"Pitchstone" Quotes from Famous Books
... two to three hundred feet; they are extremely variable in colour and nature, being compact, or brecciated, or cellular, or amygdaloidal with zeolite, agate and bole, or porphyritic with glassy albitic feldspar. There is also much imperfect rubbly pitchstone, with the interstices charged with powdery carbonate of lime apparently of contemporaneous origin. These lavas are conformably associated with strata of breccia and of brown tuff containing lignite. The whole mass has been broken up and tilted at an angle of 45 degrees, by a series of great ... — South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... gained the summit of the Piton, we were surprised to find scarcely room enough to seat ourselves conveniently. We were stopped by a small circular wall of porphyritic lava, with a base of pitchstone, which concealed from us the view of the crater.* (* Called La Caldera, or the caldron of the peak, a denomination which recalls to mind the Oules of the Pyrenees.) The west wind blew with such violence ... — Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt |