"Basaltic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fires is a striking fact. First we have the deluges of submarine lavas, which were poured out long before the Andes lifted their heads above the waters; then alternate porphyritic strata, feldspathic streams, and gypseous exhalations; then, at a later day, floods of basaltic lava; next the old tertiary eruptions; and, lastly, the vast accumulations of boulders, gravel, ashes, pumice, and mud of the present day, spread over the Valley of Quito and the west slope of the Cordilleras to an unknown depth ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... assumes a stalactical form,"—a description perfectly applicable to the margin of Keeling atoll. (Kotzebue's "First Voyage," volume iii., page 142. Near Porto Praya, in the Cape de Verde Islands, some basaltic rocks, lashed by no inconsiderable surf, were completely enveloped with a layer of Nulliporae. The entire surface over many square inches, was coloured of a peach-blossomed red; the layer, however, was of no greater thickness than paper. ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... the impatient needle to the pole, Tho' mountains rise between, and oceans roll. Where round the Orcades white torrents roar, 430 Scooping with ceaseless rage the incumbent shore, Wide o'er the deep a dusky cavern bends Its marble arms, and high in air impends; Basaltic piers the ponderous roof sustain, And steep their massy sandals in the main; 435 Round the dim walls, and through the whispering ailes Hoarse breathes the wind, the glittering water boils. Here the charm'd BYSSUS with his blooming bride Spreads his green sails, and braves the foaming tide; ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... shook as they moved forward, and the horse hastened to occupy their station as the advanced guard, and to push on reconnoitring parties to ascertain and report the motions of the enemy. They vanished from Waverley's eye as they wheeled round the base of Arthur's Seat, under the remarkable ridge of basaltic rocks which fronts the little lake ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... days this land was visibly nearer, sheer basaltic cliffs mixed with glacier, forming apparently a great bay, with two small islands in the mid-distance; and at fore-day of the 3rd August I arrived at the definite edge of the pack-ice in moderate weather ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... are about three-eighths of a mile long. They are the most dangerous rapids on the river, and are never run through in boats except by accident. They are confined by low basaltic banks, which, at the foot, suddenly close in and make the channel about 30 yards wide. It is here the danger lies, as there is a sudden drop and the water rashes through at a tremendous rate, leaping and seething like a cataract. The miners ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue
... the chalk formation stretches westward, the structure changes in hardness until at Portland we meet with Portland stone. In California many of the needle rocks are of volcanic origin; others again are basaltic columns. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... moments of superhuman effort we found ourselves at last out of danger, on a kind of basaltic terrace, elevated some fifty meters above the channel of the stream we had just left. Luck was with us; a little grotto opened out behind. Bou-Djema succeeded in sheltering the camels there. From its threshold we ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... Oliver was compelled to restrain his ardour, for on nearing the sea he found that he stood on the summit of high cliffs, beyond which the Land's End stretched in a succession of broken masses of granite, so chafed and shattered by the action of the sea, and so curiously split, as to resemble basaltic columns. To reach the outermost of those weather-worn sentinels of Old England, required some caution on the part of our traveller, even although well used to scaling the rocky heights of Scottish mountains, and when he did at last plant his foot on the veritable Land's End, he found ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... been seen before by European eyes, but scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight. Five columns of "smoke" arose, bending in the direction of the wind. The entire falls is simply a crack made in a hard basaltic rock from the right to the left bank of the Zambesi, and then prolonged from the left bank away through thirty or forty miles of hills. The whole scene was extremely beautiful; the banks and islands dotted over the river are adorned with sylvan vegetation ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... momently in its majesty before us! After all the descriptions which we had read, and the views we had seen of this singular little island, we were struck with delighted astonishment at its aspect. It is, in fact, one great mass of basaltic columns, bearing on their heads another huge mass of black stone, here and there covered with green turf. We sailed past the different caves—the Boat Cave and the Cormorant Cave, which are themselves very wonderful; but it was Fingal's Cave that struck us ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... is the case," said the Doctor. "Down the coast here, under a hopeless, black basaltic cliff, is to be seen the wreck of a very, very old ship, now covered with coral and seaweed. I waited down there for a spring tide, to examine her, but could determine nothing, save that she was very old; whether Dutch or Spanish I know not. You English should never sneer at ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... moon Lunar craters Pico Wrinkles of age Extinct craters Landscape scenery of the moon Meeting of British Association at Edinburgh The Bass Rock Professor Owen Robert Chambers The grooved rocks Hugh Miller and boulder clay Lecture on the moon Visit the Duke of Argyll Basaltic formation at Mull The Giant's Causeway The great exhibition Steam hammer engine Prize medals Interview with the Queen and Prince Consort Lord Cockburn Visit to Bonally ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... bits of fanciful legend than the neighborhood of the Giant's Causeway. For miles along the coast the geological strata resemble that of the Causeway, and the gradual disintegration of the stone has wrought many peculiar and picturesque effects among the basaltic pillars, while each natural novelty has woven round it a tissue of traditions and legends, some appropriate, others forced, others ridiculous misapplications of commonplace tales. Here, a long straight row of columns is known as the "Giant's Organ," and tradition pictures the scene ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... transportation purposes, bury their dead, usually heaping over them piles of stones, either to mark the spot or to prevent the bodies from being exhumed by the prairie wolf. Among the Yakamas we saw many of their graves placed in conspicuous points of the basaltic walls which line the lower valleys, and designated by a clump of poles planted over them, from which fluttered various articles of dress. Formerly these prairie tribes killed horses over the graves—a custom now falling into disuse in consequence of the teachings ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... Mountains and other parts of Europe) joined to the phenomenon of total absence of fragments of pyroxenic porphyry, trachyte, basalt and phonolite (The fragments of these rocks appear only in tufas or conglomerates which belong essentially to basaltic formations or surround the most recent volcanoes. Every volcanic formation is enveloped in breccia, which is the effect of the eruption itself.), in the conglomerates or fragmentary rocks anterior to the recent tertiary strata, renders it probable that the appearance of trap rocks at the surface ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... Bakaa and Bamangwato, and the Makalaka, living between 22 deg. and 23 deg. south latitude. The Bakaa Mountains had been visited before by a trader, who, with his people, all perished from fever. In going round the northern part of these basaltic hills, near Letloche, I was only ten days distant from the lower part of the Zouga, which passed by the same name as Lake Ngami; and I might then (in 1842) have discovered that lake, had discovery alone been my object. Most of this journey beyond Shokuane was performed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... and instinct with the latent forces of the universe. Equally remarkable, but in a diverse style, is the Giant's Causeway, whose innumerable black stone columns rise from two to four hundred feet above the water's edge in the County of Antrim, on the north coast of Ireland. These basaltic pillars are for the most part pentagonal, whose five sides are closely united, not in one conglomerate mass, but, articulated so aptly that to be traced the ball and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... Professor Silliman took papa a long walk in the country, and geologised him among basaltic rocks of great beauty; and in passing through the woods, they made a grand collection of red leaves. I had, during this walk, been deposited with Mrs. Silliman, and we remained and drank tea with them. The professor's father, also Professor ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... apparently something like vingt un; not a word was said, but money was shovelled to the right and left very plentifully.... I forgot to mention that near Linz on the Rhine we passed a headland fronted and inlaid with as fine a range of Basaltic columns as the Giant's Causeway, some bent, some leaning, some upright. They are plentiful throughout that part of the country, and are remarkably regular; all the stone posts are formed of them, and even ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... a bewildering route for anyone who was not accustomed to face Nature in her wildest moods. On the one side a great crag towered up a thousand feet or more, black, stern, and menacing, with long basaltic columns upon its rugged surface like the ribs of some petrified monster. On the other hand a wild chaos of boulders and debris made all advance impossible. Between the two ran the irregular track, so narrow in places that they had to travel in Indian ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... re-enter the trail, Watson's Peak, 8500 feet high, with its basaltic crown, looms before us. At our feet is a big bed of wild sunflowers, their flaring yellow and gold richly coloring the more somber slopes. Here I once saw a band of upwards of 2000 sheep, herded by a Basque, one of that strange ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... so magnificent a growth, and nothing less hardy than the cocoa-palm could have derived nourishment from such a soil. Several of these fine trees stood almost at the water's edge, springing from a bed of sand, mingled with black basaltic pebbles, and coarse fragments of shells and coral, where their roots were washed by every rising tide: yet their appearance was thrifty and flourishing, and they were thickly covered with close-packed bunches of tassel-like, ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... scourge of great black crickets appeared, crackling loathsomely under the wheels. Sagebrush and sand took the place of trees and grass as they left the river valley and crossed a succession of ridges or plateaus. At last they reached vast black basaltic masses and lava fields, proof of former subterranean fires which seemingly had forever dried out the life of the earth's surface. The very vastness of the views might have had charm but for the tempering feeling of awe, of ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... coursed to all directions, as if distorted by the sunken reefs. The eastern jamb is formed by Tiran Island; the western by the sandy Ras Nasrani, whose glaring tawny slope is dotted with dark basaltic cones, detached and disposed like great ninepins. Beyond this cape the Sinaitic coast, as far as Ras Mohammed, the apex of the triangle, is fretted with little indentations; hence its name, El-Shurum—"the Creeks." Near one of these baylets, Wellsted chanced upon "volcanic ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... culprits and that they never came down the Colorado as they claimed. In the morning, therefore, a number secreted themselves near the edge of the water-pocket. The trail to the water leads down under a basaltic cliff perhaps thirty or forty feet high, as I remember the spot, which I visited about six years later. As the unfortunate men turned to come up from filling their canteens, they were shot down from ambush. In consequence I have called ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... of this enormous pit was fully a thousand feet. The walls were smooth and appeared to be composed of a black, basaltic rock. ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a steep basaltic rock at the mouth of the Firth of Forth, 350 ft. high, tenanted by solan geese; once used as a prison, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... sea. The ride through this irregular valley is very noble. For a mile or two on our left rose a grand mass of basalt quite two thousand feet in height, buttressed with bold outlying rocks and presenting very regular basaltic columns. A few miles farther the views grew yet more interesting, because around us rose tall ragged gray or dark mountains, and among them gigantic forms of red, brown and yellow limestone rocks, as brilliant as the dolomites of the Southern Tyrol. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... falling storms, While higher yet the peaks upraised Against the winds their giant forms. On, on and on, past Idaho, On past the mighty Saline sea, His covering at night the snow, His only sentinel a tree. On, past Portneuf's basaltic heights, On where the San Juan Mountains lay, Through sunless days and starless nights, Toward Taos and far Sante Fe. O'er table-lands of sleet and hail, Through pine-roofed gorges, canons cold, Now fording ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... reached the Hoy he left the wheel and stood in wonder and awe gazing at the sea around him. For some time it had been cloudy and unquiet, but among these great basaltic pillars and into their black measureless caves it flung itself with the rush and roar of a ten-knot tide gone mad. Yet the thundering bellow of its waves was not able to drown the aerial clamor of the millions ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... which the boat at first passed, suddenly rose; but the darkness was too deep, and the light of the lantern too slight, for either the extent, length, height, or depth of the cave to be ascertained. Solemn silence reigned in this basaltic cavern. Not a sound could penetrate into it, even the thunder peals could not pierce ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... with its huge leather hood and double rumble, swaying dangerously to and fro, descends a steep and rugged road embowered in forest, leading to a narrow ledge upon the summit of a line of cliffs. On the very edge of these cliffs, formed of a dark-red basaltic stone, the marchesa's villa stands. A deep, dark precipice drops down beneath. Opposite is a range of mountains, fair and forest-spread on the lower flanks, rising above into wild crags, and broken, blackened peaks, that mock the soft blue radiance ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... all sizes and shapes—which to all appearances had been shot up from underneath by some internal force. They were outwardly much blackened by the action of fire, but internally were of a grey tint. A little farther we were encircled by basaltic columns of great height, many of them fractured, forming a fantastic sky-line. Some resembled the spires of a cathedral; groups of others had the appearance of the ruins of an ancient fortress; others stood up like giant obelisks; while accumulations ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... top of the Cliff of Marimi, the first object which caught our eye was a sheet of foam, above a mile in length and half a mile in breadth. Enormous masses of black rock, of an iron hue, started up here and there out of its snowy surface. Some resembled huge basaltic cliffs resting on each other; many, castles in ruins, with detached towers and fortalices, guarding their approach from a distance. Their sombre colour formed a contrast with the dazzling whiteness of the foam. Every rock, every island, was covered with flourishing trees, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... notes on some most extraordinary anthropological discoveries which certain members of the society have recently made among the inhabitants of Giants' Bay. At a very early period of the world's history, midway, it is conjectured, between the glacial and basaltic epochs—that is to say, about 100,000 years before the creation of the world—there appears to have prevailed an unusual divergence in the normal stature of the mammal bipeds ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... now see what bearing this has on the question of the antiquity of man. Scattered here and there throughout California are numerous masses of basaltic lava, which appear as elevated ridges, the softer strata around having been denuded away. They have received the general name of Table Mountains. They have not only been noted for their picturesque beauty, but miners long since found that the gravels underneath ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... which he taketh under the sun. Our country, in this Tertiary time, has still its great outbursts of molten matter, that bury in fiery deluges many feet in depth, and many square miles in extent, the debris of wide tracts of woodland and marsh; and the basaltic columns still form in its great lava bed; and ever and anon, as the volcanic agencies awake, clouds of ashes darken the heavens, and cover up the landscape as if with accumulated drifts of a protracted snow storm. Who shall declare what, throughout those long ages, the ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... waiting for the spiritual, he probably finds it worth his while to do so, in view of the zeal of the Church, and in remembrance of the fifteenth verse of the twenty-third chapter of Matthew, if he ever reads that portion of the Bible. It is in the great basaltic vase in the baptistery of St. John Lateran, the same in which Rienzi bathed in 1347, before receiving the insignia of knighthood, that the converted Jew, and any other infidel who can be brought ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... of the Mont-Dore valley decreased rapidly, and I entered the gorge of the Dordogne, where basaltic rocks were thrown up in savage grandeur, vividly contrasting with which were bands and patches of meadow, brilliantly green. Yellow spikes of agrimony and the fine pink flowers of the musk-mallow mingled with the wiry broom and the ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... sunlight has precisely the same lines, in the same order, as the great arch that strides across half the sky. If you go to the Giant's Causeway, or to the other end of it amongst the Scotch Hebrides, you will find the hexagonal basaltic pillars all of identically the same pattern and shape, whether their height be measured by feet or by tenths of an inch. Big or little, they obey exactly the same law. There is 'much food in the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of September Paganel began to collect his luggage to go on shore. The DUNCAN was already steaming among the Islands. She passed Sal, a complete tomb of sand lying barren and desolate, and went on among the vast coral reefs and athwart the Isle of St. Jacques, with its long chain of basaltic mountains, till she entered the port of Villa Praya and anchored in eight fathoms of water before the town. The weather was frightful, and the surf excessively violent, though the bay was sheltered from the sea winds. ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... Kameik, in Bohemia, not far from the town of Leitmeritz. On the 24th of June in each year, large numbers of pilgrims assemble at the romantic chapel of S. John the Baptist in the Wilderness; and it is a part of their occupation to search for ice under the basaltic rocks, and carry it home wrapped in moss, as a proof that they have really made the pilgrimage. Professor Pleischl visited this district at the end of May 1834. The weather was hot for the season, as had been the case in April also, and there had been very little snow in the winter. A ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... an enthusiastic lover of building, be he architect or stonemason; for instead of being built of brick like London and so many other English centres, it is built partly of a fine hard local sandstone and partly of basaltic greenstone; and besides its old churches and palaces, many of the public buildings are particularly striking and beautiful architectural works. But just at the moment when young Telford walked wearily into Edinburgh at the end of his long tramp, there was plenty for a stout strong mason to ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... Lympia Creek, in Wild Rose Pass, a most lovely canon, through the Sierra Diablo. It is about two hundred feet wide, and carpeted with the richest green sward, while the sides, composed of dark, columnar, basaltic rocks, rise to the height of a thousand feet. Here, cozily nestled in this beautiful dell, surrounded by lofty mountains, we came upon the ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... in the occupations of its people. The central plateau of eastern Washington, made up of level stretches and undulating hills, is all covered with a soil composed of volcanic ash and the disintegration of basaltic rocks which, together with some humus from decayed vegetation, has made a field of surpassing fertility for the production of the cereals with scant water supply; but under the magic touch of irrigation it doubles its output and makes of ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... saw five or six rock Wallabies as he was coming up the glen, and said they were beautiful little animals. He remarked that they bounded up the bold cliffs near him with astonishing strength and activity; in some places there were basaltic columns, resting on granite, ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... picturesque mouth of the Johnstone River. Judging from the photographs, the scenery of this river must be very fine, for the sun-pictures represent several high waterfalls pouring volumes of water over dark and perpendicular basaltic rocks. One of the falls is said to be 300 feet high, and there are several cascades with a fall of between 100 and 250 feet. The light breeze from the S.E. carried us on famously. We soon saw the Seymour Range; a little later we found ourselves off the mouth of the Mulgrave ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... and sent to Bombay, November, 1864.] the hot spring issues from basaltic rocks on a small plateau between high and precipitous mountains. At the source itself the temperature is 141 Fahrenheit, but as the water flows down the different ravines, it gradually cools until it differs in no way from other mountain streams. ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... DISTRICT OF CHHINDWARA is 4631 sq. m. It has two natural subdivisions—the hill country above the slopes of the Satpura mountains, called the Balaghat, and a tract of low land to the south called the Zerghat. The high tableland of the Balaghat lies for the most part upon the great basaltic formation which stretches across the Satpuras as far east as Jubbulpore. The country consists of a regular succession of hills and fertile valleys, formed by the small ranges which cross its surface east and west. The average height of the uplands is 2500 ft., but there are ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... difference consisted, he gave a supper. Everyone worth knowing was bidden, and, as is usual in state functions, everyone that was bidden came. The supper hall was draped with black; the ceiling, the walls, the floor, everything was basaltic. The couches were black, the linen was black, the slaves were black. Behind each guest was a broken column with his name on it. The food was such as is prepared when death has come. The silence ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... bold precipices at the head of Port Desire, the condor is not uncommon; yet only a few stragglers occasionally visit the seacoast. A line of cliff near the mouth of the Santa Cruz is frequented by these birds, and about eighty miles up the river, where the sides of the valley are formed by steep basaltic precipices, the condor reappears. From these facts, it seems that the condors require perpendicular cliffs. In Chile, they haunt, during the greater part of the year, the lower country near the shores of the Pacific, and ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... charged with sand and gravel, is very great. According to Major Dutton, in the hydraulic mines of California, the escaping water has been known to cut a chasm from twelve to twenty feet deep in hard basaltic rock, in a single year. This is, of course, exceptional, but there have, no doubt, been times when the Colorado cut downward very rapidly. The enormous weathering of its side walls is to me the more wonderful, ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... land their mails when prevented from touching at Funchal by the south winds, which often last a week. Accordingly a breakwater has been proposed, and Messieurs Blandy are taking interest in the improvement.] The innermost of this sharp line of serrated basaltic outliers is the Pedra do Furado, which Englishmen ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... not mean to say, that this demonstration is direct; it is conditional, and proceeds upon the supposition, that the basaltic or porphyry rock, in which those specimens are found, is a body which had been in a melted state. Now, this is a supposition for which I have abundance of evidence, were it required; but naturalists are now sufficiently disposed to admit that proposition; they even draw conclusions ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... northward to visit the Bakaa and Bamangwato, and the Makalaka, living between 22 Degrees and 23 Degrees south latitude. The Bakaa Mountains had been visited before by a trader, who, with his people, all perished from fever. In going round the northern part of these basaltic hills near Letloche I was only ten days distant from the lower part of the Zouga, which passed by the same name as Lake Ngami;* and I might then (in 1842) have discovered that lake, had discovery alone been my object. Most part of this journey beyond Shokuane was performed on foot, in consequence ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... the leeward, faintly drawn against A dim perspective of perpetual storms, A frowning line of black basaltic cliffs Baffles the savage onset of the surf. But, rolled in cloud and foam, old Skidloe lifts His dark, defiant head forever mid The shock and thunder of contending tides, And fixed, immovable as fate, hurls back The rude, ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... which I had hastily written the schooner's name, the date of her arrival, and the names of all those who sailed on board,—we pulled ashore. A ribbon of beach not more than fifteen yards wide, composed of iron-sand, augite, and pyroxene, running along under the basaltic precipice—upwards of a thousand feet high—which serves as a kind of plinth to the mountain, was the only standing room this part of the coast afforded. With considerable difficulty, and after a good hour's climb, we succeeded in dragging the figure-head we had brought ashore with us, up a sloping ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... beautiful sculpture of those Maya cities of long ago. Again, the great pyramidal structures of Teotihuacan and surrounding ruins of the Toltec civilisation, had little for their composition but lavas of basaltic nature, which did not possess a character adaptable for exact stone-shaping. Thus it is seen how largely the existence, or non-existence, of freestone influenced the ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... note, as he goes, of every monolith or cairn on his track; and either up the face of the hill, or through the pass on his right, where the high road now runs, and so on to the hamlet of Maghgerabane; above which, on the Skerry—a gloomy, low-browed, basaltic precipice before him—like a dark porch or portico, in the very face of the rock, halfway up, he will descry the cave in question. He should now cross the Glenwherry at the village, in its grassy gorge, and draw nearer to the portico on the hillside beyond it, keeping a ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various
... the east are two projections for the top and bottom of the leaf playing in hollows of the lintel and threshold. It appears to be the primitive form, for we find it in the very heart of Africa. In the basaltic cities of the Hauran, where the doors are of thick stone, they move easily on these pins. I found them also in the official (not the temple)City ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... good land after entering the basin; but there was one fertile island, of a small conical shape, bearing nearly due east as you enter. From the appearance of this island there can be no doubt whatever that it is of volcanic origin; as it in all respects resembles Mount Lyell and the other basaltic conical hills which we afterwards found in the fertile district of Glenelg; we did not however land on it, but merely ran close by, and then continued our route up ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... crater connected with this group, as is also that of Cuglieri. The highest point, Monte Articu, the summit of Monte Ferro, entirely volcanic, rises 3442 feet above the Mediterranean, and the Trebia Lada, 2723 feet high, is one of the three basaltic feet forming the Trebina, or Tripod, on the summit of Monte Arcuentu, a mountain between Orestano and Ales formed of horizontal layers of basalt. Further south at Nurri, closely approaching the primitive chain, are ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... position of the sun itself seemed changed, or the shadows cast in defiance of its glory. As he walked on, long reaches of the lordly placid stream at his side were visible, as far as the terraces of the opposite shore, lifted on basaltic columns, themselves streaked and veined with gold and fire. Paul had seen nothing like this since his boyhood; for an instant the great heroics of the Sierran landscape were forgotten in ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... 'Ayyub, where he washed his leprous skin; the Dayr Ayyub, a monastery said to date from the third century; and the Makan Ayyub at Al-Markaz, where the semi-mythical patriarch and his wife are buried. The "Rock of Job", covered by a mosque, is a basaltic monolith 7 feet high by 4, and is probably connected with the solar worship of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... runs from north to south, having two peaks exceeding one thousand feet in height, it is more than probable that not one half of it is capable of cultivation. It would seem, indeed, from several ancient morais being discovered among these hills; some stone axes or hatchets of compact basaltic lava, very hard and capable of a fine polish; four stone images, about six feet high, placed on a platform, not unlike those on Easter Island, one of which has been preserved, and is the rude representation of the human figure to the hips, hewn out of a ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... alamo trees, that reflect their shadows upon crystal runlets silently coursing beneath, suddenly flashing into the open light like a band of silver lace as it bisects a glade green with gramma grass. A landscape not all woodland or meadow, but having also a mountain aspect, for the basaltic cliffs that on both sides bound the valley bottom rise hundreds of feet high, standing scarce two hundred yards apart, grimly frowning at each other, like giant warriors about to begin battle, while the tall stems of the pitahaya projecting above might be likened ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... cakes,—and cake of all kinds is among the flattest things I know! But here if was, simulating all shapes, even those of animated creatures, with the art of a mocking bird,—and simulating all in a material pure as amber, though more varied in color. One saw about him cliffs, basaltic columns, frozen down, arabesques, fretted traceries, sculptured urns, arches supporting broad tables or sloping roofs, lifted pinnacles, boulders, honey-combs, slanting strata of rock, gigantic birds, mastodons, maned lions, couching or rampant,—a fantasy of forms, and, between all, the shining, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... gave me intense pleasure. It lies at the base of a cone crowned with a heiau and a clump of coco palms. Passing among bread-fruit and guavas into a palm grove of exquisite beauty, we came suddenly upon a lofty wooded cliff of hard basaltic rock, with ferns growing out of every crevice in its ragged but perpendicular sides. At its feet is a cleft about 60 feet long, 16 wide, and 18 deep, full of water at a temperature of 90 degrees. This ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... above the sea-level. The plateau of Mexico is 8,000 feet high, and that of Puebla 9,000 feet. This central mass consists principally of a greyish trachytic porphyry, in some places rich in veins of silver-ore. The tops of the hills are often crowned with basaltic columns, and a soft porous amygdaloid abounds on the outskirts of the Mexican valley. Besides this, traces of more recent volcanic action abound, in the shape of numerous extinct craters in the high plateaus, and immense ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... wood lay hard by the Dwarf's well. Klaus, arriving there, reined his horse up, and looked upon the spring with profoundly cogitative eyes. It was clear and still. Pearly bright the water ascended from the rent basaltic bottom, and rippled in a small thread-like rill through whispering rushes, across meadows and fields, until it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... dark-green wood on the horizon. We had great difficulty in getting to the top, the rocks being so precipitous. In coming down the eastern side we were gratified by the sight of a beautiful waterfall, upwards of one hundred feet high, over columns of basaltic rock, its form, two sides of a triangle, the water coming over ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... among the Arabs, as well as the Kailouees, on account of the remains of a mosque, indicated only by lines of stones on the ground. It was founded by a great saint called Sidi Baghdadi, and is a general resting-place for caravans. The basaltic formation here succeeds the granitic; and the plain is covered with loose black stones, about the size ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... which protected the loose cinders and bones from waste. We behold in many a valley of Auvergne, within 50 feet of the present river channel, a volcanic cone of loose ashes, with a crater at its summit, from which powerful currents of basaltic lava have poured, usurping the ancient bed of the torrent. By the action of the stream, in the course of ages, vast masses of the hard columnar basalt have been removed, pillar after pillar, and much vesicular lava, as in the case, for example, of the Puy Rouge, near Chalucet, and of the ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... with a practised hand, shot his linen into one long rope, which he carefully attached to an erect and smoking pillar, perhaps of basaltic formation, perhaps an ancient altar of St. Simeon Skylites. When all was taut, Jambres approached a slanting slope, smooth and transparent, perhaps of glacial origin. On this he stamped, and the fragments tinkled as they ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... great number of volcanoes with which that country formerly abounded, and indeed every part of them exhibits the most unequivocal marks of fire. Several mountains in the great island of Chiloe, which has given name to the archipelago, are composed of basaltic columns, which could have only been produced by the operation of subterranean fire[78]. Though descended from the Chilese of the continent, as is evident from their appearance, manners, and language, the natives of these islands ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... the alkalies and earth might exist in the interior of the globe, and on being exposed to the action of air and water, give rise to volcanic fires, and to the production of lavas, by the slow cooling of which basaltic and other crystalline rocks might subsequently be formed." We have not space for the details of these investigations, interesting as they would prove to an unscientific reader; but we give an abstract of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction—Volume 13 - Index to Vol. 13 • Various
... country for miles around being of a basaltic nature, our horses became very footsore, and when we reached Lolworth Station we asked Mr. Frank Hann, the manager, if he would allow us to spell them. He consented, and invited us to the house. We stayed there about three weeks, assisting him at mustering, ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... upon a bold basaltic rock, and is thirty feet above the sea-level It is supposed to have been built by the Lancaster family, in the year 1315, and the Yorkists destroyed it after the battle of Hexham. It has never been rebuilt, and nothing is left of it but ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... came close up with the mainland of Eastern Asia. Coasts usually disappoint. This one exceeded all my expectations; and besides, it was the coast of Asia, the mysterious continent which has been my dream from childhood—bare, lofty, rocky, basaltic; islands of naked rock separated by narrow channels, majestic, perpendicular cliffs, a desolate uninhabited region, lashed by a heavy sea, with visions of swirling mists, shrieking sea-birds, and Chinese ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... the only traces of volcanic action in the Causses have been found at Sauveterre, near the so-called capital. Here basaltic rocks exist ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... feet above the old level of the plains, sprung up from a chasm. The most elevated of these is the great volcano of Jorullo. It is continually burning, and has thrown up an immense quantity of scorified and basaltic lavas, containing fragments of primitive rocks. These great eruptions of the central volcano continued till the month of February, 1760. In the following year they became gradually less frequent. The Indians, frightened at the horrible noises of the new volcano, had abandoned all the villages, ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... unfold At last how yonder suddenly angered flame Out-blows abroad from vasty furnaces Aetnaean. First, the mountain's nature is All under-hollow, propped about, about With caverns of basaltic piers. And, lo, In all its grottos be there wind and air— For wind is made when air hath been uproused By violent agitation. When this air Is heated through and through, and, raging round, Hath made the earth and all the rocks it touches Horribly hot, and hath struck off ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... undoubtedly consisted in a great archipelago, which they named after Bonaparte: the islands that composed it were in general small; some volcanic or basaltic; others sandy. After examining these, they were obliged to return to Timor, in consequence of the sickness of their crews. After they were recovered, they returned to the grand object of their expedition, which, though interesting and important ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... injury, of the act of foul cruelty and falsehood, which once roused you to flaming indignation. Are you thinking rightly too? Or has not just such an illusion been practised upon your mental view, as is played upon your bodily eye when looking over ten miles of sea upon Staffa? You do not see the basaltic columns now; but that is because you see wrongly. You do not burn at the remembrance of the wicked lie, the crafty misrepresentation, the cruel blow; but perhaps you ought to do so. And now (to speak of less grave matters) when all I had to say ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... four weeks, and were becoming run down. We passed at least two hundred bergs during the day, and we noticed also large masses of hummocky bay-ice and ice-foot. One floe of bay-ice had black earth upon it, apparently basaltic in origin, and there was a large berg with a broad band of yellowish brown right through it. The stain may have been volcanic dust. Many of the bergs had quaint shapes. There was one that exactly resembled ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... road to the Grande Chartreuse over all other narrow valleys. Neither the coasts of Croisic, where the granite bulwark is split into strange reefs, nor those of Sardinia, where Nature is dedicated to grandiose and terrible effects, nor even the basaltic rocks of the northern seas can show a character so unique and so complete. Fancy has here amused itself by composing interminable arabesques where the most fantastic figures wind and twine. All forms are here. The imagination ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... peach, olive, pomegranate, fig and pear trees, and rich vineyards cover the fields on the south. It is a clean and compact town of about 25,000 inhabitants, of whom 7000 are Greek Christians, 3000 Jacobites, and the rest Mohammedans. The houses are built of sun-dried bricks and black basaltic rock, and the streets are beautifully paved with small square blocks of the same rock, giving it a neat and clean appearance. There are few windows on the street; the houses are one story high, with diminutive ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... Edinburgh—the clear, distinct lines of streets in the New Town, and the irregular mass of houses, with their confused network of streets and lanes, which constitutes Auld Reekie, properly so called. Two heights commanded the entire city; Edinburgh Castle, crowning its huge basaltic rock, and the Calton Hill, bearing on its rounded summit, among other monuments, ruins built to represent those of the Parthenon ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... the struggle. English blood had flowed at the Boyne and at Athlone, at Aghrim and at Limerick. The graves of thousands of English soldiers had been dug in the pestilential morass of Dundalk. It was owing to the exertions and sacrifices of the English people that, from the basaltic pillars of Ulster to the lakes of Kerry, the Saxon settlers were trampling on the children of the soil. The colony in Ireland was therefore emphatically a dependency; a dependency, not merely by the common law of the realm, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... broken through in several places by flowing rivers, is nothing more nor less than a mighty stream of congealed basaltic lava called latite, which in prehistoric times, rushing down the western flank of the high Sierras, usurped the bed of an ancient river channel, drinking up the waters and piling up its ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... pointed in the direction Lizard was to steer. Many of those on board shut their eyes as they drew near the roaring breakers. The tide was running out strong. Such a wind as was then blowing would alone have enabled the boats to stem it. Tall basaltic cliffs rose up on either hand, while the foaming rollers, as they came in, appeared ready to engulf the two boats. Now the launch rose to the summit of a high sea, now downward she glided, the breakers hissing ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... columns which form the front of the cave, rests a body of decomposed basaltic matter, which was richly decorated with that large bright flower, the ox-eyed daisy. I had noticed the same flower growing with profusion among the bold rocks on the western coast of the Isle of Man; making a brilliant contrast with ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Zambezi river. Sandstones of Karroo age occur in the basin of the Luangwa (N.E. Rhodesia). There are evidences of recent volcanic activity on the summit of the small Mlanje plateau (S.E. corner of the protectorate: here there are two extinct craters with a basaltic outflow), and at the north end of Lake Nyasa and the eastern edge of the Tanganyika plateau. Here there are many craters and much basalt, or even ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... kept the semblance of man, showing that the idea arose from the basaltic statues found in Hauranic ruins. Mohammed in his various marches to Syria must have seen remnants of Greek and Roman settlements; and as has been ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... are evidently contemporaneous in origin, and were once connected in continuous beds. The degradation of the rock on which this formation rests is constantly bringing down masses of it, and mingling them with the basaltic, porphyritic, granitic, and calcareous fragments which the torrents carry down to the valleys, and, through them, in a state of greater or less disintegration, to the sea. The quantity of sand annually washed into the Red Sea by the larger torrents of ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... old days, long before white men came to Ponape. See, all around us, half-buried in the ground, are some of the blocks of stone which were carried up from the face of the mountain which overlooks Metalanien "—he pointed to several huge basaltic prisms lying near—"these stones were the lower course of the fort; the upper part was of wood, great forest trees, cut down and squared into lengths of two fathoms. And it is because of the cutting down of these trees, which were very old and took many hundred years to grow, that the place ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... 9. Basaltic Rocks, Campaspi River, near Port Phillip. Drawn on stone by George Barnard from a sketch by G. Hamilton, Esquire. M. and N. Hanhart, Lithographic Printers, 64 Charlotte Street, Rathbone Place. Published by T. & ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... down the coast, some objects were seen which the scientific gentlemen insisted were basaltic pillars, like those of the Giant's Causeway in Ireland, contrary to the opinion of the captain, who held that they were trees of a peculiar growth. An island was discovered to the south of the large island, ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston |
