"Stalactites" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... through them you find yourself in great caverns, which wind down into the bowels of the earth. I have a small bicycle lamp, and it is a perpetual joy to me to carry it into these weird solitudes, and to see the wonderful silver and black effect when I throw its light upon the stalactites which drape the lofty roofs. Shut off the lamp, and you are in the blackest darkness. Turn it on, and it is a scene ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 crystallized 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 behaved so saucily—to stay and give ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... 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 that amount if they are rich enough and green enough to continue the experiment. Schnapps ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... 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 ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... until he could scarcely see them with his flashlight. Playing it upward he could only get a faint reflection from the stalactites hundreds of ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... reason for the varied forms with which the caves are afterwards decorated. Why is it the charmed waters do not leave the evidence of their slow passage only in plain surfaces of varying widths, and the stalactites and stalagmites whose formation we can readily account for? And why do not the deposits take the same forms in all caves with only such variations as would naturally result from differences in topography? The law is written, but in unfamiliar characters that render our reading ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... strongly upward, the 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 leading ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... under our feet became stalactites overhead. The lava, which was porous in many places, had formed a surface covered with small rounded blisters; crystals of opaque quartz, set with limpid tears of glass, and hanging like clustered chandeliers ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... 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
... 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, which is kept ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... altogether. He darted after them like a greyhound. When he reached the corner and looked cautiously round, he saw them again at some distance down another long passage. None of the galleries he saw that night bore signs of the work of man—or of goblin either. Stalactites, far older than the mines, hung from their roofs; and their floors were rough with boulders and large round stones, showing that there water must have once run. He waited again at this corner till they had disappeared round the next, and so followed ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... 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. Onyx-marbles or Oriental alabaster ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... terror, we succeeded in relighting our torches, and found ourselves in a wizard-like cave. The bats, for such were our assailants, fled away like lost spirits, grotesque shapes were seen formed from the rocks by dripping waters during long ages, fantastic icicles like the stalactites and stalagmites of the famous Mammoth Cave hung suspended from the arching roof, but a resistless longing to reach the air of heaven urged us on, and we crawled to the opening through which we entered. I was in the advance, and on reaching the entrance was horrified to find ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... 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 a few steps through a very narrow path a most surprising spectacle ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... 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, perhaps I should not have started on such an adventure. Certainly, unless induced by some powerful ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... 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 ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... exhaled from them in such a manner that the 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 attracting the internal dissolved particles to the crust, or preventing them ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... 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 ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... concentrated, till at the present day it is extremely saline. Professor Geikie (to whose works the present paper is much indebted) found that he floated on the water in spite of himself; and the under sides of the steps at the bathing-places are all encrusted with short stalactites of salt, produced from the drip of the bathers as they leave the water. The mineral constituents, however, differ considerably in their proportions from those found in true salt lakes of marine origin; and the point at which the salt is thrown down is ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... cares between the strata and Dolores' kodak, how even his photography could not spoil Aunt Alda; how charming a group of sisters Dolores contrived to produce; how Adrian was the proud pioneer into a coach adorned with stalactites and antediluvian bones; how Anna collected milkwort and violets for Aunt Cherry; how a sly push sent little Joan in a headlong career down a slope that might have resulted in a terrible fall, but did only cause a tumble and great fright, and a severe reprimand from the ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... conditions. With chin upon mittens and mittens upon the crust, the eye opens upon a new world. The half-covered rivulet becomes a monster glacier-fed stream, rushing down through grand canyons and caves, hung with icy stalactites. Bit by bit the walls are undermined and massive icebergs become detached and are whirled away. As for moraines, we have them in plenty; only the windrows of thousands upon thousands of tiny seeds of which they are composed, are not permanent, but change their form and ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... Now of this grand saloon I must try to give you a conception. It was, I should think, from seventy- five to one hundred feet in length. The ceiling overhead was very rich with hanging corbels, like stalactites, and the entire walls were panelled, with a full-length family portrait in each panel, which was arched at the top, so that the whole wall was composed of these round-topped pictures with rich gilding between. Notwithstanding ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... chambers, some of which are 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
... first things I undertook, in company with Herview, was a representation of the infernal regions after Dante's description. Behind a grating I made certain dark grottoes, full of stalactites and stalagmites, with shadowy ghosts and pitchforked figures, all calculated to work on the easily-excited imaginations of a Western audience, as the West then was. I found it very popular and attractive, but occasionally some countryman would suggest to his fellow spectator ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... 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
... cave of 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. As, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... 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 fame ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... 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 a little theatrical ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... 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 ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... 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 ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... 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 stalactites, ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... 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 the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... 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 it to the floor beneath. ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... 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 ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... wood-lice, and flour-worms were all drowned, the suds trickling down into the room below in so lively and novel a manner as to convey the romantic notion that the miller lived in a cave with dripping stalactites. ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... of form, color, and 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
... level of the country. In fact, the attentive eye can in such a district find here and 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 to the floor. In this way a gallery originally ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... petrifactions: they were in the attitude of stalactites. Govicum, stunned, was looking ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... of the coach-house, occupying its 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 buried shows of ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... 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 ...
— The Cave Boy of the Age of Stone • Margaret A. McIntyre
... 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 that ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... 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. It is an exact ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... for some moments, with his hands folded behind him, and as he noted the splendour of the spectacle presented by the risen sun shining upon temples and palaces of ice, prism-tinting domes and minarets, and burnishing after the similitude of silver stalactites and arcades which had built themselves into crystal campaniles, more glorious than Giotto's,—the pastor said: "The physical world, just as God left it,—how pure, how lovely, how entirely good;—how sacred ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... before they would be reduced to using them for food, a strange mole-sized animal scraped from the darkness and pecked at one of them. As it slithered away, a writhing shape in its mouth, Holmes muttered bitterly: "A competitor!" Vague, flitting forms haunted the gloom among the stalactites of the distorted ceiling—hints of the things that lived in the terrible silence of this nether world. Here Time had paused, and life had ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... 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 to appear ...
— The Little Russian Servant • Henri Greville
... my mind, and if I have given you too much of it you must forgive me. Now we are upon the subject of old castles, do you remember my retailing to you, at second hand, a description of my father's visit to the Marquis de la Poype's old chateau in Dauphiny, with the cavern of bats and stalactites? A little while ago my father received a letter in a strange hand, which I copy for my aunt and you, as I think it will please you as it did us, to see that this old friend of my father's remembers him with so much kindness through all the changes and ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... whether the 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 common ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... pearls running along its breadth. It contained a dark red liquid, which appeared to be boiling, and the man was holding it out to a fierce lion whose shoulders were four feet across and whose mouth was like a cavern, with stalactites and stalagmites of the most terrifying nature. With an evil glare in its eyes toward the man, the lion drank thirstily from the cup. Around the man and the lion there was a ring of blazing fire, leaping out of the dome like great pillars of flame, entrapping ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... 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 making. And when he has finished it, he will ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... that the aspect of the cavern of Caripe would differ little from what I had observed in my preceding travels. The reality far exceeded my expectations. If the configuration of the grottoes, the splendour of the stalactites, and all the phenomena of inorganic nature, present striking analogies, the majesty of equinoctial vegetation gives at the same time an individual character to the aperture ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... feet in height was covered 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 ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... 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 ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... 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 ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... represents pretty well the 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 ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... shaft of sunlight fell on some glittering point of 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
... the scene, except the low plashing of the waves; the fitful gleams of light thrown first on the walls and ceiling, as the men moved to and fro along the side of the stupendous cave; the appearance of the varied roof, where different stalactites or petrifactions are visible; the vastness and perfect art or semblance of art of the whole, altogether formed a scene the most sublime, grand, ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... hands of the Inquisition, which intentionally destroyed all the Roman antiquities of Cordova. Here the fringed arches, the lace-like filigrees, the wreathed inscriptions, and the domes of pendent stalactites which enchant you in the Alcazar of Seville, are repeated, not in stucco, but in purest marble, while the entrance to the "holy of holies" is probably the most glorious piece of mosaic in the world. The pavement of the interior is deeply worn by the knees of the Moslem pilgrims, ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... outside to the 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
... end. There are two large fissures passing into the rock, one only of which can be represented in the section, and these were full of white ice, not owing its whiteness apparently to the admixture of air in bubbles, but firm and compact, and very hard, almost like porcelain. Small stalactites hung from round fissures in the roof, formed of the same sort of ice, and broken off short, much as the end of a leaden pipe is sometimes seen to project from a wall. With this exception, there was no ice hanging from the roof, though there were abundant signs ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... into 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 opened and her long light ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... chisel, pulley and wheel, and the grave architect himself directing their labour. All this is set in motion by water, and is not a mere doll's house, but a symmetrical model. Then we enter a subterranean grotto, with a roof of pendant stalactites, where the pleasant sound of falling waters and the melodious piping of birds fill all the air. There is a sly drollery too in some of the water performances, invented years ago by the grave Archbishops ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... upon a movement of the eye, these being produced by large numbers of snowy wet stalagmites, very large and high, down the centre of which ran a continuous long lane of clothes and hats and faces; with hasty reluctant feet I somehow passed over them, the cave all the time widening, thousands of stalactites appearing on the roof of every size, from virgin's breast to giant's club, and now everywhere the wet drip, drip, as it were a populous busy bazaar of perspiring brows and hurrying feet, in which the only business is to drip. Where stalactite meets stalagmite ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... our great subterranean reservoir who shall tell? What craft will ever float on its dark surface, under domes of pendant stalactites, rippling for the first time the ice-cold waters, and disturbing the eyeless fish in their shadowy haunts? Only when here and there we tap it, and the mighty pressure sends up a thin column of water hundreds ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... winter nights beside the nursery fire We read the fairy tale, while glowing coals Builded its pictures. There before our eyes We saw the vaulted hall of traceried stone Uprear itself, the distant ceiling hung With pendent stalactites like frozen vines; And all along the walls at intervals, Curled upwards into pillars, roses climbed, And ramped and were confined, and clustered leaves Divided where there peered a laughing face. The foliage seemed to rustle in the wind, A silent murmur, carved in ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... typical than 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 strands, the separate streams ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... designed by nature was loftier and wider than any built by man. But its stupendous size was the least of the wonders of the place, for running in rows adown its length were gigantic pillars of what looked like ice, but were, in reality, huge stalactites. It is impossible for me to convey any idea of the overpowering beauty and grandeur of these pillars of white spar, some of which were not less than twenty feet in diameter at the base, and sprang up in lofty and yet delicate beauty sheer to the distant roof. Others again were in process ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... remains has been made in a cave in Cravanch, about two miles 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 Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... did wait, till 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, ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... of masses of stalactites and unhewn blocks of stone, formed a deep grotto at the end of the hall, whence peered the gigantic head of a monster whose open jaws formed the fireplace of the chimney. Logs of fragrant Arabian wood were blazing brightly on the hearth, and the dragon's ruby glass eyes ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... with porphyry—supported a resplendent fresco ceiling, arched like a 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 ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... extent occur in Iceland; that of Gurtshellir being forty feet in height, fifty in breadth, and nearly a mile in length. It is situated in the lava that has flowed from a volcano. Beautiful black stalactites hang from the spacious vault, and the sides are covered with glazed stripes, a thick covering of ice, clear as crystal, coating the floor. One spot in particular is mentioned by a traveller, when seen by torch-light, ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... her 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.
... some little distance with every precaution, we turned round to look back at the entrance, to see as pretty a picture as ever I gazed upon in my life. We could now see plainly the nature of the roof, hung with beautiful stalactites of many graceful forms, giving to the great arch the appearance of some grand specimen of Gothic tracery, through which we looked upon the ravine lit up by the outer sunshine, with its green, and gold, and blushing floral hues. It was a scene to be remembered for ever; but ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... passages and chambers 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
... 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 had fallen ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... having no choice. It was a great place lit dimly by the outer light, and farther down its length with lamps. Looking round her, Rachel saw that its roof was supported by white columns which she knew to be stalactites, for as a child she had seen their like. At the end of it, where the lamps burned and a fountain bubbled from the ground, rose a very large column shaped like the trunk of a tree, with branches at the top that looked like the boughs of a tree. Gazing at it ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... than those left 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 of the frozen fluid, though it would have been vain yet to attempt ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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. Deep in ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... or points of rock overhung with moss and 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 very flowers seemed ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... continued as they passed through the Rue de la Roquette, with shops on each side, in which could be seen only chains of coloured glass and black circular tablets covered with drawings and letters of gold—which made them resemble grottoes full of stalactites and crockery-ware shops. But, when they had reached the cemetery-gate, everyone ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... passed through the open door, and soon found himself in a wonderful jewelled cave hung with stalactites, in the centre of which stood a beautiful woman, clad in silvery robes, and attended by a host of lovely maidens crowned with Alpine roses. In his surprise, the shepherd sank to his knees, and as in a ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... 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
... 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
... or two she could walk upright as long as she could retain her insecure footing on the glassy, uneven floor of rock; and a vague demi-light reigned there making objects distinct enough for her to see the stalactites and stalagmites like discoloured ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... lake, which the fiery waves seemed 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 of ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... seemed to borrow the lightness and airiness of the Gothic. As you look at the numerous windows and the multitude of columns which give a striated appearance to the fronts of the palaces, you think of stalactites and icicles, such as you might imagine to ornament the abodes of the water-gods and sea-nymphs. The only thing needed to complete the poetic illusion is transparency or brilliancy of color, and this is wholly wanting; for at Venice ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... hour; but at length they once more reached level ground and, leaving the steps behind them, proceeded to traverse a narrow and winding passage, the air in which smelt stale and musty, while here and there they were obliged to squeeze their painful way between long, spiky stalactites and stalagmites until they came to more steps—this time leading upward. Harry counted these; there were only one hundred and twenty-three of them, and they were not nearly so steep as the others; and then they ceased, and the pair came to a gently ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... carved in the manner of the 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
... and delighted with it. The mouth was of considerable width, sufficient to admit two or three boats abreast. Once inside, the water was fully five fathoms deep. We here found ourselves amid columns and stalactites hanging from the high-domed roof, resembling Gothic arches. The bright sunlight streamed down through the wonderfully clear water, and was reflected up from the sparkling stones and coral at the bottom, with a beautiful ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... covered with white and glistening stalactites; underfoot, the floor was strewn with bits of carbonate and the broken bases of stalagmites, which had been shattered to make a path for the ruthless iconoclast who had made his home in this pearly-white temple, ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... tights she had nothing on but a golden girdle which hardly concealed her behind and in front. All round her the grotto, which was entirely of glass, shone like day. Cascades of diamonds were flowing down; strings of brilliant pearls glistened among the stalactites in the vault overhead, and amid the transparent atmosphere and flowing fountain water, which was crossed by a wide ray of electric light, she gleamed like the sun with that flamelike skin and hair of hers. ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... marsh that imbeds 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 ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... rested and ate, a party of Hindus down by the stream where there was a shrine to Krishna that nestled under a huge banyan that was like the roof of a cave from which dropped to earth to take roots hundreds of slender shoots, like stalactites, and whose roots, creeping from the earth like giant worms, crawled on to lave in the stream. When they had finished eating, Jemla said, "That is a temple of the Preserver;" then he laughed a full-throated sneer: "Allah hafiz! (God protect us), give ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... 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; tinted walls like evening ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... 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 be so. I want to get home and look ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... Virginia, or St. George's, Hanover Square. 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
... out in the most unexpected planes, frequently far up mountain sides, and fall in silver veils upon stones beaten round by the ceaseless dash for ages. Caves, rich in quaintly formed stalactites and stalagmites, and their recesses filled with metallic salts of the most powerful and diverse natures; break the mountain sides at frequent intervals. Everywhere one is met by surprises and anomalies. Even the rank vegetation is eccentric, and as prone to develop into bizarre forms ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... 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 resemble bunches ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... on, now advancing among fairy halls, glistering with stalactites or paved with silver sand, and finally pushing our way through a concealed crevice down dank and narrow passages in the rock. The darkness increased; the pavement plashed beneath our feet, and the ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... 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 ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... 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 ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... sources was situated at the height of about 100 feet above the level of the lake. It kept continually filled an oval basin about 250 feet in circumference—the margins of which were fringed all round with beautiful pure white stalactites, formed by deposits of silica, with which the hot water was strongly impregnated. At various stages below the principal spring were several others, that contributed to feed the lake at the bottom, in the centre of which was a small island. Minute bubbles continually escaped from ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... 