"Bitumen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dioscoridem. Others commend accurate music, so Saul was helped by David's harp. Fires to be made in such rooms where spirits haunt, good store of lights to be set up, odours, perfumes, and suffumigations, as the angel taught Tobias, of brimstone and bitumen, thus, myrrh, briony root, with many such simples which Wecker hath collected, lib. 15, de secretis, cap. 15. [Symbol: Jupiter] sulphuris drachmam unam, recoquatur in vitis albae, aqua, ut dilutius sit sulphur; detur aegro: nam daemones sunt morbi (saith Rich. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... strength was restored, their courage was reinforced. Their tortures were increased after this, and so it went on till the 10th of May, 253, when S. Alfio was killed by having his tongue pulled out, S. Filiberto was burnt on a gridiron and S. Cirino was boiled in pitch and bitumen. ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... and arriving at this place (Cholula), not finding the means of reaching the sun, enamored of his light and beauty, they determined to build a tower so high that its summit should reach the sky. Having collected materials for the purpose, they found a very adhesive clay and bitumen, with which they speedily commenced to build the tower; and having reared it to the greatest possible altitude, so that they say it reached to the sky, the Lord of the Heavens, enraged, said to the ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch (bitumen). ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... river of fresh water runs from the sea into a dark cavern, whose entrance is very high and spacious. What is most remarkable in this place is that the stones of the mountain are of crystal, rubies, or other precious stones. Here is also a sort of fountain of pitch or bitumen, that runs into the sea, which the fish swallow, and evacuate soon afterward, turned into ambergris; and this the waves throw up on the beach in great quantities. Trees also grow here, most of which are of wood of aloes, equal in ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... together. This also the lowlands of Chaldea and Babylonia yield in sufficient quantity and of various qualities. While in the early structures a kind of sticky red clay or loam is used, mixed with chopped straw, bitumen or pitch is substituted at a later period, which substance, being applied hot, adheres so firmly to the bricks, that pieces of these are broken off when an attempt is made to procure a fragment of the cement. This valuable article was brought down by water from IS on the Euphrates (now called ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... called the Blue Mountain is by far the highest, being seen from the greatest distance at sea. Java is subject to frequent and terrible earthquakes, which the inhabitants believe are caused by the mountain of Parang, which is full of sulphur, salt-petre, and bitumen, which take fire by their intestine commotions, causing a prodigious struggle within the bowels of the earth, whence proceeds the earthquake; and they assert that it is common, after an earthquake, to see a vast cloud of smoke hanging over the top of that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... translations of Scott had called the attention of the trade to English novels. The race of publishers, all agog for a second Norman conquest, were seeking industriously for a second Scott, just as at a rather later day every one must needs look for asphalt in stony soil, or bitumen in marshes, and speculate in projected railways. The stupidity of the Paris commercial world is conspicuous in these attempts to do the same thing twice, for success lies in contraries; and in Paris, of all places in the world, success spoils success. So beneath ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... Mesopotamia, where the mountains also yield copper and lead and iron. Except Eridu, where ancient workers quarried sandstone from its sea-shaped ridge, all the cities were built of brick, an excellent clay being found in abundance. When brick walls were cemented with bitumen they were given great stability. This resinous substance is found in the north and south. It bubbles up through crevices of rocks on river banks and forms small ponds. Two famous springs at modern ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... we passed New Town, not on the charts, but famed for owning a fine gold placer north of the town-lagoon. After my departure from the coast it was inspected by Mr. Grant, who sent home specimens of bitumen taken from the wells. Then came the two Assinis, eastern and western, both places of small present importance. The 'Assini Hills' of the chart lie to the north, not to the south of the Tando water; and by day one can easily distinguish their broken line, blue and tree-clad. ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... to be formed chiefly from the resinous principles of plants,—this would account for its appearance when burnt, which is the same as that of burnt bitumen. But resinous principles are, even when they exist, of partial extent only in plants. In good coal the whole of the vegetable substance seems to be transformed, a supposition barely compatible ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... different manner in which they receive the Sun's rays. Do you not see in our fires, that various kinds of wood produce different colors? Pines and firs give a flame mixed with thick smoke, and throw out little light. That which rises from sulphur and thick bitumen is bluish. Lighted straw gives out sparks of a reddish color. The large olive, laurel, ash of Parnassus, etc., trees which always retain their sap, throw a whitish light similar to that of a lamp. Thus, comets whose fires are formed of different materials, each ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... into the sea; but here a river of fresh water[62] runs from the sea into a dark cavern, whose entrance is very high and spacious. What is most remarkable in this place is that the stones of the mountain are of crystal, rubies, or other precious stones. Here is also a sort of fountain of pitch or bitumen,[63] that runs into the sea, which the fish swallow, and evacuate soon afterward, turned into ambergris[64]; and this the waves throw up on the beach in great quantities. Trees also grow here, most of which are of wood of aloes,[65] ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... hay, with corn-barns proportionable, lie smoking ashes and chaff, which man and beast would sputter out and reject like those apples of Asphaltes and bitumen. The food for the inhabitants of earth will quickly disappear. Hot rolls may say: "Fuimus panes, fuit quartern-loaf, et ingens gloria Apple-pasty-orum." That the good old munching system may last thy time and mine, good un-incendiary George, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... honour paid: So lofty was the pile, a Parthian bow, With vigour drawn, must send the shaft below. The bottom was full twenty fathom broad, With crackling straw, beneath in due proportion strowed. The fabric seemed a wood of rising green, With sulphur and bitumen cast between To feed the flames: the trees were unctuous fir, And mountain-ash, the mother of the spear; The mourner-yew and builder-oak were there, The beech, the swimming alder, and the plane, Hard box, and linden of a softer ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... attention, like those of Egypt, by the magnificence of their ruins. They are merely heaps of rubbish in which no architectural outline can be traced—mounds of stiff greyish clay, containing the remains of the vast structures that were built of bricks set in mortar or bitumen. Stone was not used as in Egypt. While the Egyptian temple was spread superficially over a large area, the Chaldaean temple strove to attain as high an elevation as possible. These "ziggurats" were composed of several immense cubes piled ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... that they caviled very much with one another. Some were for fires, but that they must be made of wood and not coal, and of particular sorts of wood too, such as fir, in particular, or cedar, because of the strong effluvia of turpentine; others were for coal and not wood, because of the sulphur and bitumen; and others were neither for one or other. Upon the whole, the lord mayor ordered no more fires, and especially on this account, namely, that the plague was so fierce that they saw evidently it defied all means, and rather seemed to increase than decrease upon ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... Greeting." Anxious to reach Elzear's abode before nightfall, he walked on as briskly as the heat and heaviness of the sandy soil would allow, keeping to the indistinctly traced path that crossed and re-crossed at intervals the various ridges of earth strewn with pulverized fragments of brick, bitumen, and pottery, which are now the sole remains of stately buildings once ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... saved by means of the ship, which, being lifted up by the waters, rested at last upon the top of the Gendyae or Mountain, on which, it is reported, there now remaineth some part, and that men take away the bitumen from it, and make use of it by way of charm or expiation, to avoid evil." A more general Assyrian tradition, somewhat different in its details, also survives.[25] The god Chronus, it was said, appeared ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... days. On this occasion, an artificial mount was erected in the middle of the imperial court, covered all over with branches of cypress, and planted with 100,000 torches; by means of little artificial mice, made of bitumen or wild fire, which ran along a number of ropes, fixed for the purpose, these torches were all lighted up in a moment, forming a wonderful blaze of lights from the bottom of the mountain to the top; and many other lights ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... to the wind "and stood away for Alvarado." The pirates were very glad to see the last of them; "and we, glad of the Deliverance, went away to the Eastward." On the way, they visited all the sandy bays of the coast to look for "munjack," "a sort of Pitch or Bitumen which we find in Lumps." When corrected with oil or tallow this natural pitch served very well for the paying of the seams "both ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... have been thrown up from old volcanic vents; mineral and hot springs abound, some of them spreading sulphurous odours; earthquakes have been frequent, and from time to time these have cast up masses of bitumen; concretions of sulphur and large formations ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... that some pieces of coal are dull and smutty, while others are hard and bright? The dull coal is called bituminous, because it contains more bitumen or mineral pitch. This is often sold as "run-of-mine" coal,—that is, just as it comes from the mine, whether in big pieces or in little ones; but sometimes it is passed over screens, and in this process the dust and smaller bits ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan
... was a princess; my father I knew not. My father's brother loved the mountain land. In the city of Azipiranu, which on the bank of the Euphrates lies, my mother, the princess, conceived me; in an inacessible spot she brought me forth. She placed me in a basket of rushes; with bitumen the door of my ark she closed. She launched me on the river, which drowned me not. The river bore me along; to Akki, the irrigator, it brought me. Akki, the irrigator, in the tenderness of his heart, lifted me up. Then Akki, the ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... that of his Byzantine guides, so prone to the marvellous, so careless, and, in this instance, so jealous of the truth. From their obscure, and perhaps fallacious hints, it should seem that the principal ingredient of the Greek fire was the naphtha, or liquid bitumen, a light, tenacious, and inflammable oil, which springs from the earth, and catches fire as soon as it comes in contact with the air. The naphtha was mingled, I know not by what methods, or in what proportions, with sulphur, and with the pitch that ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... Dinky-Dunk yesterday that we were running out of soap, he said he'd build a leach of wood-ashes and get beef-tallow and make soft soap. I asked him how long he'd want to kiss a downy cheek that had been washed in soft soap. He said he'd keep on kissing me if I was a mummy pickled in bitumen. But I prefer not risking too much of the ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... have a life of its own, almost Medusa-like, thick, glossy and moist, lying in heavy, sweet-smelling masses over her forehead, over her small ears with their pink lobes, and far down upon her nape. Deep in between the coils and braids it was of a bitumen brownness, but in the sunlight it vibrated with a sheen ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... relied upon as correct: The whole space between Charles Street and Tottenham Court Road is occupied by 12 different specimens, which are completed in the following order, commencing at Charles Street: viz.—40 feet of Robinson's Parisian bitumen—24 feet laid in straight courses, and 16 feet diagonally; 74 feet of parish stone paving, 54 feet of which is laid in straight courses, the stones 9 inches deep, and the interstices filled up with Claridge's asphalte; the remaining 20 feet consisting ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... ended at the wide nostrils; the mouth was a crescent, but bowed downwards; the heavy shoulders were rounded. Indeed, the only straight line to be discerned about him was that of his hair, black as bitumen, banged across his forehead; even his polished porphyry eyes were constructed on some curvilinear principle, and never seemed to focus. It might be said of Mr. Gorse that he had an overwhelming impersonality. One could never be quite sure that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... vessels attacked by this strange weapon frequently forsook every means of defence, and ran themselves ashore. One of the principal ingredients of this dreadful fire was supposed to be naphtha, or the bitumen which is collected on the banks of the Dead Sea, and which, when in a state of ignition, could only be extinguished by a very singular mixture, and which it was not likely to come in contact with. It produced a thick smoke and loud explosion, and ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the angry lava-waves of a volcano; it is always of a very high temperature, and occasionally runs over the rim of the basin, but never rises violently into the air. It looks like black sulphur (bitumen), and has a brimstone smell. Certainly it is a diabolical pit, and worth coming far to see, but it shows none of the phenomena ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... brick.—Ver. 58. The walls were built by Semiramis of bricks dried in the sun, cemented together with layers of bitumen.] ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... feet, eighty-seven feet in thickness, and extending sixty miles around the city! One writer says, that two four-horse chariots could pass each other on the top. They were built of brick, cemented together with bitumen. ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... last produce eruptions and explosions. The mouth or chimney of a burning mountain is, in many instances, upwards of a mile across! from which, in an eruption, are emitted torrents of smoke and flame, rivers of lava, (consisting chiefly of bitumen and melted metal,) and clouds of cinders, stones, &c. to an immense distance. The wonderful quantity of these materials thrown out from the orifice almost exceeds belief; the lava rushes like a fiery torrent at a very rapid pace,—ravages the labours ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... important avenue for commerce, and besides rafts, which could be floated down to a certain distance, the only means of communication ever used were wicker baskets coated within and without with bitumen, or some form of a primitive ferry for passing from ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... with horrid monsters, the enemies of the human race; look next at the sandy continent, scorched perhaps by the fatal approach of some ancient comet, now the abode of desolation. Examine the rains, the convulsive storms of those climates, where masses of sulphur, bitumen, and electrical fire, combining their dreadful powers, are incessantly hovering and bursting over a globe threatened with dissolution. On this little shell, how very few are the spots where man can live and flourish? even under those mild climates which seem to breathe peace and ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... disappeared; nor is the neighbourhood any longer adorned with those singular flowers known among the Crusaders by the familiar appellation of Jericho roses. A little farther south two rough and barren chains of hills encompass with their dark steeps a long basin formed in a clay soil mixed with bitumen and rock-salt. The water contained in this hollow is impregnated with a solution of different saline substances, having lime, magnesia, and soda for their base, partially neutralized with muriatic and sulfuric acid. The salt which ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... says to us, "I scumbled in the background solid, using bitumen as an undertone, then I dragged over my high lights and painted my cool color right into it," it is as meaningless to most of us as if another bread-winner had said, "I use a Singer with a straight shuttle and No. 60 ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... actual flame in these European parts, and first of them all except Jenkins's Ear) is out, fairly withdrawn; but the fire, you perceive, rages not the less. The fire will not quench itself, I doubt, till the bitumen, sulphur and other angry fuel have run much lower! Austria has fighting men in abundance, England behind it has guineas; Austria has got injuries, then successes:—there is in Austria withal a dumb ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... bitumen were found upon the beach; but the principal season of the year for finding it is in winter, especially at the commencement of winter, when the lake becomes unusually agitated, and breaks off masses of it from the bottom, often of very large size—the peasants of Hebron, with exaggeration, ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... the argument upon a single point, for the sake of simplicity or clearness, not for want of those circumstances which shall be found to corroborate the theory. The strata of fossil coal are found in almost every intermediate state, as well as in those of bitumen and charcoal. Of the one kind is that fossil coal which melts or becomes fluid upon receiving heat; of the other, is that species of coal, found both in Wales and Scotland, which is perfectly infusible in the ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton |
