"Basalt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... murder you," advised Saxham, facing the passionate emotion of the younger man as a basalt cliff might oppose a breaking wave, "you ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... 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
... 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
... things are fashioned soft— Air, water, earth, and fiery exhalations— And by what force they function and go on: The fact is founded in the void of things. But if the primal germs themselves be soft, Reason cannot be brought to bear to show The ways whereby may be created these Great crags of basalt and the during iron; For their whole nature will profoundly lack The first foundations of a solid frame. But powerful in old simplicity, Abide the solid, the primeval germs; And by their combinations more condensed, All objects can be tightly ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... of it: Yet how should our Lord Love curtail one whit Thy perfect praise whom most he would exalt? Alas! he can but make my heart's low vault Even in men's sight unworthier, being lit By thee, who thereby show'st more exquisite Like fiery chrysoprase in deep basalt. ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... the hottest sun-bibbers of the Rheingau, glistened in the roll of Gottlieb's possessions; corn-acres below Cologne; basalt-quarries about Linz; mineral-springs in Nassau, a legacy of the Romans to the genius and enterprise of the first of German traders. He could have bought up every hawking crag, owner and all, from Hatto's Tower to Rheineck. Lore-ley, combing her yellow ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... consequently they ran the risk of missing their way in returning without light. At their first attempt they failed to reach the penguin rookery, but undismayed they started again on the following day, and wound their way through frightful ice disturbances under the high basalt cliffs. In places the rock overhung, and at one spot they had to creep through a small channel hollowed in the ice. At last the sea-ice was reached, but by that time the light was so far spent that everything had to be rushed. Instead of the 2,000 or 3,000 nesting birds ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... to the home of the water babies, in Saint Brandan's fairy isle, he found that the isle stood all on pillars, and that its roots were full of caves. There were pillars of black basalt and pillars of green and crimson serpentine; and pillars ribboned with red and white and yellow sandstone; and there were blue grottoes and white grottoes, all curtained and draped with seaweeds, purple and crimson, green and brown; and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... fact, and one which proves that the various kinds of coal which are found are nothing but stages begotten by different degrees of disentanglement of the contained gases, that where, as in some parts, a mass of basalt has come into contact with ordinary bituminous coal, the coal has assumed the character of anthracite, whilst the change has in some instances gone so far as to convert the anthracite into graphite. The basalt, which is one ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... earth, but a good deal on sea, and a trifle on as uncomfortable a section of basalt as ever served two unhappy buccaniers for bed, table, and sofa. The chilliness ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... our continent is carried into the seas of the New World. In 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 ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... first, and then the pineapple, which we cut with a sliver of basalt,—we were in the stone age, as her tribe was when the whites came,—and last the oranges. She made cups of leaves and filled them with water, and into them we squeezed the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... occasional hour to literature and geology. The proof-sheets of my book began to drop in upon me, demanding revision; and to a quarry in the neighbourhood of the town, rich in the organisms of the Mountain Limestone, and overflown by a bed of basalt so regularly columnar, that one of the legends of the district attributed its formation to the "ancient Pechts," I was able to devote, not without profit, the evenings of several Saturdays. I formed, at this time, my first acquaintance with the Palaeozoic shells, as they occur ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... quay, the Negro still at his side. A few prowling sailors passed them. But for the most part the waterfront was deserted. The ships lay side by side—an intricate tangle of bowsprits and rigging, masts and chains. Around them the water was black as basalt, only that now and again a spark of light was struck by the faint lifting of the current against the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... the 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, he ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... that within three-quarters of an hour's walk are found hereabout granite, sandstone, and basalt, a variety of ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... between his sculptured knees; the black basalt must contrast with the bas-relief in ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... the one deity traces are visible on the heights of Fruska Gora in the fossil sea-shells strewn around, and in Veterani's cave with its petrified relics of saurian monsters of the deep; of the other god, the basalt of Piatra Detonata bears witness. While the man of the iron hand is revealed by long galleries hewn in the rock, a vaulted road, the ruined piers of an immense bridge, the tablets sculptured in bas-relief on the face of the cliff, and by a channel two hundred feet wide, hollowed ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... beautiful waterfall, a palisade of wonderful basalt, and occasionally some island draped with verdure of many tints. Further away a murmuring brook or crystal streamlet may be heard hurrying down a rocky hillside or winding between towering cliffs, adding its share to the tuneful sound ...
— The Beauties of the State of Washington - A Book for Tourists • Harry F. Giles
... 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 ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... stones, which were firmly set in cement. These stones were sometimes square, but more frequently irregular. They were, however, always accurately fitted to each other. Many varieties of stone were used, but the preference was given to basalt. Where large blocks could not be conveniently obtained, small stones of hard quality were sometimes cemented together with lime, forming a kind of concrete, of which masses extending to a depth of several feet are still in existence. ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... far enough 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 returned ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... Byzantine Madonna stepped out of its frame, had all the stiffness, the precision of those mysterious figures, the more modern cousins of Isis and her sister goddesses sheathed in marble folds by Egyptian sculptors. It was granite, basalt, porphyry, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... climbed up the precipitous basalt, and reached, at 3 P.M., a level covered with large blocks of the same material, where the thermometer was slightly under 12 deg. F. in the shade. The blocks were for the most part stripped of snow, and in some cases thin shields of ice were observed ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... truths the more nearly before us, it is possible to make a substance resembling basalt in a furnace; limestone and sandstone have both been formed from suitable materials in appropriate receptacles; the phenomena of cleavage have, with the aid of electricity, been simulated on a small scale, and by the same ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... the Square. It was Saturday, and all over the Square little stalls, with yellow linen roofs, were being erected for the principal market of the week. In those barbaric days Bursley had a majestic edifice, black as basalt, for the sale of dead animals by the limb and rib—it was entitled 'the Shambles'—but vegetables, fruit, cheese, eggs, and pikelets were still sold under canvas. Eggs are now offered at five farthings ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... boundaries: none Coastline: 965 km Maritime claims: (measured from claimed archipelagic baselines) Exclusive economic zone: 200 nm Territorial sea: 12 nm 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 NEGL%; meadows and pastures 6%; forest and woodland NEGL%; other 85%; includes irrigated 1% Environment: subject ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... fine a volcanic upheaval as one will find anywhere. Sheer walls of cloud-capped rock 6,000 feet high, some literally overhanging the crystal-clear water, and all embossed and engraved with strangely patterned basalt. There are pillars, battlements, and turrets; so that, with half-closed eyes, it seems you are approaching a temple, a medieval castle, or a mosque of the East. And the valleys—deep, choked with the most ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... dancing spirits). Arch Rock is the place that Manitou built to reach his home from Sunrise Land the better. There were many such monuments of divinities in the north. They are met with all about the lakes and in the wooded wilderness, the most striking one being the magnificent spire of basalt in the Black Hills region of Wyoming. It is known as Devil's Tower, or Mateo's Tepee, and by the red men is held to be the wigwam of a were-animal that can become man at pleasure. This singular rock towers above the Belle Fourche River to a height ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... eastern and the 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 lagunas at ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... gulfs, which include some of the finest harbours in the world. About a third of its interior to the north and east is occupied by an elevated mountainous region, raised from 3,000 to 5,000 feet above the sea, and consisting of Primary rocks—granite, gneiss, and basalt—probably very ancient land, and forming during the Secondary geological epoch an island much smaller than the Madagascar of to-day. While our Oolitic and Chalk rocks were being slowly laid down under northern seas, the extensive coast plains of the island, especially on its ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... woolly-haired Africans, as black as the basalt tablets in the museum, were seated on the floor of the white marble court. Some were eating their frugal meal; some were lying on their backs resting; while others were lost in prayer. Here and there a tall sheikh or ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... that while the sandstone which we now see scattered about, and the tetzontli' (amygdaloide poreuse, basalt, trap-rocks) 'boiled with great tumult, there also arose ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... 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 ashore ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... sensibility and 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 ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... the hand of man are found in great quantities in the bone beds of the Godavery. Some javelin heads in sandstone, basalt, and quartz, with scrapers and knives, most of them flat on one side and rounded on the other, appear to be even more ancient than the agate implements. Some of the celts resemble those of European type, others the flint weapons found in Egypt, and the clumsiest forms ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... give rise to some curious speculations 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... no answer, save the incessant angry murmur of the Nile as it raced round a basalt-walled bend and foamed across a rock-ridge half a mile upstream. It was as though the brown weight of the river would drive the white men back to their own country. The indescribable scent of Nile mud in the air told that the stream was falling and the next few miles would be no light thing ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... sharpened in the light. Then each detail became visible: the elephants of the pedestals standing upon tortoises of rock; the great grim faces of the capitals; the serpents and monsters writhing among the friezes; the many-headed gods of basalt in their galleries of fretted niches, tier above tier; the pictured foulnesses, the painted lusts, the divinities of abomination. And, yawning in the sloping precipice of sculpture, beneath a frenzied swarming of gods and Gopia,—a ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... huge fragment of rock crash down into the depths below. This was followed by a grinding sound and a rumble like thunder; then high above us shot a shower of red-hot lava and stones, while we crouched under a projecting shelf of black basalt, and forgot that we were prisoners in the midst of such an impressive scene. When the stream of fire which darted upwards had somewhat subsided, our captives urged us forward, and on we went, tumbling and slipping over the dangerous rocks, which threatened every instant to give way beneath our ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the great hall of Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum is a wonderful piece of sculpture known as the Rosetta Stone. I doubt if any other piece in the entire exhibit attracts so much attention from the casual visitor as this slab of black basalt on its telescope-like pedestal. The hall itself, despite its profusion of strangely sculptured treasures, is never crowded, but before this stone you may almost always find some one standing, gazing with more or less of discernment at the strange characters that are graven neatly across its upturned, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... chemical compound of lead,—much as now has come out in the patent toughened glass. Also we initiated mild experiments about an imitation of volcanic forces in melting pounded stone into moulds,—as recently done by Mr. Lindsay Bucknall with slag:—but unluckily we found that the manufacture of basalt was beyond our small furnace power: I fancied that apparently carved pinnacles and gurgoyles might be cast in stone; and though beyond Dr. Kerrison and myself, perhaps it may still be done by the hot-blast ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... saltpeter to from 80 to 100 million marks a year.[202] Hensel makes the emphatic claim, and produces numerous proofs of the correctness of his views, that the mineral of our mountains contain an inexhaustible supply of the best fertilizing stuffs. Granite, porphyry, basalt, broken and ground up, spread upon the fields or vineyards and furnished with a sufficiency of water, furnished a fertilizer that excelled all others, even animal and human refuse.[203] These minerals, he ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... the top of which the mussulmans erected a mosque, that they might perform their devotions where, according to their belief, mohammed received from the angel gabriel the first chapter of the Koran."—Author. "In the kaaba at mecca, there is a celebrated block of volcanic basalt, which the mohammedans venerate as the gift of gabriel to abraham, but their ancestors once held it to be an image of remphan, or saturn; so 'the image which fell down from jupiter,' to share with diana the homage of the ephesians, was probably nothing more than ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... from 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 ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... religious rites, and their astrological reveries. I have given in this work a description of the teocalli, or Mexican pyramids, and have compared their structure with that of the temple of Belus. I have described the arabesques which cover the ruins of Mitla, the idols in basalt ornamented with the calantica of the heads of Isis; and also a considerable number of symbolical paintings, representing the serpent-woman (the Mexican Eve), the deluge of Coxcox, and the first migrations of the natives ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... the hill. Two well-marked lines of wall occur at the foot of the hill, on the flat bottom land, but the slopes of the hill are covered with bowlders and show no well-defined lines. Scattered about on the surface of the ground are some fragments of metates of coarse black basalt and some potsherds, but ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... second. In two places, unfortunately outside of the entrances to the caves in question, where atmospheric and perhaps other influences had been destructively at work, there were found conically pointed basalt prisms, which exhibited unmistakable traces of hieroglyphic writing. These inscriptions were no longer legible; and though our Egyptologists, as well as those of London and Paris, agreed in thinking that the inscription ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... persevering oxen who dragged after them little sledges laden with casks and bales. Camels also we saw introduced from the not far off coast of Africa, patient as ever, bearing heavy weights balanced on their hump backs. Madeira was hot, but we were much hotter now, as the basalt-paved streets and the white glittering buildings sent back the burning rays of the almost vertical sun. Thus fired and scorched, we could not help gazing with a somewhat envious glance into some of the Moorish-looking houses, not unlike the model of the Alhambra or the Pompeian ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... to gluttony. First some bird-drops the seeds of the banian fig into crevices of the ramparts, and its insidious roots push their way and grow and grow into great tortuous snakes, embracing the massive blocks of basalt, heaving them up and holding them up, so that they cannot fall. Then prickly shrubs and thorny trees follow, fighting for every inch of ground, but quite unable to eject the gently persistent custard-apple, descended doubtless from seeds which ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... rummaging among the ruins of the Nile Delta. And behold! he found a stone which greatly puzzled him. Like everything else in Egypt it was covered with little figures. But this particular slab of black basalt was different from anything that had ever been discovered. It carried three inscriptions. One of these was in Greek. The Greek language was known. "All that is necessary," so he reasoned, "is to compare the Greek text with the ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... 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, valuable for its ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... isolated rocky tongue rising suddenly like an island from the low levels, and trending north-west to south-east. The site is perfectly healthy; the ground is gravel, not clay, and the stone is basalt. The upper heights are forested and full of game; the lower are cleared and await the colonist. With the pure and keen Atlantic breeze ever blowing over it, the Mount is a ready-made sanatorium. Its youth has been disreputable. Here ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... 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 ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... so cramped but thence 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 pulse. —Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone, ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... 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 this respect. A species of plant ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... feet high. The lower part of the canon is much rougher to run through than the upper part, the fall being apparently much greater. The sides are generally perpendicular, about 80 to 100 feet high, and consist of basalt, in some ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue
... sinister door, and was impelled to open it. I found myself in a large oak-panelled room, with small barred windows admitting a sickly light. The floor was paved with stone; and in the centre, built into the pavement, stood a large block of basalt, black and smooth, which was roughly carved into the semblance of a gigantic human head. I stared at this for a long time, and then swiftly withdrew, overcome with horror which I could not translate into words. All that I seemed to know was that some kind of shocking rites were here celebrated: ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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, and is beyond all proportion with the extent of the town, it ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... 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
... the hills, making for the spot he and others 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 ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... 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, 25 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 ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... daughters husbands who will last well. You do not know how to preserve yourselves any longer. Even those who died only fifteen centuries ago are already no more than a handful of dust. Behold, my flesh is solid as basalt, my bones are bones ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... "That's black basalt," answered the little girl. Then, leaning far out of the saddle to point to the depths below, ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... visit to Linyanti he had heard of a mighty waterfall on the river, and now he discovered this African Niagara, which he named the Victoria Falls. Above the falls the river is 1800 yards broad, and the huge volumes of water dash down foaming and roaring over a barrier of basalt 390 feet high to the depth beneath. The water boils and bubbles as in a kettle, and is confined in a rocky chasm in some places barely 50 yards broad. Clouds of spray and vapour hover constantly ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... there being a more heated and plastic layer below it, the cracks once initiated above would continually widen at the surface as they penetrated deeper and deeper into the slightly heated substratum. Now, as basalt begins to soften at about 1400 deg. F. and the surface of Mars has cooled to at least the freezing-point—perhaps very much below it—the contraction would be so great that if the fissures produced were 500 miles apart they might be three miles wide at the surface, and, if only 100 miles apart, ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... 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
... denuding agents, 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 a little higher than ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... and consisting of black ferruginous sandstone. It was broad and of peculiar structure, so that it might well have been considered a dividing feature. Parallel to it on the south, a line of pointed hills of trap or basalt, extended so as to give birth, in the valley intervening, to the watercourse by which we were encamped. On one of these Mr. Kennedy afterwards found the Bottle tree, represented at page 154. I at length reached the gap in this range, and in it discovered a most favourable and curious opening to the ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... Capri. Nor will the student of Suetonius forget his even more memorable grand-nephew Caligula. The following passage is an episode from the biography of that imperial maniac, whose portrait in green basalt, with the strain of dire mental tension on the forehead, is still so beautiful that we are able at this distance of time to pity more than loathe him. 'Above all, he was tormented with nervous irritation, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Half-a-dozen boats, some of them neat little feluccas with three masts, are drawn up 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 vein of manganese ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... islets, Walter, are squared, and their shores are frowning seawalls of gigantic basalt blocks hewn and put in place by the hands of ancient man. Each inner water-front is faced with a terrace of those basalt blocks which stand out six feet above the shallow canals that meander between them. On the islets behind these walls are ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... nearness of the Giant's Causeway to make a careful examination of the marvellous volcanic columns in that neighbourhood. Having scrambled up to a great height, I found a thick band of hematitic clay underneath the upper bed of basalt, which was about sixty feet thick. In this clay I detected a rich deposit of completely charred branches of what had once been a forest tree. The bed had been burst through by the outburst of molten basalt, and converted the branches into charcoal. ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... mossed with seaweed. The polygonal masses composing these shapes are called by the fishermen 'tortoise-shell stones.' There is a legend that once Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami, to try his strength, came here, and, lifting up one of these masses of basalt, flung it across the sea to the mountain of Sanbeyama. At the foot of Sanbe the mighty rock thus thrown by the Great Deity of Kitzuki may still be seen, it is alleged, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... silver beeches a stone chess-table was set embedded in the moss; and Iole indolently stretched herself out on one side, chin on hands, while Wayne sorted weather-beaten basalt and marble chess-men which lay in ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... and in optical and other physical characters it is thus much nearer to the anorthite end of the series than to albite. Like labradorite and anorthite, it is a common constituent of basic igneous rocks, such as gabbro and basalt. Isolated crystals of bytownite bounded by well-defined ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... 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 ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... 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
... an observation which appears to me suggestive and may prove valuable. It has been observed that the inhabitants of basaltic localities are more generally natural clairvoyants than others. Basalt is an igneous rock composed largely of augite and felspar, which are silicate crystals of calcium, potassium, alumina, etc., of which the Moonstone is a variety. The connecting link is that clairvoyance is found to be unusually active during ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... 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 ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... from behind a carved screen. Trumpets announced the approach of Caesar, who could enter unobserved through a door at the side of the dais. From the moment that the trumpet sounded, and the guards grew as rigid as the basalt statues in the niches of the columned walls, it was a punishable crime to speak or even to move until Caesar appeared and ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... avoiding my camp where they would first look for me, swim the river, and push through the forest, around that steep, pyramid peak to the next canyon. You see it?—The Duckabush cuts through there to tide water. I left no trail in crossing the stony bed of the brook, and took advantage of a low basalt bluff in climbing the farther bank. It was while I was working my way over the rock into cover of the trees that the pleasant calling on the ridge behind me changed to the first terrible cry. The mother had found her ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... kind of rock it was—iron and basalt. And I'd made borings which checked. We'd tested the speed of escape which was a good push so we had to be careful, and its force of gravity, which wasn't much. And then I'd discovered that the balance in the lab had a habit of being 25 per cent wrong one way or the ...
— The Minus Woman • Russell Robert Winterbotham
... the valley bordering on the cave, shaded by fir and other trees, was thoroughly explored, and on turning the point of the south-western spur, the colonists entered a narrower gorge similar to the picturesque columns of basalt on the coast. Here the trees were fewer. Stones took the place of grass. Goats and musmons gambolled among the rocks. Here began the barren part of the island. It could already be seen that, of the numerous valleys branching off at the base of Mount Franklin, three only were wooded and rich ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... 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 roar ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... Numidian marble, toned by time to a hue of richest orange. Here stood soldiers, to whom again the password was given. Entering, they beheld a great hall, surrounded by a colonnade of the Corinthian order, whereon had been lavished exquisite carving; in niches behind the columns stood statues in basalt, thrice the size of life, representing Roman emperors, and at the far end was a tribune with a marble throne. This, once the hall of audience, at present served as a sort of antechamber; here and there loitered a little group of citizens, some of whom had been waiting ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... Architecture and Painting," and you are surprised to find a stucco classic portico in the corner, painted and grained, and heaped around with lucky horseshoes, brightly blackleaded, and mysterious rows of large blocks of slate and basalt and trap—a complete museum of local geology, if only you knew it—very unlike an ideal entrance; still more unlike an ordinary one. While you wait you can see through the glass door a roomy hall, lit with candles, and hung with large ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... 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 less ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... destruction, and his wife Parvati seated 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 and proportioned. On noticing this we were told that 'such ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... necklaces and their mop-heads of mutton wool, now and then plastered with lime. They sell water, firewood, fowls, eggs, and so forth. We landed at Aden for a few hours. It is a wild, desolate spot; the dark basalt mountains give it a sombre look. Richard and I spent some hours with the wife of the Governor, or Station Commandant, at her house. It was terribly hot. I think it was Aden where the sailors reappeared who had died and gone to a certain fiery place; and ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... tell me of your city in the sea, Paved with red basalt of the Paduan hills. Tell me of art in Venice. Three great names, Giorgione, Titian, and the Tintoretto, Illustrate your Venetian school, and send A challenge to the world. The first is dead, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... The Manufactures are large and comprehensive, and include the most famous distilleries in the world. The Minerals are most abundant, and amongst these may be reckoned quartz, porphyry, felspar, malachite, manganese, and basalt. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... had 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, ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... tender conscience; deep in hell they had forged a terrible temptation. They knew the walls of the citadel of morality, built alone on natural virtue and unaided by divine grace, would soon crumble before their powerful machinations. In moments of sober reflection our resolutions are like prisms of basalt, that will not be riven by the lightning, but which in the hour of real trial prove to be ice-crystals that a sunbeam can dissolve. The powers that wage war with frail humanity have hung on the portals of the infernal ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... ago, it'll be 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, beryllium, vanadium, chromium, ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... presence, though he knows perfectly well that there is a great deal of necessity; and, therefore he builds them. Where? On rocks whose sides are one mass of buttresses, of precisely the same form; on rocks which are cut and cloven by basalt and lava dikes of every size, and which, being themselves secondary, wear away gradually by exposure to the atmosphere, leaving the intersecting dikes standing out in solid and vertical walls, from the faces of their precipices. The eye passes over heaps of scoriae and sloping banks of ashes, over ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... 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 from such comparison, ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... the product of the complete distillation of liquid hydrocarbons 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 matter they contain (Lycoming Valley, Pa., Glenn's ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... at which they crossed a spur of the range running into it, so rugged that they were obliged to lead their horses. Beyond this they emerged on to a basaltic plain, timbered with box and bloodwood, and so stony as to render the walking very severe for the horses. The basalt continued for the rest of the day. At about 18 miles a large creek was crossed, running into an ana-branch. The banks of the river which border the basaltic plain are very high and steep on both sides. Running the ana-branch down for ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... walls," with polygonal stones of five or six feet diameter, so well polished and adjusted that no mortar was necessary; sometimes with a projecting part of the stone fitting exactly into a corresponding cavity of the stone immediately above or below it. Such huge stones are of hard granite or basalt, etc. The walls are often very massive and substantial, sometimes from thirty to forty feet in thickness. The only approach to the modern "arch" in the Peruvian structures is a device similar to that which was ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... closing in on the dark and frowning tower that was perched like an osprey upon the basalt cliffs that overlooked the sea. The building was really rather a peel tower than a castle, for it was of no great extent, consisting merely of the tall, gaunt tower with a wing added on to its western side. ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... the rivers, densely charged with mud, deluged the country far and wide. At the end of four days (October 12th), a second eruption occurred, more violent than the first, in which hot water and mud were again vomited, and great blocks of basalt were thrown to the distance of seven miles from the volcano. There was at the same time a violent earthquake, the face of the mountain was utterly changed, its summits broken down, and one side, which had been covered with trees, became an enormous gulf in the form of a semicircle. Over 4000 persons ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... 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 ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... From Ain to Mahaber (direction E. by N.) about twenty miles.] the road is most picturesque; always following the winding of the small river Ain, here and there compressed to only a few yards by perpendicular walls of trachyte, or basalt; further on expanding into miniature green plateaus, bordered by conical hills, covered to the very summit by mimosas and huge cactuses, alive with large hordes of antelopes (the agazin), which, bounding from rock to rock, scared by their frolics the countless host of huge baboons. The valley ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... principal objects being to propagate amongst the artists a general taste for elegance and beauty of form, and to enliven the national industry. Plaster-casts, to the amount of forty thousand dollars, were sent out by the King of Spain, and as they possess in the academy various colossal statues of basalt and porphyry, with Aztec hieroglyphics, it would have been curious, as the same learned traveller remarks, to have collected these monuments in the courtyard of the Academy, and compared the remains of Mexican sculpture, monuments of a semi-barbarous people, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... the gravels of the Somme. It is therefore not a little interesting to learn from Prof. Whitney that he finds many proofs of the existence of man in the gravels of the Pliocene Age in California. Under the solid basalt of Table Mountain have been found many works of men's hands, as well as the ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... 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 body of water about the entrance of Lancaster ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... Paseo de la Reforma, in the City of Mexico, was erected at the charges of Don Antonio Escandon, to whose public spirit and enterprise the building of the Vera Cruz & Mexico Railway was due. The monument is the work of the French sculptor Cordier. The base is a large platform of basalt, surrounded by a balustrade of iron, above which are five lanterns. From this base rises a square mass of red marble, ornamented with four basso-relievos; the arms of Columbus, surrounded with garlands of laurels; the rebuilding of the monastery of Santa ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... is a meteor or a block of volcanic basalt," judged the Master. "It seems sprinkled with small crystals, with rhombs of tile-red feldspath on a dark background like velvet or charcoal, except for one reddish protuberance of an unknown substance. A good blow with a hammer would surely break it along the original lines of fracture—and this ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... One, the largest, almost directly under the apex of the 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 ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... angle. This arrangement of the mealing stones is characteristic of the more densely clustered communal houses of late date. In the more primitive house the mealing stone was usually a single large piece of cellular basalt, or similar rock, in which a broad, sloping depression was carved, and which could be transported from place to place. Fig. 106 illustrates an example of this type from the vicinity of Globe, in southern Arizona. The stationary mealing trough of the present day is undoubtedly the successor ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... extensive ruins built of sandstone and limestone. At one place a village site was discovered, in which several hundred people once found shelter. To the north of this and about twenty-five miles from the summit of San Francisco Peak there is a volcanic cone of cinder and basalt. This small cone had been used as the site of a village, apueblo having been built around the crater. The materials of construction were derived from a great sandstone quarry near by, and the pit from which they ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... able to make your marble quite fluidic, and flow into innumerable graceful forms; you may be past master of every intricacy, multiplying your skill to the power of n;—but you will still in reality have made no progress beyond that unknown carver who shaped his syenite, or his basalt, into the "peace which passeth understanding"—"the eternity which baffles and confounds all ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... (after leaving Serdalas) a narrow pass, with lofty rugged hills on each side; some were peaked. The black colour of almost all, with white streaks, gave them a sombre appearance. The external surface of this sandstone soon acquires a shining black, like basalt; so much so, that I have several times been deceived, till I took up the specimen. The white part is from a shining white aluminous schistus, that separates into minute flakes like snow. The ground had in many places the appearance of being covered ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... a naked mass of what seemed to be basalt polygons, similar to the Giants' Causeway of Ireland back on Earth. There was no softness anywhere. The stone which on other planets underlay soil, here showed harshly. There was no soil. There was no microscopic life ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... shorter than hers, and his hands rested on the sensitive warmth of her upper arms. He peered at those dear gray-blue eyes of hers, but he could not calm himself enough to tell whether they were china-blue or basalt-black. ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... 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 a quadrangular market; surveyed the old ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... billows, like those of a tempestuous sea. Into the vast burning chasms, whence these 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
... enough to bear you, but when you step on this peaty edge you go down into the liquid mud beneath. Here you have reproduced in fragile miniature the same result as happened at the Giant's Causeway on the sea margin at the northeast corner of Ireland. There a long vein of once liquid basalt, freezing suddenly ages ago, left a great ridge of close-packed, vertical rock crystals running out an unknown distance into ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... romantic coast of Northumberland, "over against" an obscure town of the same name. It stands upon a basalt rock, of a triangular shape, high, rugged, and abrupt on the land side; flanked by the German Ocean, and strong natural rampires of sand, matted together with sea rushes on the east; and only accessible to an enemy on the south-east, which is guarded by a deep, dry ditch, and a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... I? Where was I? I must know at any cost. I tried to speak, but Captain Nemo stopped me by a gesture, and, picking up a piece of chalk-stone, advanced to a rock of black basalt, and traced ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... a boat!" 'Poleon cried. In between the basalt jaws appeared a skiff with two rowers, and a man in the stern. The latter was braced on wide-spread legs and he held his weight upon a steering-sweep. Down the boat came at a galloping gait, threshing over waves and ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach |
