with fresh spirit that they climbed the rough hills leading upward towards the Raton Pass, emerging at length into a grand mountain amphitheatre closed in with steep walls of basalt and granite. They seemed to be in a splendid mountain temple, in which they enjoyed their first Sunday's rest since ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... on, the fosse north of the Wall, and also that of the Vallum, show a skill in engineering such as we are apt to fancy belongs only to these days of powerful machinery, and explosives for rending a way through the hardest rock. The ditches have both been cut through the solid basalt, and great boulders of it are strewn around; one huge mass, weighing many tons, has been hoisted out—by what means, we are left to wonder; and another, still in the ditch, has the holes, intended for the wedges ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... with many arms, jewels, and picture writings, these last relating to historic matters, both Toltec and Aztec. The great sacrificial stone of the aborigines, placed on the ground floor of the museum, is, in all its detail, a study to occupy one for days. It is of basalt, elaborately chiseled, measuring nine feet in diameter and three feet in height. On this stone the lives of thousands of human beings, we are told, were offered up annually. The municipal palace is on the south side of the plaza, nearly opposite to which is a block of buildings resting upon arcades ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... under the apse of the church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, together with the one now in the Villa Mattei von Hoffman. In 1435, Eugenius IV. discovered the two lions of Nektaneb I. which are now in the Vatican, and the two of black basalt now in the Capitoline Museum. In 1440 the reclining figure of a river-god was found and buried again. The Tiber of the Louvre and the Nile of the Braccio Nuovo seem to have come to light during ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... swinging light! Spars and lances of light upon the shivering waters, red and yellow and white! Light, the reflective radiance of jewels and happy eyes! Light, breaking against the pink and white marbles, the columns of porphyry, malachite, basalt, and golden mosaics! Let the would-be traveler dream of it never so well; he will come to find his dreams vanquished. Nothing changes in the Piazza San Marco, nothing save the tourists and the contents ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... hours on what type to use, till Mel dragged out his rock book. Most, automatically, had wanted basalt. However, the moon's density being low, heavier rocks are probably scarce—one good reason not to expect radioactive ores there. We finally settled for rhyolite ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins
... accent—that pure insular accent, which has scarcely ever been successfully imitated on the continent. What was the astonishment of Oswald in hearing her! He remained at first immovably fixed to the spot where he was, and feeling confused he leaned against one of the lions of basalt at the foot of the stairway descending from the Capitol. Corinne viewed him again, forcibly struck with the emotion he betrayed; but she was dragged away towards the car, and the whole crowd disappeared ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... of the water of the river, and as soon as the water touched my lips, lo! the river vanished, and the flat country with its poppies and lilies, and I dreamed that I was in a boat by myself again, floating in an almost land-locked bay of the northern sea, under a cliff of dark basalt. I was lying on my back in the boat, looking up at the intensely blue sky, and a long low swell from the outer sea lifted the boat up and let it fall again and carried it gradually nearer and nearer towards the dark cliff; and as I moved on, I saw at last, on the top of the cliff, a castle, ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... western. The principal point is the volcano Taal, located in the northeastern portion of the province of Batangas. It is situated on a small island in the center of the Bombon laguna, and has an altitude of 550 feet above sea level. Its form is conical, and the rock is composed of basalt feldspar with a small quantity of augite. The crater is supposed to be 232 feet deep. Its sides are almost vertical, and there are two steaming ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... imported from the earliest times. The date palm was probably introduced by man, as were certainly the vine and the fig tree, which were widely cultivated, especially in the north. Stone, suitable for building, was very scarce, and limestone, alabaster, marble, and basalt had to be taken from northern Mesopotamia, where the mountains also yield copper and lead and iron. Except Eridu, where ancient workers quarried sandstone from its sea-shaped ridge, all the cities were built of brick, an excellent ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... on the beach: there is not much fishing; the vine-disease has raged, and the staple export consists of maize in some quantities; of cantaria, a grey trachyte which works more freely than the brown or black basalt, and of an impure limestone from Ilheu Baixo, the only calcaire used in Funchal. This rock is apparently an elevated coral-reef: it also produces moulds of sea-shells, delicately traced and embedded in blocks of apparently unbroken limestone. Of late a fine ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... as is the case in many parts of Africa. There seems to be little or no indication of mineral wealth in the white sand area, but in the north and east there is not only every prospect of a great agricultural and pastoral future but also of considerable mining development. Though basalt predominates in the neighbourhood of the Victoria Falls and large fields of granite crop up on the Batoka plateau and elsewhere, there is every indication of the existence of useful minerals in these districts. Gold, copper, tin, lead, zinc ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... something to see," he promised. "These volcanoes have been dormant for, oh, maybe as long as a thousand years; there ought to be a pretty good head of gas down there. And the magma'll be thick, viscous stuff, like basalt on Terra. Of course, this won't be anything like basalt in composition—it'll be intensely compressed metallic fluorides, with a very high metal-content. The volcanoes we shot three months ago yielded a fine flow of lava with all sorts of metals—nickel, ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... rocks, and that no shelving shores prevented us coasting along them. There was not a shadow of doubt as to the rock being of purely volcanic origin, up- heaved by some mighty subterranean convulsion. It is formed of blocks of basalt, arranged in perfect order, of which the regular prisms give the whole mass the effect of being one gigantic crystal; and the remarkable transparency of the sea enabled us plainly to observe the curious shafts of the prismatic columns that support ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... of so many little black pebbles that they were cleared away by shoveling (La Sci. Pour Tous, 5-264); great number of small black stones that fell at Birmingham, England, August, 1858—violent storm—said to be similar to some basalt a few leagues from Birmingham (Rept. Brit. Assoc., 1864-37); pebbles described as "common water-worn pebbles" that fell at Palestine, Texas, July 6, 1888—"of a formation not found near Palestine" (W.H. Perry, Sergeant, Signal Corps, Monthly Weather Review, July, 1888); round, smooth ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... The basalt clock on the mantelpiece trembled and burst into the song of six. Clara Curtenty rose swiftly from the easy-chair, and took her seat in front of the tea-tray. Almost at the same moment a neat black-and-white parlourmaid brought in teapot, copper kettle, and a silver-covered ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... familiarized themselves with the darkness, and favored by the glimmering of the stars, he began to recognize with but little effort the actual shape of the surrounding objects. The window was divided in two equal parts by a stone mullion, and had in front a wide shelf of basalt, surrounded by a balustrade. Gilbert fastened one of two knotted ropes with which he had supplied himself securely to the mullion; then he crept upon the ledge of basalt and stood there for a few moments contemplating the precipice in silence. In the gloomy and vaporous gulf which ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... familiar with the region knew as The Crater. Back about half a mile from the rim of Shoestring Canyon, which, itself, had originally been cut out of lava from extinct volcanoes of the range, rose a vast basalt peak, smooth and precipitous on the side toward the canyon. Its lower slopes had once been terraced down to the flat bench land which rimmed the canyon, but, unnumbered ages ago, the subterranean forces had burst their way through and formed a crater whose sides fell steeply away to the flats ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... near it a circular building evidently meant for the baptistery: this is covered with a cupola surmounted by the monogram of Christ; and over the gate are curtains drawn up on each side, See Raoul-Rochette-Tableau des Catacombs, p. 332. The font is an ancient urn of basalt the paintings above it, between the second order of columns, representing, the life of S. John Baptist, ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... he saw hills and a small mountain, but all the country in that direction seemed to be extremely arid and repellent. The bare basalt of volcanic origin showed everywhere, and, even at the distance, he could see many deep quarries in the stone, where races older, doubtless, than Aztecs and Toltecs, had obtained material for building. It was always Ned's feeling when in Mexico that he was in an old, old land, not ancient ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of the western section varies from a deep black vegetable loam to a light brown loamy earth. The bills are generally basalt stone and slate. The surface is generally undulating, well watered, well wooded, and well adapted for agriculture and pasturage. The timber consists of pine, fir, spruce, oaks (white and red), ash, arbutus, cedar, arbor-vitae, poplar, maple, willow, cherry, tew, with underwoods ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... fineness, not theirs, and for the like of which one must pass onward to the Antonines. Popular hatred had been careful to destroy its semblance wherever it was to be found; but one bust, in dark bronze-like basalt of a wonderful perfection of finish, preserved in the museum of the Capitol, may have seemed to some visitors there perhaps the finest extant relic of Roman art. Had the very seal of empire upon those sombre brows, reflected from his mirror, suggested ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... remaining is that of Tinaarloo, and the largest is that of Borger, which contains forty-five blocks, of which ten are cap-stones. Several Huenenbetter have been excavated. In them are found pottery vases, flint celts, axes and hammers of grey granite, basalt, and jade. ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... country, to eastward of that. But to the north, again, about Striegau, the hollow deepens, narrows; and certain Hills," much notable at present, "rise to west of Striegau, definite peaked Hills, with granite quarries in them and basalt blocks atop:—Striegau, it appears, is, in old Czech dialect, TRZIZA, which means TRIPLE HILL, the 'Town of the Three Hills.' [Lutzow, p. 28.] An ancient quaint little Town, of perhaps 2,000 souls: brown-gray, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the great hall of the palace—the vastest hall in the world—dim and dull and dusty and delightful, with nothing in it except at one end Donatello's colossal marble-headed wooden horse of Troy, stared at from the other end by the two dog-faced Egyptian women in basalt placed ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... nothing but bricks in their constructions. There is no reason for it in the nature of the country. The cities of Assyria—NINEVEH (Koyunjik), KALAH (Nimrud), ARBELA, DUR-SHARRUKIN (Khorsabad) were built in the midst of a hilly region abounding in many varieties of stone, from soft limestone to hard basalt; some of them actually stood on rocky ground, their moats being in part cut through the rock. Had they wanted stone of better quality, they had only to get it from the Zagros range of mountains, which skirts all Assyria to the East, separating ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... obstacle to his control. His fiery energy is shown by the rapidity with which hundreds of men swarm on ditch and flume. They are working at mill and giant water-wheels. They are delving and tracing the fat brown quartz, gold laden, from between the streaks of rifted basalt ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... basalt sarcophagus had been prepared which was to be the outer coffin of the mummy. This sarcophagus had also the form and features of the dead pharaoh. It was covered with inscriptions, and pictures of people praying, of sacred birds and ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... there can be no doubt that, to the land exposed to them, the waves of the sea are by far the most powerful. Think how they beat and tear, and drive and drag, until even the hardest rock, like basalt, becomes honeycombed into strange galleries and passages—Fingal's Cave, for instance—and the softer parts are crumbled away. But the area now exposed to the teeth of the waves is not great. The fury of a winter storm may dash them ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... three hundred and sixty days, to which, agreeable to the Egyptian practice, five complementary days were added.... This pyramid was visited by M. Dupe, a captain in the service of the King of Spain. He possesses the bust, in basalt, of a Mexican, which I employed M. Massard to engrave, and which bears great resemblance to the calautica of ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... undulating floor. It is not easy to catch the real complexion of St. Mark's, and these laudable attempts at portraiture are apt to look either lurid or livid. But if you cannot paint the old loose-looking marble slabs, the great panels of basalt and jasper, the crucifixes of which the lonely anguish looks deeper in the vertical light, the tabernacles whose open doors disclose a dark Byzantine image spotted with dull, crooked gems—if you cannot paint these things you can at least ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... of preserving their echoes, or of shrining them in the eternal basalt of print, like to the oft-repeated cries of Lurley's hunted in-dweller. The humorous infection caught also me, as a thing inevitable; but the case, I wot, proved an unfavourable one: and who dare enter the arena of contention with these mighty men of Momus, these ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the beckoning form of the celestial bird, and felt the first stirrings of unrest. Then I spoke with the bearded man, and told him of my new yearning to depart for remote Cathuria, which no man hath seen, but which all believe to lie beyond the basalt pillars of the West. It is the Land of Hope, and in it shine the perfect ideals of all that we know elsewhere; or at least so men relate. But the bearded man said to me, "Beware of those perilous seas wherein men say Cathuria lies. ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... fifteen feet down a rocky declivity, and fell into a circular basin a few yards in diameter. Overflowing this basin, it found its way into the lake by another descent of a few feet. Around the basin, and on both sides of the waterfall, were several curious columns of basalt, and irregular picturesque piles of basaltic rock. The plash of the water, falling into the rocky basin, was the only sound that broke the Sabbath-like silence that pervaded the valley. There was, or seemed to be, something ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... hill was tree-covered, and they could see nothing beyond their immediate locality until the sailor found a point higher than the rest, where a rugged collection of hard basalt and the uprooting of some poon trees provided an open ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... away, the songs say, along the Mysian shore, and past the mouth of Rhindacus, till they found a pleasant bay, sheltered by the long ridges of Arganthus, and by high walls of basalt rock. And there they ran the ship ashore upon the yellow sand, and furled the sail, and took the mast down, and lashed it in its crutch. And next they let down the ladder, and went ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... graced his carrion with, God curse the same! Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence 20 One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side, And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats, And up into the aery dome where live The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk: And I shall fill my slab of basalt there, And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest, With those nine columns round me, two and two, The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands: Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... the flame shot up suddenly, and he sat relieved against the glow, like a gigantic statue in black basalt. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... pyramid, was empty. In another, which had an arched roof, constructed in the most careful and elaborate way, was found the sarcophagus of the king, Men-kau-ra, to whom tradition assigned the building, formed of a single mass of blue-black basalt, exquisitely polished and beautifully carved, externally eight feet long, three feet high, and three feet broad, internally six feet by two. In the sarcophagus was the wooden coffin of the monarch, and on the lid of the coffin was his name. The chambers were connected by ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... wonderful hall of an austere, rigid, metallic and sepulchral magnificence, giving the impression of a Greek temple with columns, architraves, flagstones and ornaments of black marble, gold and ebony. The hall is trapezium-shaped. Basalt steps, occupying almost the entire width, divide it into three successive stages, which rise gradually toward the back. On the right and left, between the columns, are doors of sombre bronze. At the back, a monumental door of brass. ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Minar is an immense shaft tapering gradually toward the top. It is built in stages, with a gallery round each. Each stage is different. In one it is fluted with round columns like a huge mass of basalt. In another the columns are angular; and in the next, round and angular alternately. The highest stage is plain. The height is very great, and the solidity of execution and the strength of the edifice are as striking ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... Ursus, Equus, &c., found in bone-caverns. Eruptive masses intrude in the Balkans and Sredna Gora, as well as in the Archean formation of the southern [v.04 p.0774] ranges, presenting granite, syenite, diorite, diabase, quartz-porphyry, melaphyre, liparite, trachyte, andesite, basalt, &c. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... through. The southern part of the island has an undulating surface, and is covered either with an open forest or with high ferns. In general the soil is extremely fertile, and where it is naturally drained a rich vegetation of fern and flax occurs. On the north-west are several conical hills of basalt, which are surrounded by oases of fertile soil. On the south-western side is Petre Bay, on which, at the mouth of the river Mantagu, is Waitangi, the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... spices and aromatic unguents used in embalming, filled the room. Gradually the yellow skin preserved by the natron began to appear through the cross-hatchings of the bandages. Attached to a thick gold wire round the neck and placed over the heart was a scarab of green basalt, mounted in a gold setting; and on the henna-stained little finger of the left hand was another of steatite. As the right arm was freed from its artificially tightened grasp a peculiar wooden cylinder rolled ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... 3.2 to 3.35. It does not occur in distinct crystals with definite outlines, but only as lamellar masses in deep-seated igneous rocks, principally gabbro, of which it is an essential constituent. It occurs also in some peridotites and serpentines, and rarely in volcanic rocks (basalt) and crystalline schists. Masses of considerable size are found in the coarse-grained gabbros of the Island of Skye, Le Prese near Bornio in Valtellina, Lombardy, Prato near ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... original meaning. This is strikingly the case with the Scarabaeus which, under the hands of the Etruscan cutter, lost at once all specific character. He might be Scarabaeus anything: he is not pilularius; and, instead of being made of basalt, porphyry, smalt, and very rarely of pietra dura, as in Egypt, he is engraved in carnelian, onyx, sardonyx, and all the rare and lovely varieties of pietra dura,—which, being essentially the same, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... with which the rock was once impregnated. The remarkable purity of such graphite is the natural result of its mode of formation, and such cases resemble the occurrence of graphite in cast iron and basalt. The black clouds and bands which stain many otherwise white marbles are generally due to specks of graphite, the residue of hydrocarbons which once saturated the rock. Some limestones are quite black from the carbonaceous ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... Columbia Basin, surrounded by the Cascade Mountains on the west, the Coeur d'Alene and Bitter Root Mountains on the east, the Okanozan range to the north, and the Blue Mountains to the south. The valley floor was basalt, from the lava flow of volcanoes in ages past. The rainfall was slight except in the foot-hills of the mountains. The Columbia River, making a prodigious and meandering curve, bordered on three sides what was known as ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... village of Espaly, and by the face of basaltic columns rising from the Borne and its little affluent the Riou-Pzeliou, in whose bed zircons and blue sapphires have been found. On the opposite side of the Borne is the great mass of basalt called the Croix de la Paille, with a display of prisms in three tiers, called les orgues d'Espaly. The village, pop. 2300, is built at the foot of a rock of volcanic breccia crowned by the scanty ruins of a castle built in 1260 by Guillaume de la ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... corruption of the Turkish "Kara Tsh" black stone, in Arab. "Hjar Jahannam" (hell-stone), lava, basalt. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... old Haurani towns deserted since the sixth century, which a silly writer miscalled the "Giant Cities of Bashan." I have never seen anything weirder than a moonlight night in one of these strong places whose masonry is perfect as when first built, the snowy light pouring on the jet-black basalt and the breeze sighing and the jackal wailing ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... subsided in whirlpools. The boats hugged the left wall for some distance, but when the men saw that they could not descend on this side they pulled up stream several hundred yards and crossed to the other. Here there was a bed of basalt about one hundred feet high, which, disembarking, they followed, pulling the boats after them by ropes. The major, as usual, went ahead, and discovered that it would be impossible to lower the boats from the cliff; but the men had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... four fossil floras,—its flora of the Old Red Sandstone, its Carboniferous flora, its Oolitic flora, and that flora of apparently Tertiary age of which his Grace the Duke of Argyll found so interesting a fragment overflown by the thick basalt beds and trap tuffs of Mull. Of these, the only one adequately known to the geologist is the gorgeous flora of the Coal Measures,—probably the richest, in at least individual plants, which the world has yet seen. The others ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... port of Nubia. It is about 275 miles, or 25 days' camel-journey, from thence to Berber on the Nile. The road passes through Korib, and among fine red granite and black basalt mountains, 4,000 feet high. We left one of the firemen, Tom Dollar, behind at Aden by mistake, and only found out yesterday that we had done so. It appears that he has a brother living there, whom he was most anxious to go and see directly the anchor was let go, in the morning. Unfortunately, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... like the carven face upon the basalt door;— Her beauty could not charm him, her voice had lost its power; So she wrapped a veil about her and entreated him no more But sat alone and watched, from out her ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... place worth all we have undergone. The crags are wonderful, chalk at the bottom, basalt above, and of course all round to the Giant's Causeway it is finer still. Well may we, as the Bishop is always doing, give thanks that we were taken, by the Divine Hand guiding tide and current, to this milder and ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... he lived or died. Morning revealed a shore of black basalt, reef upon reef, like sentinels of death saying, 'Come in! come in! We are here to see that you never go out'; and there was a nasty clutch to the backwash of the billows smashing ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... on the origin of this island. It has long been decided that basaltic rocks are of igneous origin, in opposition to the theory of Werner—that they were deposited by the ocean on the summits of elevated mountains. May not the occurrence of these basalt rocks therefore illustrate the more immediate volcanic origin ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... practised, and reached great excellence. As we shall see later on under the head of "Religion" it became customary for every man who could afford it to place in one of the temples an image of himself. These were sometimes carved in wood or in hard black stone like basalt, but among the wealthy it became the fashion to have their statues cast in one of the precious metals, aurichalcum, gold or silver. A very fair resemblance of the individual usually resulted, while in some cases ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... middle pavement is composed of a very hard kind of brick called 'basalt,' which is very solid ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... have remarked, that they were covered with the same productions and the same stones as the plains below, of which they seemed to have formed a part. Milky quartz was scattered over them, although no similar formation was visible; of manganese, basalt, and ironstone, with other substances, there were now no indications. None of these fragments had been rounded by attrition, but still retained their sharp edges and seemed to be little ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... boatmen pass over them in safety; while the Dalles, some six or eight miles below, may be passed during low water but are utterly impassable in flood time. At the Dalles the vast river is jammed together into a long, narrow slot of unknown depth cut sheer down in the basalt. ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... faithfulness—as all-inclusive. They are the two which are often jointly ascribed to God, especially in the Psalms. Our attitude to one another should be moulded in God's to us all. The tiniest crystal has the same facets and angles as the largest. The giant hexagonal pillars of basalt, like our Scottish Staffa, are identical in form with the microscopic crystals of the same substance. God is our Pattern; goodness is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... sagely over these matters as he sped on over the Great Indian Peninsula Railway. The western Ghauts were now far behind him and their dark basalt crags. Bombay, Hyderabad, Berar, the Central Provinces, Central India, and the southern prong of Oude was reached. He was, however, no whit the wiser when he reached the Ganges and hastily sought the telegraph station at Allahabad. But he felt ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... irregular. The Ecuadorian volcanoes have rarely ejected liquid lava, but chiefly water, mud, ashes, and fragments of trachyte and porphyry. Cotopaxi alone produces pure, foam-like pumice, and glossy, translucent obsidian.[62] The paucity of quartz, and the absence of basalt, are remarkable. Some of the porphyroids are conglomerate, but the majority are true porphyries, having a homogeneous base. Dr. T. Sterry Hunt calls them porphyroid trachytes. They have a black, rarely reddish, vitreous, or impalpable base, approaching ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... wrists and hands of the lady seated among the blue cushions in the Louvre are as illusive as any one of Mr. Whistler's "Nocturnes". The beautiful "Andromeda", head and throat leaned back almost out of nature, wild eyes and mass of heavy hair, long white arms uplifted, chained to the basalt,—how rare the simplifications, those arms, that body, the straight flanks and slender leg advancing,—are made of lines simple and beautiful as those which in the Venus of Milo realise the architectural beauty of woman. We shrink ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... table whereon rested, amongst other curios, the mummy of the cat which had raised Silvio's ire. I got a candle and easily found the mark of the bullet. It had broken a little glass vase and a tazza of black basalt, exquisitely engraved with hieroglyphics, the graven lines being filled with some faint green cement and the whole thing being polished to an equal surface. The bullet, flattened against the wall, lay ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... peculiar and almost impassable nature of the country, Borneo has never been crossed by the white man. Travelling over some of the mountains seems to be an absolute impossibility. Many of them consist almost wholly of huge blocks of basalt, soft, moist, and too slippery to walk upon. I would rather attempt to cross the continent of Africa than the island of Borneo. The explorer must carry with him provisions enough to last both going and returning. ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... those in use in Egypt were carved out of opaque or semi-transparent stones, and those cut in hard stone were usually made of some one of the following varieties: green basalt, diorite, granite, haematite, lapis lazuli, jasper, serpentine, verde antique, smalt, root of emerald, which is the same as plasma or prase[19] cornelian, amethyst, sardonyx, agate and onyx. Those of soft material were cut out of steatite, a soft limestone similar to chalk, but usually they were ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer
... McNiel, and now in the possession of Mr. J. B. Stearns, of Short Hills, N.J. The example shown in Fig. 7 was obtained near the Gulf of Dolce, 82 deg 55' west. Three views are presented: profile, front, and back. It is carved from what appears to be a compact, grayish olive tufa or basalt, and represents a male personage, distinct in style from the female figure first presented. The head is rounded above, the arms are flattened against the sides, and the feet are folded in a novel position beneath the body. The ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... magnesia, soda, etc.) and therefore called BASIC. The acidic lavas, of which RHYOLITE and THRACHYTE are examples, are comparatively light in color and weight, and are difficult to melt. The basic lavas, of which BASALT is a type, are dark and heavy and melt at ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... whom I called Billy. On one of my trips to the Gilbert, when passing Dalrymple, Billy Marks, the store and hotel-keeper, presented me with a well-bred cattle pup and a gin case to put him in. This I placed on top of the load. We had six miles to go over very rough basalt country to our camp. That day I had yoked a steer for the first time, and I intended to hobble him at night. When we reached camp I told Billy to bring up a quiet bullock called Darling, and this I coupled to the steer, instructing the boy to hold the whip-stick in front ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... of a fairly spacious little bay, or loch, penetrating for some distance into the land. Soon afterwards the big rock mentioned in O'Gorman's document separated itself from the background of bush and trees with which it had hitherto been merged, and proclaimed itself as an obelisk-like monolith of basalt rearing its apex to a height of some ninety feet above the water level. When fairly abreast of this the canvas was clewed up, and the brig slid into the loch with the way that she had on her. This loch, or channel, wound gradually round for a length of about ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... measured from claimed archipelagic baselines exclusive economic zone: 200 nm territorial sea: 12 nm International disputes: none Climate: temperate; warm, dry, summer; precipitation very erratic Terrain: steep, rugged, rocky, volcanic Natural resources: salt, basalt rock, pozzolana, limestone, kaolin, fish Land use: arable land: 9% permanent crops: 0% meadows and pastures: 6% forest and woodland: 0% other: 85% Irrigated land: 20 km2 (1989 est.) Environment: ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... his immense villa at Tibur, to enable him to celebrate his voluptuous feasts under the friendly eyes of Serapis. He extolled the merits of the deified Antinous in inscriptions couched in the ancient language of the Pharaohs, and set the fashion of statues hewn out of black basalt in the Egyptian style.[36] The amateurs of that period affected to prefer the hieratic rigidity of the barbarian idols to the elegant freedom of Alexandrian art. Those esthetic manifestations probably corresponded to religious prejudices, and the Latin ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... by whalemen, "Devil's Thumb," was now open; it appears to be a huge mass of granite or basalt, which rears itself on a cliff of some 600 or 800 feet elevation, and is known as the southern boundary of Melville Bay, round whose dreary circuit, year after year, the fishermen work their way to reach the large ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... vaulted arches, to drink in the impression of architectual sublimity, which I can neither analyze nor express. Cathedrals do not seem to me to have been built. They seem, rather, stupendous growths of nature, like crystals, or cliffs of basalt. There is little ornament here. That roof looks plain and bare; yet I feel that the air is dense with sublimity. Onward I sped, crossing a bridge by the Hotel Dieu, and, leaving the river, plunged into narrow streets. Explored ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... wadys, with no water but that of wells, generally muddy, brackish, or bitter, and at fearful intervals. On the first evening, the place of encampment was a small plain, with no other vegetation than a few prickly talk bushes, encircled by high mountains of basalt, which gave it the appearance of a volcanic crater. Here, at a well of tolerably good water, called Gatfa, the camels were loaded with water for five days. The next day, the horse and foot men passed over a very steep mountain called Nufdai, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... about the port and its neighbourhood. The sun was growing strong. The rocks were emerging by degrees from their winter clothing of snow; moss of a wine-like colour was springing up on the basalt cliffs, strips of seaweed fifty yards long were floating on the sea, and on the plain the lyella, which is of Andean origin, was pushing up its little points, and the only leguminous plant of the region, that gigantic cabbage already mentioned, ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... she had lain through three eventful days, and slipped out toward the waste of water bound by the flaunting autumn of the west. An island wind, fragrant of bark and secret berries, blew in puffs from the steep. A gull swooped to her nest in a cranny of the basalt. From below a servant came on deck, his broad American face smiling over a tray of glasses and decanters and tinkling ice. It was all very tranquil and public and almost commonplace—just the high tropic seas ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... the northern hills begin with the basalt buttresses of Antrim and the granite ribs of Down, and pass through northern Ulster and Connacht to the headlands of Mayo and Galway. Their rear is held by the Donegal ranges, keeping guard against the blackness ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... external occupations is ever acting upon our religious life. Travellers tell us that the constant friction of the sand on Egyptian hieroglyphs removes every trace of colour, and even effaces the deep-cut characters from basalt rocks. So the unceasing attrition of multitudinous trifles will take all the bloom off your religion, and efface the name of the King cut on the tables of your hearts, if you do not counteract them by constant earnest effort. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... priest threw the ashes of the sacrifices. We saw in the Museum at Portici some lovely arabesque paintings, cut from the walls of the cloister. The foliage which ran round the whole sweep of the cloister itself is in the finest taste. A tablet of basalt with Egyptian hieroglyphics was transported from thence to Portici, together with the following inscription, taken from the front gate ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... he caught up his rifle and strode on down the passage, at that moment illuminated by the last unearthly rays of the aurora borealis. A single, dazzling beam played before him like a powerful searchlight, to light a high vaulted tunnel of basalt rocks which were distorted by some long-gone convulsion of the earth into a hundred weird cleavages and faults. For that brief instant he found he could see perhaps a hundred feet down into a high roofed passage, along the top of which poured a tremendous stream ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... glistening sparkle here, there, and everywhere when the sun was shining, and the far distant land sitting Sphinx-like on the Western horizon, with its shaded white slopes, and its bare outcrops of black basalt. Wilson in our "South Polar Times" wrote some lines entitled, "The Barrier Silence"—sometimes the silence was broken by howling blizzard, then and only then, except by the puny handful of men who have passed this way. Only in Scott's first and Shackleton's ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... from the cliff to be clear of the shadow. The sun shone on its brown weed-clad sides, glistened on black clusters of mussels, glowed on the red seams of the rock where the iron cropped out, and baked the black basalt of the upper surface. The spirits of the party revived when they landed. Una's gaiety ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... at Horta, and it was preferable to run for shelter under the lee of the island. As we closed the land, grand effects were produced by the clouds and mist driving before the gale down the green slopes of the mountains to the dark cliffs of lava and basalt, on which the mighty surges of the Atlantic were breaking into foam. Late in the afternoon of December 2nd the 'Sunbeam' gained the northern entrance to the channel which divides Fayal and Pico. An attempt was made to reach ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... sensations which will combine the calm of death with the consciousness of sepulchral magnificence. He pleads, as for dear life, with those who are to inherit his wealth, and who may at their pleasure fulfil his last wishes or disregard them: that he may have jasper for his tomb—basalt (black antique) for its slab—the rosiest marble for its columns—the richest design for its bronze frieze! A certain ball of lapis-lazuli (such as never yet was seen) is to "poise" between his knees; and he gasps forth the secret ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... excessive hardness and durability of this kind of basalt, this monumental fortress will endure long after the corroding tooth of time shall have crumbled to dust the royal pyramids and their very memory shall have been ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... short, we are still very little advanced towards the theory of the earth as it now exists." Guettard was the first to discover the volcanoes of Auvergne, but he was "hopelessly wrong" in regard to the origin of basalt, forestalling Werner in his mistakes as to its aqueous origin. He was thus the first Neptunist, while, as Geikie states, his "observations in Auvergne practically ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... crystallisation of rock-materials (even siliceous conglomerate, limestone and rock-salt) had been effected! These extravagant "anti-Wernerian" views the young student might well regard as not one whit less absurd and repellant than the doctrine of the "aqueous precipitation" of basalt. There is no evidence that Darwin, even if he ever heard of them, was in any way impressed, in his early career, by the suggestive passages in Hutton and Playfair, to which Lyell afterwards called attention, and which foreshadowed ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... large well in the desert of Aina. It had a girdle wall like a mountain of basalt(?), with twenty buttresses(?) in the foundation [on] the ground, and its height was thirty cubits, and it had bastions. The frame-work and the doors were cut out of cedar, and the bolts thereof and their sockets were of copper. I cut out large sea-going ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... and icy-white quartz project from the surface in dikes. These run for miles in tolerably direct lines, like walls, from west to east. Generally the rocks are granitic, consisting of syenite and gneiss, with micacious schist in the lower valleys. Occasionally, dikes of basalt break through the surface, which is generally much denuded, and the rocks are ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... Barn garbejo. Barometer barometro. Baron barono. Barrack soldatejo. Barrel barelo. Barrel-organ gurdo. Barren senfrukta. Barrenness senfrukteco. Barricade barikado. Barrier barilo. Barrister advokato. Barrow pusxveturilo. Barter intersxangxi. Barytone baritono. Basalt bazalto. Base fundamento. Base (mean) malnobla. Basely perfide. Baseless senfundamenta. Basement subetagxo. Baseness perfideco. Bashful modesta. Basin pelvo. Basis fundamento. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... part of the range called Bakaa. The Bakaa tribe, however, removed to Kolobeng, and is now joined to that of Sechele. The range stands about 700 or 800 feet above the plains, and is composed of great masses of black basalt. It is probably part of the latest series of volcanic rocks in South Africa. At the eastern end these hills have curious fungoid or cup-shaped hollows, of a size which suggests the idea of craters. Within these are masses of the rock ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... basalt let us raise The bust of CAESAR; he has done Great things for Rome; but here is one Above the rest, o'ertopping praise. The elephants and kings are gone, But still the roaring tumult sways— Much for the Conqueror of the East, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... perfectly precipitous, both towards the main and the peninsula; but a natural terrace runs along under the cliff in the direction of Camden Sound, which I believe would form a good road to that harbour. The tract thus enclosed appears to be very fertile. Porphyry and basalt are the common rocks. The soil is rich vegetable mould, mixed with gravel and covered with the most luxuriant grass. The trees were in general small. We only found three springs here; these however were sufficient to prove that it was well supplied in ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey |
