"Naphtha" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... composition which was largely used by the Greeks of the Byzantine Empire in their wars with the Mohammedans. Its nature was kept a profound secret for centuries, but the material is now believed to have been a mixture of nitre, sulphur, and naphtha. It burned with terrible fury wherever it fell, and it possessed the property of being inextinguishable by water. Even when poured upon the sea it would float upon the surface and still burn. It was used in warfare for a considerable time after the discovery of gunpowder, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... ground a wide circle was traced by a small rod, tipped apparently with sponge saturated with some combustible naphtha-like fluid, so that a pale, lambent flame followed the course of the rod as Margrave guided it, burning up the herbage over which it played, and leaving a distinct ring, like that which, in our lovely native fable talk, we call the "Fairy's ring," but yet more visible because marked in phosphorescent ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... scorching sensation in the region of the back brought his head round. Then he yelled in earnest, for the roaring flame from the other brazier had set the quickset hedge, inflammable with drought, burning as fiercely as the naphtha torch of a fair-booth, while a black patch, widening every moment, was spreading through the dry, white grasses under the clumsy wheels of the living-van, whose brown painted sides were beginning to blister and char, as Billy, rendered intrepid ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... they so much wounded and wrought upon, as by looking and being looked upon again. There is such a communication, such a flame raised by one glance, that those must be altogether unacquainted with love that wonder at the Median naphtha, that takes fire at a distance from the flame. For the glances of a fair one, though at a great distance, quickly kindle a fire in the lover's breast. Besides every body knows the remedy for the jaundice; if they look upon the bird called charadrios they are ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... to danger, though I ought to be as careful of them as if they were my real brothers. And there I was trying to be, only she didn't understand. Then, another day, not long before, I coaxed some big boys who have a naphtha-launch to give the 'Balls a sail on it down the bay. The thing happened to explode, and, though nobody was hurt, she went on just terrible because I'd taken the children without asking her. How could I ask her ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... Maraguaca, so often wrapped in electric storms. The granite of the Cerro Duida is full of veins, partly open, and partly filled with crystals of quartz and pyrites. Gaseous and inflammable emanations, either of hydrogen or of naphtha, may pass through these veins. Of this the mountains of Caramania, of Hindookho, and of Himalaya, furnish frequent examples. We saw the appearance of flames in many parts of eastern America subject to earthquakes, even from secondary rocks, as ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt |
