"Obsidian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their weapons.[17-2] Besides the bow and arrow, [c]ha, they used a lance, achcayupil,[18-1] and especially the blow-pipe, pub, a potent weapon in the hands of an expert, the knowledge of which was widely extended over tropical America. Their arrow points were of stone, especially obsidian, bone and metal. Other weapons were the wooden war club, [c]haibalche; the sling, ica[t]; the ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... still exists amongst tribes more rude and savage than the Swiss lake-dwellers. Numerous facts of a like tendency are on record, such as the finding in the mounds of the Mississippi valley, side by side, obsidian from Mexico and mica from the Alleghanies, and in the mounds around the great northern lakes large tropical shells two thousand miles from their native habitat. The ancient inhabitants of China and India found at a very early period that they possessed in their jade rocks a ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... the carved face on the altar. Presently they advanced to her, one of them suddenly seizing her by the shoulders and pinioning her arms behind her, while the other drew from beneath his robe a long sharp knife of the glassy flint known as obsidian. ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... that, she went down from the terrace into her own dwelling, and made prayers to her own gods of her Apache people. With a blade of obsidian she made scars until the blood dripped from her braceletted arms. To the divinely created Woman Without Parents, she chanted a song of prayer, and to the Twin Gods who slew enemies, she let her blood drop by drop fall on the sacred ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... branches, but it changed little by little near four o'clock in the afternoon; it grew rockier and seemed to be strewn with pudding stones and a basaltic gravel called "tuff," together with bits of lava and sulfurous obsidian. I expected these long plains to change into mountain regions, and in fact, as the Nautilus was executing certain turns, I noticed that the southerly horizon was blocked by a high wall that seemed ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... tendency to slouch; he stood tall and straight, reminding MacHeath of a poplar tree towering proudly over the countryside. Benbow was one of those rare American Negroes whose skin was actually as close to being "black" as human pigmentation will allow. His eyes were like disks of obsidian set in spheres of white porcelain, which gave an odd contrast-similarity effect when ...
— Psichopath • Gordon Randall Garrett
... was a certain clan that had to provide the victim, and they used to sit in solemn council among themselves to choose him. It was a sacrificial feast to avert evil from the chief." Amongst the Maoris many spells were uttered at hair-cutting; one, for example, was spoken to consecrate the obsidian knife with which the hair was cut; another was pronounced to avert the thunder and lightning which hair-cutting was believed to cause. "He who has had his hair cut is in immediate charge of the Atua ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... this the case with platina or metals only, but also with earthy bodies, Rock crystal and obsidian would not wet freely upon the surface, but being moistened with strong oil of vitriol, then washed, and left in distilled water to remove all the acid, they did freely become moistened, whether they ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... told me the other day), there is soil in the beautiful island of Madeira so thin that you cannot dig more than two or three inches down without coming to the solid rock of lava, or what is harder even, obsidian (which is the black glass which volcanos sometimes make, and which the old Mexicans used to chip into swords and arrows, because they had no steel)—and that this soil, thin as it is, is yet so fertile, that in it used to be grown the grapes of which the famous ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley |