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 must be its under surface. For, as far as we could ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... ceaseless erosions of measureless time, Have chiseled the grotto and canon sublime; 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 on the ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... Martin to visit the caves of St. Marcel, 4 m. up the river, or 3m. W. from the village of St. Marcel. The price depends upon the time the visitors make the boat wait. The cave consists of a tunnel, 4m. long, which here and there widens out into spacious lofty caverns hung with stalactites. Some parts are very steep, slippery, and fatiguing. The visit requires from 6 to 7 hours, and certainly none but ardent lovers of walking in dark caverns should undertake the labour. The sail, however, is pleasant. The nearest hotels are at Pont-Saint ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... polished glass, 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 their little round ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... found that the water ran out of a grotto, or cavern, in the face of the cliff-out of the unknown darkness into the sunlight! Walking up the bed of the stream, I entered the cave, and, striking a few matches, found it to be inhabited by hundreds of vampire bats, which were hanging from the sides and stalactites of the roof, like so many damp, black rags. On my entrance the unearthly creatures were disturbed, and many came flying in my face, so I made a quick exit. Several which I killed came floating down the stream with me; one that I measured proved to be twenty-two inches across ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... it, too—is that 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," and "Cascades," and "Altars," and "Bridal Wreaths" ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... made which spares them the trouble. Along its base the cliff is honeycombed with caves, one of ample dimensions, sufficient to shelter the whole crew. A ship's lamp, which they have brought with them, when lighted throws its glare upon stalactites, that sparkle ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... deposits. In old auriferous workings which have been under water for years, in many parts of the world, formations of iron and silica have been found on the walls and roof, while in mining tunnels which have been long unused stalactites composed of silica and calcite have formed. Then, again, experiments made by the late Professor Cosmo Newbery, in Victoria, showed that a distinctly appreciable amount of gold, iron, and silica (the latter in granular form) could be extracted from solid mine timber; which ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... like cliffs; the pit, with its seats under a gray drugget, because of the dust, lifted toward the stage its rows of motionless waves. The stage itself was strange: a sort of huge cave, with strips of scenery hanging like stalactites; near the wall, a metal pedestal, with a red velvet platform, looked like a blood-stained scaffold; one suspected the presence of properties: wheels, iron implements, tangled ropes, like so many instruments of torture. At the New Zealanders' feet, half-naked bodies, suggesting the ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... by their owners as "side shows" to this exhibition of natural marvels. Of these caves Cox's, the one nearest the village, was discovered as early as 1832, and has long been known to excursionists as one of the sights of Cheddar (entrance fee 1s.). The stalactites within are highly fantastic in shape and peculiarly rich in colour. There is, however, more to be seen for the money at Gough's, a little higher up, where a similar charge is made. A long natural gallery, rendered ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... right round the palace. It 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 gilded wainscoting; tiring-women ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... place of the wire, and 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 ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... deposition is undisturbed, there will be formed over the floor of the cave a more or less continuous layer of limestone matter known as stalagmite. The same formations on the top and sides of the cave are called stalactites. In places where the drip is continuous the stalactite gradually assumes the shape of an immense icicle; while the stalagmite on the floor of the cave, underneath the drip, rises in a columnar mass to meet the descending stalactite. A union of these is not uncommon, and, we have pillars and ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... of which was discovered in 1837, and the second in comparatively recent 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 splashings, ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... the cave at an early hour, provided with guides, candles and rockets. We explored to a distance of about three miles from the entrance, and found a succession of chambers of great dimensions and of great beauty when lit up with our rockets. Stalactites and stalagmites of all sizes were discovered. Some of the former were many feet in diameter and extended from ceiling to floor; some of the latter were but a few feet high from the floor; but the formation is going ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... have a nice collection of curiosities, and would like to exchange with any correspondent for sea-shells or other curiosities. I have iron ore, soft gypsum crystals, stalactites, stalagmites, pretty pebbles, different kinds of limestone, pressed ferns, and other things. In sending specimens, correspondents will please mark each plainly with the name and the locality ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... outflung limb and from every tiniest twig hung plumes and festoons and stalactites of gray moss. For perhaps a hundred years the moss had been growing thus on the giant oak, first in little bunches and trailers that were scarce noticeable and which affected the forest monarch's appearance and health ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... trace of Thora at the entrance, for I had made noise enough to attract her. Yet I noticed the flagon that had held the warm tea we had sent down in the morning lying empty on a flat stone. I continued my way further into the cavern, watching the play of light upon the huge stalactites that hung from the roof. At last I came to the stream in which Thora had so nearly lost her life. It was swollen, and rushed past with great force. At one point a kind of bridge had been formed by a couple ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... have gone 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 |
