"Alluvial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... surrounds him. No alternation of plain and highland, meadow and forest, no slopes of hills, or hanging woods, or dells, or gorges, or cascades, or rushing streams, or babbling rills, meet his gaze on any side; look which way he will, all is sameness, one vast smooth expanse of rich alluvial soil, varying only in being cultivated or else allowed to lie waste. Turning his back with something of weariness on the dull uniformity of this featureless plain, the wayfarer proceeds southwards, and enters, at the distance of a hundred miles from the coast, on an entirely new scene. Instead of ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... mouth of the cave several hundred acres of fertile alluvial land can be seen along both banks of the river. In the bottom land lying nearest to the spring branch—which is itself entitled to be called a creek—and extending southward to Miller's residence, partly on an upper terrace, but mostly ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... surface, and one which was terrible in its aspect." Sturt's views are only to be accounted for by the fact that what we now call excellent sheep and cattle country appeared to him like a desert, because his comparisons were made with the best alluvial lands he had left near the coast. Explorers as a rule, great ones more particularly, are not without rivals in so honourable a field as that of discovery, although not every one who undertakes the task is fitted either by nature or art to adorn the chosen part. Sturt was rivalled by ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... is the narrow strip of alluvial soil which forms the Nile banks, and the fertile delta which spreads fan-like from Cairo to the sea. These two divisions of the land practically constitute Upper and Lower Egypt. In area each is less than Wales, ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... ground rose abruptly to a height of thirty or forty feet; the ground around was covered with bushes, through which a few good-sized trees rose. The two men had dug through two feet of alluvial soil, and about five feet of sand. Altogether, it was a place which seemed to afford no promise whatever; and although, at the first impulse, some miners who were doing badly had marked out claims next to those staked out by Frank and his party, no steps ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... 1200 or 1500 feet, and steadily increased their altitude. Owing to the dip of the strata across the east and west trend of the canyon the walls on the north were steeper than those on the south, but they seldom rose vertically from the river. Masses of talus, and often alluvial stretches with rocks and trees, were strung along their base, usually offering numerous excellent landings and camping places. We were able to stop about as we wished and had no trouble as to camps, though they were ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... recent examinations have shown that instead of being a remnant of the original rock by which Ceylon is supposed to have been once connected with the Indian continent, it is in reality a comparatively recent ridge of conglomerate and ironstone, covered with alluvial deposits carried by the current and heaped up at this particular point; whilst the gradual rising of the coast has contributed to give ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... to divide them, so that the torrent could escape through. The eyes of this object rolled in pain, but he gave no sign of relinquishing his hold, and again the painful whisper skipped through the abyss, "Who goes back from the alluvial?" Mr. Waples got a breathful of air from an explosion of bubbles, and boldly ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... for considering them to be of foreign origin. The hog of the present breed, may indeed be of continental origin; so may the present cat, horse, and ass. Nevertheless, the hog, cat, horse, and ass, whose bones are found in the alluvial deposits, may have been domesticated. The Devonshire, Hereford, and similar breeds of oxen may be new; but the bos longifrons may have originated some native breeds, which the inhabitants of even the earliest period—the ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... observation of him sufficed to show that, like a Norman peasant, he invariably held the upper hand in business matters. He was an authority on wine-making, the leading science of Touraine. He had managed to extend the meadow lands of his domain by taking in a part of the alluvial soil of the Loire without getting into difficulties with the State. This clever proceeding gave him the reputation of a man of talent. If Monsieur de Bourbonne's conversation pleased you and you were to ask who he was of a Tourainean, "Ho! a sly old ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... musk-rat in the great work of the creation. According to the Tacullies, nothing existed in the beginning but water and a musk-rat. As the animal sought his food at the bottom of the water, his mouth was frequently filled with mud. This he spat out, and so gradually formed by alluvial deposit an island. This island was small at first, like earth in the Sanskrit myth in the Satapatha Brahmana, but gradually increased in bulk. The Tacullies have no new light to throw on the ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... By Jove, it is balsam! These hills are for the healing of men. I have been here three days and have taken more exercise than in three months—walking and climbing; beside the creek lined with great sycamores—alluvial soil, crumbles in your hand, and with our friend the gopher in it; and climbed up through a bit of manzanita—big fellows, twenty feet high some of them— and such a rich brown, near-burgundy red! I barked a bit of the bole to get that green beneath, spring ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... that a man's first life-story shall clean him out, so to speak, of his best thoughts. Most lives, though their stream is loaded with sand and turbid with alluvial waste, drop a few golden grains of wisdom as they flow along. Oftentimes a single cradling gets them all, and after that the poor man's labor is only rewarded by mud and worn pebbles. All which proves that I, as an individual of the human family, could write ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... get on, Harnden whipped up when he was again facing a smooth road. Therefore he came suddenly around the bend of the alders into cleared country and abreast a farm. It was a farm made up of the alluvial soil of the lowlands and was a rather pretentious tract of tillage, compared with the other hillside apologies of Egypt. And the buildings were in fairly good repair. It was the home of Jared Sparks Grant, the first selectman of ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... less than one hundred thousand, of whom a considerable portion had come from the States. There, as always on the frontier, land had been a lodestone attracting both the speculator and the homeseeker. In the parishes of West Feliciana and Baton Rouge, in the alluvial bottoms of the Mississippi, and in the settlements around Mobile Bay, American settlers predominated, submitting with ill grace to the exactions of Spanish officials who were believed to be as ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... any place in them; nothing pusillanimous, nothing unsocial and austere. I speak of them as they were; before Superstition woke up again from her slumber, and caught to her bosom with maternal love the alluvial monsters of the Nile. Philosophy, never fit for the people, had entered the best houses, and the image of Epicurus had taken the place of the Lemures. But men cannot bear to be deprived long together of anything they are used to, not even of their fears; and, by a reaction of the mind ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... and the clearings of the forest proceed; for I have observed within fifteen years the total drying up of streamlets by the removal of the forest, and these streamlets had evidently once been rivulets and even rivers of some size, as their banks, cut through alluvial soils, plainly indicated. ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... East over a wide area, ranging from Bombay to southern China, but its chief home is British India. It principally affects the alluvial soil near the mouths of the great rivers, and more particularly the delta of the Ganges. Lower Bengal is pre-eminently the standing focus and centre of diffusion. In some years it is quiescent, though never absent; in others it becomes diffused, for reasons of which nothing is known, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... difference is found between the growth in the upper Mississippi bottoms and that along the rivers on the Atlantic coast and on the Gulf. In the latter regions the bottoms are lower, and consequently more subject to floods and to continued overflows (see Fig. 11). The alluvial deposit is also greater, and the trees grow considerably faster. Trees of the same diameter show a larger percentage of sapwood there than in the upper portions of the Mississippi Valley. The Mississippi Valley hardwood trees are for the most part considerably older, and reach larger dimensions ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... Montreal, in 1844, says, "The soil, which is alluvial, is beyond example rich and productive, and withal so easily worked, that, although it does not quite come up to the description of the Happy Islands—reddit ubi cererem tellus inarata quot annis—there is an instance, I was assured, of a farm in which the owner, with comparatively ...
— A Letter from Major Robert Carmichael-Smyth to His Friend, the Author of 'The Clockmaker' • Robert Carmichael-Smyth
... or Prussian Black, is a native earth, combined with iron and alluvial clay. It is found in most countries, and should be washed and exposed to the atmosphere before being employed. Sea-coal, and other black mineral substances, have been and may be used as substitutes for the more perfect ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... bottoms, change their channels very gradually, and therefore one needs to learn them but once; but piloting becomes another matter when you apply it to vast streams like the Mississippi and the Missouri, whose alluvial banks cave and change constantly, whose snags are always hunting up new quarters, whose sandbars are never at rest, whose channels are for ever dodging and shirking, and whose obstructions must be confronted in all ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... we rode down from the Cadmeion, and took the highway to Livadia, leading straight across the Boeotian plain. It is one of the finest alluvial bottoms in the world, a deep, dark, vegetable mold—which would produce almost without limit, were it properly cultivated. Before us, blue and dark under a weight of clouds, lay Parnassus; and far across ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... its high mountains by its immense rivers. The valleys of the Indus (1800 miles long), the Ganges (1600 miles long), and the Brahmapootra (1500 miles long) include an area of 1,125,000 square miles, a part of which, the Indus-Ganges plain, consists of a great stretch of alluvial soil whose fertility is as rich as that of any portion of the globe. One hundred and eighty millions of people live in this plain. So finely pulverised is its soil that for a distance of almost 2000 miles not even a pebble can be found in it. And so fertile is it that there are some agricultural ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... of the mound houses were only one story high, and where second or third stories were indicated, they were never found intact. In neither place were circular houses observed. The mounds here were located on a rich, alluvial ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... members. Commerce accounts for about 8% of GDP and the construction, public works, and service sectors for about 38%. Undeveloped natural resources include titanium, iron ore, manganese, uranium, and alluvial gold. Oil exploration, taking place under concessions offered to US, French, and Spanish firms, has been moderately successful. Increased production from recently discovered natural gas fields will provide a greater share of exports ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... pours its streams through a narrow vale, varying in breadth from two miles to a fourth of that distance, and which, being composed of rich alluvial soil, is, and has long been, enclosed, tolerably well inhabited, and cultivated with all the skill of Scottish agriculture. Either side of this valley is bounded by a chain of hills, which, on the right in particular, may be almost termed mountains. Little brooks arising ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... abutting on the Gulf of Mexico, between Louisiana and Alabama; has a hilly surface, traversed by numerous rivers, the Yazoo, a tributary of the Mississippi, forming a great fertile delta; the climate is free from extremes; the chief industry is agriculture; the best crops are grown in the N., and on the alluvial bottom lands; in the centre and NE. are good grazing farms; cotton, corn, oats, and fruits are the chief crops; virgin forests of hardwood cover much of the delta; valuable deposits of pipe and ochre clays and of lignite are found; cotton is manufactured, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... to come. With these people all tended to sterile enjoyment. Sterile, Sterile, Sterile. That was the key to the enigma. Mind and senses were fruitlessly debauched. A brilliant art, full of wit and cleverness—a lovely form, in truth, a tradition of beauty, impregnably seated, in spite of foreign alluvial deposits—a theater which was a theater, a style which was a style, authors who knew their business, writers who could write, the fine skeleton of an art, and a thought that had been great. But a skeleton. Sonorous words, ringing phrases, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... have been formed by the torrents, which, in the season of the rains, rush from the extensive plain, as from a wide ocean, down to the deep channel of the river in narrow streams. These streams cut their way easily through the soft alluvial soil, which must once have formed the bed of a vast lake.[14] On coming through the forest, before sunrise we discovered our error of the day before, for we found excellent deer-shooting in the long grass and brushwood, which grow luxuriantly ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... had seen. He found them, to the number of forty or fifty, extending at a distance of four or five rods from one another, in a couple of wide avenues, from the edge of a wood to the margin of a river. The piece of ground on which the lodges were built seemed to be a bit of alluvial formed by the overflowing of the river. All along the stream were scattered fields of maize, whose tall, stout stalks attested the richness of the soil. The cultivation was of that sluggish and negligent ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... momentary eruptions of volcanic force from within and then relapsed into inactivity. Peel on the other hand steadily accumulated knowledge and opinions, his mind receiving impressions from outward experience like the alluvial soil deposited by a river in its course. But this is to anticipate. At Oxford Peel was the first man to win a 'Double First' (i.e. a first class both in classics and mathematics), in which distinction ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... Taylor, M.D., of Osaka in Japan, attributed the disease to a microscopic spore found largely developed in rice, and which he had also detected in the earth of certain alluvial and damp localities. ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... turned in towards the river about three p.m. on the 16th, at Makaberab, or, as the natives call it, Omdabiya—i.e., the place of hyenas. For over a mile, men and animals had to make their way through halfa-grass scrub, and then over bare alluvial land, deeply sun-cracked and scored in all directions. The ground was cris-crossed like a chessboard, the lines being a foot to two feet apart, and four to six inches wide, and several feet in depth. There were numberless spills through these ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... where I was told there were extensive forests, and where I hoped to be able to make some good collections. The country for many miles behind Sourabaya is perfectly flat and everywhere cultivated; being a delta or alluvial plain, watered by many branching streams. Immediately around the town the evident signs of wealth and of an industrious population were very pleasing; but as we went on, the constant succession of open fields skirted by ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the entire skeleton of a stag, of very large size, was dug up by some labourers, in excavating the bed of the river Ouse, near Lewes, in Sussex. The remains were found imbedded in a layer of sand, beneath the alluvial blue clay, forming the surface of the valley. The horns were in the highest state of preservation, and had seven points, like the American deer. The greater part of the skeleton was destroyed by the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... much under British as under Republican rule prevailed on the Rand. The great stay of law and order was the individual digger, and this element of stability has always been missing at the goldfields, except in the few instances where alluvial mining has been pursued. ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... south-west the white Pyrenees; and from the purple glens and yellow downs of the Cevennes on the north-west, the Herault slopes gently down towards the "Etangs," or great salt-water lagoons, and the vast alluvial flats of the Camargue, the field of Caius Marius, where still run herds of half-wild horses, descended from some ancient Roman stock; while beyond all glitters the blue Mediterranean. The great almond orchards, each one sheet of rose- colour in spring; the mulberry orchards, the oliveyards, ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... one should never forget. We saw it in the early afternoon when the heat vapours from the noontide sun partially obliterated the landscape, but even so it was impressive. Except on the right, where the mountains close in the horizon, the eye has a range of many miles over fertile alluvial plains, studded with coco and banana and palm trees, and every other patch of ground cultivated "like a tulip bed." Miss Marianne North, whose collection of paintings in Kew Gardens may be familiar to some of ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... district where tobacco flourishes at an altitude of 4,000 feet above the sea. But of this we see nothing, for we are off again long before daylight; and by the time that external objects can be made out we find ourselves in a new region. A valley floored with rich alluvial soil from the hills that rise steeply on both sides, their tops shrouded in clouds. Signs of wonderful fertility in the fields of maize and barley along the roadside. The air warm, but full of mist, which has already penetrated our ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... until recently, but now only the best located tracts are in maximum production, and this can be maintained only by the most advanced agricultural science. In spite of greater advantages, the crowded cities and deserted country districts are beginning to repeat in the fertile alluvial valleys of the interior, the tragic story of ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... fifty miles. But its depth was great, for the waters not only filled a channel now buried to a depth of from three to five hundred feet, but stood at an elevation much higher than the broad bottom lands which now constitute those fertile alluvial flats of the Mississippi Valley, so liable to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... are correct in assuming that the age of the human race is coincident with that of the alluvial stratum, from eighty to one hundred centuries, are not domestic traditions and household customs the great arteries in which beat the social life of humanity, linking the race in homogeneity? Roman women suffered no first day of May pass without celebrating the festival of Bona ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... a caon like those of the Yellowstone, and on a little space of alluvial land at the bottom lies the convent, a building of the Servian Empire, curiously spared by the Turkish invasions. We descended 2500 feet, measured by my aneroid, to the flat, where the monks made us most welcome. We walked along the river, a rapid and ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... connected with those of Safed, crossing the Jordan valley north of that lake; owing to this the waters of the Lake of Merom (Huleh) were pent up, and formerly covered an extensive tract, now formed of alluvial deposits. ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... the narrowest. It had three transverse stays, also cut out of the solid. It was distant from the present river about 40 yards, lying due east and west, on what must have been a sloping beach. It was completely buried in a bed of alluvial clay; one end being 5ft. below the surface, and the other 9ft. below. It is fully described in an article, written by T. Tindall Wildridge, in “Bygone Lincolnshire” (1st series). The writer gives other instances of similar ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... Grande Place, surrounded by beautiful brick houses, some of them of the XVth century, some of them dating from the time of the Spanish occupation, and some again, of the epoch of Louis XIV. As the Belgian lines are on a dead flat alluvial plain reclaimed from the sea, it had proved impossible to manage communication-trenches. If they were dug into the ground they would instantly become full of water. No doubt they might have been built up with sandbag parapets, but this apparently was not ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... ancient demon of water-force had excelled himself in enchantments. The slopes of the alluvial soil were dotted with little buttes of mingled sandstone and shale, varying from five to twenty feet in height, many of them bearing a grotesque likeness to artificial objects. There were columns, ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... Quarterly Journ. of Sci., 1867, pp. 477-8. He imagined an observer examining a great river system, and finding everywhere adaptations which reveal the design of the Creator. "He would see special adaptations to the wants of man in the broad, quiet, navigable rivers, through fertile alluvial plains, that would support a large population, while the rocky streams and mountain torrents were confined to those sterile regions suitable for a small population of shepherds ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... similar to those along the lower Nile, and in ancient times this region was the seat of a civilization perhaps older than that of Egypt. The flood plains of the Ganges in India, and the Hoang in China, are the most extensive in the world, and in modern times the most populous. The alluvial valley of the Mississippi is extremely productive of corn, cotton, and ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... used a top dressing of nitrous soil, which was spread over the surface; a custom continued to the present day; but this was confined to certain crops, and principally to those reared late in the year, the fertilizing properties of the alluvial deposit answering all the purposes of the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... in regard to gold mining was in Ballarat, when a well-known miner and business man in that pretty town took me round the old alluvial diggings and pointed out the most celebrated claims. These (in 1879) were, of course, deserted or left to an occasional Chinese "fossicker," who rewashed the rejected pay dirt, which occasionally has ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... journey to the ocean. Uniting, they widen into brooks and rivulets, then into streams and rivers; and, at last, a Nile, a Ganges, a Danube, an Amazon, or a Mississippi rolls between its banks, mighty, majestic, and resistless, creating vast alluvial valleys to be the granaries of the world, ploughed by the thousand keels of commerce and serving as great highways, and as the impassable boundaries of rival nations; ever returning to the ocean the drops ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... for fresh pasturage made him a pioneer also, drove him ever nearer to the mountains, and furnished the economic motive for his westward advance. The small farmer needed the virgin soil of the new region, the alluvial river-bottoms, and the open prairies, for the cultivation of his crops and the grazing of his cattle; yet in the intervals between the tasks of farm life he scoured the wilderness in search of game "and spied out ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... country, famous for its ivory and coffee productions, they descended from the Mountains of the Moon to an alluvial plain, where Rumanika keeps thousands of cows. Once elephants abounded here, but, since the increase of the ivory trade, these animals had been driven off to the ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... Warrenne, William of Valence, Guy of Lusignan, and Earl Bigod of Norwich, were separated from the rest of the band, and, despairing of attaining the prince again, rode across the low alluvial flats ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... love, In general, he carefully avoided all that could shock their national or religious prejudices. His administration was indeed in many respects faulty; but the Bengalee standard of good government was not high. Under the Nabobs, the hurricane of Mahratta cavalry had passed annually over the rich alluvial plain. But even the Mahratta shrank from a conflict with the mighty children of the sea; and the immense rich harvests of the Lower Ganges were safely gathered in under the protection of the English sword. The first English conquerors had been more rapacious and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Linda; there's nothing to be much alarmed for as yet; I hope this plan of Holt's may stop its progress. I'll be at the house as soon as I can, tell her;' and he ran after the others, down to the mouth of the creek, where a strip of alluvial land, covered with bushes and rank grass, interrupted the belt of firs and cedars. Calling in fire as an ally against itself seemed to Robert very perilous; but the calm Indians, accustomed to wilderness exigencies, set about the protective burning at once. The ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... stuck in the ground. The toldos were divided into separate groups, which belong to the different caciques' tribes, and the groups were again divided into smaller ones, according to the relationship of the owners. For several miles we travelled along the valley of the Colorado. The alluvial plains on the side appeared fertile, and it is supposed that they are well adapted to the growth of corn. Turning northward from the river, we soon entered on a country, differing from the plains south of ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... have been cut off since 1993 because of the government's gross corruption and mismanagement. Businesses, for the most part, are owned by government officials and their family members. Undeveloped natural resources include titanium, iron ore, manganese, uranium, and alluvial gold. The country responded favorably to the devaluation of the CFA franc in January 1994. Boosts in production, along with high world oil prices, should ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Clays and heavy alluvial soils are not usually considered desirable soils on which to build. Water does not run from such soils; they hold moisture, and hence are always damp, and marshes are very apt ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... the Arab troops passed in succession Yeddie, a large walled city twenty miles from Angoumou, Badagry, and several other towns built on an alluvial soil which has a dark ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... rushes over sheets of rock and beds of gravel, inspiring a species of awe from the few and faithless fords which it presents, and the frequency of fatal accidents, now diminished by the number of bridges. These alluvial holms were frequently bordered by triple and quadruple rows of large trees, which gracefully marked their boundary, and dipped their long arms into the foaming stream of the river. Other places I remembered, which had been described by the old huntsman as the lodge of tremendous ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... attempt has been vain to discover the author both of the music and of the sequence. They have been attributed to Frangipani, Thomas of Celano, St. Bernard and a crowd of others, and they have remained anonymous, simply formed by the sad alluvial deposits of the age. The "Dies irae" seemed to have, at first, fallen, like a seed of desolation, among the distracted souls of the eleventh century; it germinated there and grew slowly, nurtured by the sap of ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... carelessness. But we must not be hard upon M. Marie. He is an engineer, utterly ignorant of mineralogy and of assaying: he was told off to do the duty, and he did it as well as he could—in other words, very badly. He neglected to search for alluvial gold in the sands. Every Wady which cuts, at right angles, the metalliferous maritime chains, should have been carefully prospected; these sandy and quartzose beds are natural conduits and sluice-boxes. But the search for "tailings" is completely different from that of gold-veins, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... the morning, milked a cow, and carried the pail of fresh milk to Huldy and the baby, furtively, apologetically. The food, the raiment, everything had to be smuggled into the house little by little, explained, apologized for. The land on The Bench was rich alluvial soil. Sammy, in his first burst of independence, ploughed it (borrowing mule and plough from a neighbor—the one neighbor ever known to be on ill terms with Pap Overholt), and planted it to corn. ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... their owner. The merchants, it seemed, were well known to the Cornishmen on shore, and Hereward went up with them unopposed; past the ugly dykes and muddy leats, where Alef's slaves were streaming the gravel for tin ore: through rich alluvial pastures spotted with red cattle; and up to Alef's town. Earthworks and stockades surrounded a little church of ancient stone, and a cluster of granite cabins, thatched with turf, in which the slaves abode." If this is a picture of Gweek, the church must be imaginary; ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... gold like potatoes we weren't the only ones. No, not by a lot. There never was a richer patch of alluvial, I believe, in any of the fields, and the quantity that was sent down in one year was a caution. Wasn't the cash scattered about then? Talk of money, it was like the dirt under your feet—in one way, certainly—as the dirt was more often than not ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... wives, who had with equal fervor embraced the doctrine of Mormonism and the profession of day's-washing to keep their liege in luxury due his rank. The land along the shore of the river was usually well timbered, and in the level openings looked as fertile as might be expected of an alluvial first-bottom frequently overflowed. At its junction with the Columbia the Willamette is about three-quarters of a mile in width, and the Columbia may be half a mile wider, though at first sight the difference seems more than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... is heavily dependent on the mining industry to extract and process minerals for export. Mining accounts for almost 30% of GDP. Namibia is the fourth-largest exporter of nonfuel minerals in Africa and the world's fifth-largest producer of uranium. Alluvial diamond deposits are among the richest in the world, making Namibia a primary source for gem-quality diamonds. Namibia also produces large quantities of lead, zinc, tin, silver, and tungsten, and it has ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... through broad valleys or basins, once the beds of great lakes, whose rich, alluvial soil give forth abundant crops of cereals. Here, too, flows the Niemen, 500 miles in length, watering a basin 40,000 square miles in area and separating Poland from Lithuania. It advances northward in a great, winding pathway, between limestone hills covered with loam or amid forests, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... narrow serpentine canals and creeks, we looked down upon conical roofs thatched with attaps, and diversified by the pyramids and spires and fantastic turrets of the more important buildings. The valley of the Meinam, not over six hundred miles in length, is as a long deep dent or fissure in the alluvial soil. At its southern extremity we have the climate and vegetation of the tropics, while its northern end, on the brow of the Yunan, is a region of perpetual snow. The surrounding country is remarkable for the bountiful productiveness of ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... nay millions, of years which she requires to make her deposits in Nature's great saving-bank. These are they for whom the Nile, as he brings down year by year his tribute to the sea from Central Africa, lays down in vain layer after layer of alluvial deposit, which can be measured to an inch for tens of thousands of years. These are they to whom the comparatively younger growth of trees, the dragon tree of Orotava, and the cedars of California, plead in vain when they show, year after year, ring on ring of ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... Nile, which settles in the canals and ditches, is cleaned out at frequent intervals and spread over the fields, providing a new dressing of rich alluvial soil to annually stimulate the productive capacity ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... instance of these in front of New Orleans, which has led to much private dispute, and even public disturbance, as to ownership. Within sixty years, in front of the Second Municipality of the city, the amount of alluvial formations susceptible of private ownership were worth over five millions of dollars, that is, nearly one hundred thousand dollars per annum, and the causes which have produced them are still at work, and will probably remain so. As far back as 1847 these remarks were made upon the subject: 'The ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the turf in which to flower, instead of the woods, where grass does not grow, is one of the secrets of the flower-world. So, too, the wild hyacinths grow not in the meadows, though the fritillaries, the chequered red or pale "snake flowers," are grass-lovers, and grow only in the alluvial meadows by the streams and brooks of the valleys. Early though the fritillaries are, they are a real "grass flower," flourishing best where there is some early succulent growth around them, for they like the shelter ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... ft. (from Derwentwater 244 ft.); the waters are usually beautifully clear, and the river is not navigable. At a former period this stream must have formed one large lake covering the whole area which includes Derwentwater and Bassenthwaite; between which a flat alluvial plain is formed of the deposits of the river Greta, which now joins the Derwent from the east immediately below Derwentwater, and the Newlands Beck, which enters Bassenthwaite. In time of high flood this plain is said ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... train of travellers, then, that left the gates of Blonay just as the fog began to stir on the wide alluvial meadows of the Rhone, were all in the saddle. A courier, accompanied by a sumpter-mule, had departed over-night to prepare the way for those who were to follow, and active young mountaineers had succeeded, from time to time, charged with different ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... Male about 6 P.M. Passed en route a few villages, none of any size or importance. The river varies in width, i.e. the channel, from 400 to 600 yards. The banks are either alluvial or rocky; and there are hills on the right bank skirting the river; those on the left, are more distant and higher. Borassus commences to be common; it is a taller, and more slender tree than that of Coromandel, and the trunk is not covered with the persistent ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... spot. There was no longer the vast sandy desert with the river flowing through its sterile course on a level with the surface of the country, but after traversing an apparently perfect flat of forty-five miles of rich alluvial soil, we had suddenly arrived upon the edge of a deep valley, between five and six miles wide, at the bottom of which, about 200 feet below the general level of the country, flowed the river Atbara. On the opposite side of the ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... the letter r, which is the bequest of an unconquerable past, and inspires one with the hope of some day hearing a freeborn Scot say "Auchterarder." The train runs over bleak moorlands with black peat holes, through alluvial straths yielding their last pickle of corn, between iron furnaces blazing strangely in the morning light, at the foot of historical castles built on rocks that rise out of the fertile plains, and then, after a space of sudden darkness, any man with a soul ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... by eight or ten men on shoulder poles passed through rings fitted on top of the boiler. Thus it can be easily transported up country, and has for this reason been found most useful for prospecting. For alluvial mining it will throw a powerful jet at 100 lb. to 120 lb. pressure, or by means of a belt will drive an experimental quartz crusher or stamp mill. The power developed is six horses, and the boiler will burn wood or other inferior fuel when coal ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... he had seen enough of it to recognize that prospecting is an art. Men certainly strike a vein or alluvial placer by the merest chance now and then, but the trained man works from indication to indication until, though he is sometimes mistaken, he feels reasonably sure as to what waits to be uncovered by the blasting charge or shovel. Grenfell's previous account of the discovery ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... made in the new atlases that bear the imprimatur of Potsdam. Similarly, all the country south of the Caucasus must rank as Turkish territory, since the Turks form from fifty to eighty per cent, of the population; all Kazan, for the same reason, is truly Turkish, with the alluvial plains of the Volga, while the Crimea, so Tekin Alp discovers, is also a lost sheep longing for the Turkish fold. All this is Turkey (or Turania) Irredenta, and, may we ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... killed and eaten by the blacks. Kellerman, who was a man of powerful physique, had succeeded in reaching a beche-de-mer station on the coast, where for six or eight months he worked steadily and made a little money. From there he went to a newly-discovered alluvial goldfield north of Cooktown with a prospecting party, who all spoke well of him as "a plucky, energetic fellow, and a good mate." Then, one day, two mounted troopers rode into camp; and Kellerman, with despair in his eyes, was taken in handcuffs to Cooktown. He was at once ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... River, as well as of the Canning and most other rivers of the colony, contain many miles of rich alluvial soil, capable of growing wheat sufficient for the support of a large population. Many of these flats have produced crops of wheat for sixteen years successively, without the aid of any kind of manure. It must, however, be owned, that a very slovenly ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... 14. On alluvial land it is best to plant them on slight rises as a protection against the rains which sometimes occur toward the end of the month. If frost should threaten just as the beans begin to peep out, cover them an inch deep with the plow or hand cultivator. ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... disappeared as that beyond which her prosperity may not continue. There are large tracts of land which when labor is no longer directed to lumber, will become, in the hands of the farmer, what the valley of the Kennebec now is. The land may not offer soil so deep as alluvial districts, nor be at first as productive as those on which a deep vegetable mould has accumulated, yet its productiveness may not be less permanent than those. In them the elements which support the farmer's ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... of water sufficient for the purposes of commerce, etc.; and in accordance with an act entitled "An act to provide for the appointment of a commission of engineers to investigate and report a permanent plan for the reclamation of the alluvial basin of the Mississippi River subject to inundation," I appointed a commission of engineers. Neither board has yet completed its labors. When their reports are received, they will be forwarded to Congress ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... great service, by eating the cockle-burs which grow on the rich alluvial soil of Carolina. This prickly fruit is apt to come off on the wool of the sheep, which, in some places, it almost completely destroys. The bird also lives on the beech-nut and seeds of the cypress. The head—with the brains—and intestines of the Carolina parrot are said to be poisonous to eat; ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... between the Rice Lake and the Ontario, a deep and fertile valley, surrounded by lofty wood-crowned hills, the heights of which were clothed chiefly with groves of oak and pine, though the sides of the hills and the alluvial bottoms gave a variety of noble timber trees of various kinds, as the maple, beech, hemlock, and others. This beautiful and highly picturesque valley is watered by many clear streams of pure refreshing water, from whence the spot has derived its appropriate appellation of "Cold ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... high-water at nine A.M. Not far within the river is a small island on which the Dutch had formerly a factory. The shores are flat on both sides to a considerable distance up the country, and the whole of the soil is probably alluvial; but about a hundred and twenty-five or thirty miles up Mr. Lynch marks the appearance of high land, giving it the name of Princess Augusta Sophia hill, and points it out as a commanding situation ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... we got there, for lack of evidence. There was no work suitable to our instincts; so me and Liverpool began to subsist on the red rum of the country and such fruit as we could reap where we had not sown. It was an alluvial town, called Soledad, where there was no harbour or future or recourse. Between steamers the town slept and drank rum. It only woke up when there were bananas to ship. It was like a man sleeping through dinner ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... has been the meeting of two or more transit lines, the confluence of two or more streams of trade, and easy communication. The final limit to the size and importance of the great city has been the commercial "sphere of influence" commanded by that city, the capacity of the alluvial basin of its commerce, so to speak, the volume of its river of trade. About the meeting point so determined the population so determined has grouped itself—and this is the point I overlooked in those previous vaticinations—in ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... the tusks of the great mammoth or fossil elephant of the geologist. The remains of this gigantic animal are abundantly distributed over the whole extent of the globe. They exist in large masses in the northern hemisphere, deeply embedded in the alluvial deposits of the tertiary period. Humboldt discovered specimens on some of the most elevated ridges of the Andes; and similar remains have been found in Africa. In the frozen regions of the far North, surrounded by successive ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... be asked, should it be assumed that the moon ever had things which it does not now possess? Perhaps no entirely satisfactory reply can be made. Some observers have believed that they detected unmistakable indications of alluvial deposits on lunar plains, and of the existence of beaches on the shores of the "seas." Messrs. Loewy and Puiseux, of the Paris Observatory, whose photographs of the moon are perhaps the finest yet made, ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... eminence on which the castle is situated, curves away from the fortress and its corresponding village on the west, and the hill sinks downward to an extensive plain, so extremely level as to indicate its alluvial origin. Lower down, at the extremity of this plain, where the banks again close on the river, were situated the manufacturing houses of the stout Flemings, which were now burning in a bright flame. The bridge, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... desert of the Columbia is not old; it's tremendously new; so new that Nature hasn't had time to take the scaffolding away. You know—do you not—this was all once a great inland sea? Countless glacial streams brought wash down from the mountains, filling the shallows with the finest alluvial earth. Then, in some big upheaval, one or perhaps several of these volcanic peaks poured down a strata of lava and ash. As the ice tongues receded, the streams gradually dried; only the larger ones, fed far back in the range, are ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... coast of Alaska may be said to be perhaps a million years younger than any land on this continent, for it is still in the glacial period. The vast alluvial plains and valleys of the interior are rimmed in to the southward and shut off from the Pacific by a well-nigh impassable mountain barrier, the top of which is capped with perpetual snow. Its gorges, for the most part, ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... cotton bales, used hogsheads of sugar, which were conveniently near, for the same purposes. These our shot easily knocked to pieces, saturating the damp earth around with the saccharine sweets. Our breastworks were more substantially and easily made of the alluvial earth. ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... which yields by its seeds the condiment of our tables, and the pungent yellow flour which we employ for the familiar stimulating poultice, or sinapism. This black Mustard is a tall smooth plant, having entire leaves, and smooth seed pods, being now grown for the market on rich alluvial soil chiefly in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. In common with its kindred plants it gets its name from mustum, the "must," or newly fermented grape juice, and ardens, burning, because as a condiment, Mustard flour was formerly mixed with home-made wine and sugar. The virtues of ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... presently if my notion how the boat was lost is accurate," The cargo's another thing. There may have been conspiracy between merchant and ship-owner; I don't know yet, but if it was conspiracy, this would account for much. Some of the gum shipped was very costly, and African alluvial gold, washed by the negroes, has been found mixed with ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... leaving our canoes we found that the whole character of the country changed. Our road was persistently upwards, and as we ascended the woods became thinner and lost their tropical luxuriance. The huge trees of the alluvial Amazonian plain gave place to the Phoenix and coco palms, growing in scattered clumps, with thick brushwood between. In the damper hollows the Mauritia palms threw out their graceful drooping fronds. We traveled entirely by compass, and once or twice there were differences of opinion ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sight. I had lost all my standards of comparison. Compared to it, my little home streams would not fill a pint cup; and, like a man suddenly ushered into a new world, I was amazed at the scene before me. Mere amplitude of the most ordinary elements of water and alluvial land has done this. The onward rush of eternal waters was an idea vaguely floating in my mind. The Indians appeared to have embodied this idea in the ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... and navigable for vessels of three hundred tons. The shores were in some places high and rocky, with low marshy islands at their feet, subject to inundation, and covered with willows, poplars, and other trees that love an alluvial soil. Sometimes the mountains receded, and gave place to beautiful plains and noble forests. While the river margin was richly fringed with trees of deciduous foliage, the rough uplands were crowned by majestic pines, and firs of gigantic size, some towering to ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... variable streams, which have buried the lower levels under great stretches of shingle, patched with jungles of hippophae and tamarisk, affording cover for innumerable wolves. Great lateral torrents descend to these rivers, and on alluvial ridges formed at the junctions are the villages with their pleasant surroundings of barley, lucerne, wheat, with poplar and fruit trees, and their picturesque gonpos crowning spurs of rock above them. The first view of Nubra is not beautiful. Yellow, ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... in question is a plain composed of a deep alluvial deposit, generally overlying gravel, and known as "black cotton soil." After heavy rain it is practically impassable for traffic for ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... common term in Australia and New Zealand for gold-bearing alluvial soil. The word is also ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris |
