"Alluvial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... missed most of all—intermediate forms between apes and man—has been recently furnished. E. Dubois, as is well known, discovered in 1893, near Trinil in Java, in the alluvial deposits of the river Bengawan, an important form represented by a skull-cap, some molars, and a femur. His opinion—much disputed as it has been—that in this form, which he named Pithecanthropus, he has found a long-desired transition-form is shared by the present writer. ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... mimosas was a stretch of sparsely timbered country, which quite deserved its name of "open plain." Some fragments of quartz and ferruginous rock lay among the scrub and the tall grass, where numerous flocks were feeding. Some miles farther the wheels of the wagon plowed deep into the alluvial soil, where irregular creeks murmured in their beds, half hidden among giant reeds. By-and-by they skirted vast salt lakes, rapidly evaporating. The journey was accomplished without trouble, and, indeed, ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... thousand in number, extend, for the space of four miles, upon a beautiful piece of rich alluvial soil, in a very high state of cultivation; the fields were well fenced and luxuriant with maize, pumpkins, melons, beans and squashes. The space between the mountains and the river, on each side of the village, was thickly planted with close ranks of prickly pear, impassable ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... granulated limestone may have been formed by alluviation, on or beneath the shores of the sea, or in vallies of the land; it would seem, that some coal countries, which in the great commotions of the earth had been sunk beneath the water, were thus covered with alluvial limestone, as well as others with alluvial basaltes, or common gravel-beds. Very extensive plains which now consist of alluvial materials, were in the early times covered with water; which has since diminished as the solid parts of the earth have increased. ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... years the riches of yonder hillside had been washing down upon the bottom, and this alluvial was rich ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... is heavily dependent on the extraction and processing of minerals for export. Mining accounts for almost 25% of GDP. Namibia is the fourth-largest exporter of nonfuel minerals in Africa and the world's fifth-largest producer of uranium. Rich alluvial diamond deposits make Namibia a primary source for gem-quality diamonds. Namibia also produces large quantities of lead, zinc, tin, silver, and tungsten. More than half the population depends on agriculture (largely subsistence agriculture) for its livelihood. Namibia ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... country in question is a plain composed of a deep alluvial deposit, generally overlying gravel, and known as "black cotton soil." After heavy rain it is practically impassable ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... would seem as though Chaldea or Lower Mesopotamia, regarded from this point of view, could never have originated any architecture at all, for it is, at first sight, absolutely deficient in building materials of any sort. The whole land is alluvial, that is, formed, gradually, through thousands of years, of the rich mud deposited by the two rivers, as they spread into vast marshy flats towards the end of their course. Such soil, when hardened into sufficient consistency, is the ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... are correct in assuming that the age of the human race is coincident with that of the alluvial stratum, from eighty to one hundred centuries, are not domestic traditions and household customs the great arteries in which beat the social life of humanity, linking the race in homogeneity? Roman women suffered no first day of May pass without celebrating the ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... a thousand things on my mind's surface and only one thought in its inner deeps. The sun swung up the sky, and the thin August air even in its heat was light and invigorating. The river banks were low and soft where the stream cuts through the alluvial soil a channel many feet below the level of the Plains. The day was long, but full of interest to me, who took its sight as a child takes a new picture-book, albeit a certain sense of peril lurked in the ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... the forests. In Virginia this section meets the lower and flatter country known as Tide-Water Virginia. In the southern part of this state we come to the Pine Hills, which follow the Piedmont and stretch, interrupted only by the alluvial lands of the Mississippi, to central Texas. The Pine Hills seldom touch the Piedmont directly, but are separated by a narrow belt of Sand Hills, which run from North Carolina to Alabama, then swing northward around the coal measures and spread ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... curious appearance as it hangs over the ascent, not unlike the bushy eye-brows of a sullen and frowning face. With this ledge of rocks terminate the Cumberland mountains, which cross the State of Tennessee to the margin of the river. The stream here flows nearly west, through a beautiful valley of alluvial land, formed by the Cumberland mountains and a continuation of the Blue Ridge of Virginia. Immediately opposite the termination of the Cumberland mountains commences a broken and rocky surface, which extends along the shore of the river ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... two chains of hills— Fir-capped and rugged monuments of time; A level vale of rich alluvial land, Washed from the slopes through circling centuries, And sweet with clover and the hum of bees, Lies broad between the rugged, somber hills. Beneath a shade of willows and of elms The river slumbers in this meadowy ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... as full of talk as an egg of meat. The theme he dwelt longest on was the new glory that lay in store for the Ballarat diggings. At present these were under a cloud. The alluvial was giving out, and the costs and difficulties of boring through the rock seemed insuperable. One might hear the opinion freely expressed that Ballarat's day as premier goldfield was done. Ned set up this belief merely for the pleasure of demolishing it. He had ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... great many items which go to make up Tuscany and the specially Tuscan mood. The country is at once hilly and mountainous, but rich in alluvial river valleys, as flat and as wide, very often, as plains; and the chains which divide and which bound it are as various as can be: the crystalline crags of Carrara, the washed away cones and escarpments of the high Apennines, repeating themselves ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... recurring need for fresh pasturage made him a pioneer also, drove him ever nearer to the mountains, and furnished the economic motive for his westward advance. The small farmer needed the virgin soil of the new region, the alluvial river-bottoms, and the open prairies, for the cultivation of his crops and the grazing of his cattle; yet in the intervals between the tasks of farm life he scoured the wilderness in search of game "and spied out ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... adapted for the blowing sands of that country; the Chinese peasant, that the warm sloping banks of light land are fitted for the tea plant, and stiff, wet, impervious flooded clays for his rice. Even the slaves in the Southern States were aware that open alluvial lands were best suited to cotton; and the degraded slaves of Pernambuco know that the cocoa grows only on the sandy soils of the coast, just the same as in west Africa the oil palms flourish on the moist sea sand that skirts the shore, and the mangroves ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... mouth of the Stour. Between Ebbsfleet and Worth it was over 4 miles wide. The Roman fortress of Ritupiae (Richborough) guarded it on the south, and the river Stour flowed into it at Stourmouth. This stream caused so much alluvial deposit that the sea receded from Richborough in early Saxon times, and part of the population removed to Sandwich. The repeated attacks by the Danes and the French did not check the growth of the town, which attained ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... be planted February 14. On alluvial land it is best to plant them on slight rises as a protection against the rains which sometimes occur toward the end of the month. If frost should threaten just as the beans begin to peep out, cover them an inch deep with the plow or hand cultivator. Sow Early Mohawk first, and at the end of the ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... species as for considering them to be of foreign origin. The hog of the present breed, may indeed be of continental origin; so may the present cat, horse, and ass. Nevertheless, the hog, cat, horse, and ass, whose bones are found in the alluvial deposits, may have been domesticated. The Devonshire, Hereford, and similar breeds of oxen may be new; but the bos longifrons may have originated some native breeds, which the inhabitants of even the earliest period—the period of stone and ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... beautiful groves without underbrush, where the soil was of virgin richness, and the landscape painted with almost perpetual verdure; one of the most attractive spots by nature on the face of the earth,—a great contrast to the flat prairies of Illinois, or the tangled forests of Michigan, or the alluvial deposits of the Mississippi. It was a paradise of hills and vales, easily converted into lawns and gardens, such as the primitive settlers of New England would have looked upon with blended ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... World Bank and the IMF have been cut off since 1993 because of the government's gross corruption and mismanagement. Businesses, for the most part, are owned by government officials and their family members. Undeveloped natural resources include titanium, iron ore, manganese, uranium, and alluvial gold. The country responded favorably to the devaluation of the CFA franc in January 1994. Boosts in production, along with high world oil prices, should further stimulate ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... mother, Linda; there's nothing to be much alarmed for as yet; I hope this plan of Holt's may stop its progress. I'll be at the house as soon as I can, tell her;' and he ran after the others, down to the mouth of the creek, where a strip of alluvial land, covered with bushes and rank grass, interrupted the belt of firs and cedars. Calling in fire as an ally against itself seemed to Robert very perilous; but the calm Indians, accustomed to wilderness exigencies, set about the protective burning at once. The flame easily ran through the dry ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... success. The British Indian forces engaged were increased in number and strength, and, in spite of appalling conditions of climate, and notwithstanding more than one narrow escape from disaster, the British flag was pushed further and further forward into this flat alluvial country. In the autumn of 1915, we held all the country up to Nasiriyeh on the Euphrates and to Kut el Amara on the Tigris. Then that ill-fated decision was arrived at which sent General Townshend, with the inadequate force at his command, ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... of the lowlands revealed no minerals—nothing but alluvial material of unknown depth—and there was no reason to stay longer except that return to the caves was impossible until spring came. They built attack-proof shelters in the trees and settled down to wait ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... and Euphrates combine with the ordinary action of their streams upon their banks to produce a constant variation in their courses, which in a long period of time might amount to something very considerable. It is impossible to say, with respect to any portion of the alluvial plain, that it may not at some former period have been the bed of one or the other river. Still it would seem that, on the whole, a law of compensation prevails, with the result that the general position of the streams in the valley is not very different now ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... enumerated. The road from Louisville to the Cave, and thence to Nashville, is graded the entire distance, and the greater part of it M'Adamized. From Louisville to the mouth of Salt river, twenty miles, the country is level, with a rich alluvial soil, probably at some former period the bed of a lake. A few miles below the former place and extending to the latter, a chain of elevated hills is seen to the South-East, affording beautiful and picturesque situations for country seats, and strangely overlooked ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... between the Rice Lake and the Ontario, a deep and fertile valley, surrounded by lofty wood-crowned hills, clothed chiefly with groves of oak and pine, the sides of the hills and the alluvial bottoms display a variety of noble timber trees of various kinds, as the useful and beautiful maple, beech, and hemlock. This beautiful and highly picturesque valley is watered by many clear streams, whence it derives its appropriate ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... head waters of the Gallegos River. They were disappointed in their search until they crossed the Cordillera, and sighted the gloomy shores of Last Hope Inlet, leading into Smyth Channel. They there found alluvial sand and gold-bearing quartz, yielding but poor results. Unfortunately, some natives assured them that the metal they sought abounded in Hanover Island. They obtained canoes, voyaged down the long inlet, crossed the straits, and struck inland towards ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... are numerous and too complex to fully analyze in a little book like this one. They include the intrinsic mineralization of the soil itself, the temperature of the soil during the growing season, and the high nutritional needs of the vegetables themselves. In my experience, a few alluvial soils that get regular, small additions of organic matter can grow good vegetable crops without additional help. However, these sites are regularly flooded and replenished with highly mineralized rock particles. Additionally, they must become very warm during the growing ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... 7 A.M., reached Hazarebaug, a small station, about two hundred and twenty miles from Calcutta. It is a healthy spot; the earth sandy and rocky, presenting a strong contrast to the loomy and alluvial soil of Southern Bengal. From Rogonnathpore to Hazarebaug the road runs through an almost uninterrupted jungle, swarming with wild beasts. At this place we met with a hospitable friend, who stored our palankeens with provisions, after giving us ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... when the vein would fault and cease as entirely as if cut off. And the explanation of this is entirely theoretical. The theory is that the place of the gold was the gravel bed of an old stream, an old stream antedating the petrified forests of the South-west, and that, when vast alluvial deposits were carried over a great part of the {49} continent by inland lakes and seas, the gold settled to the bottom and was buried beneath the deposits of countless centuries. Then convulsive changes shook the earth's surface. Mountains heaved up where had been sea bottom ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... sails in flotillas of a dozen at a time crawled up the deep water, or were towed through the shallows by crews frolicking and shouting. Then the scene changed to a broad and deep river, with a peculiar alluvial smell from the quantity of vegetable matter held in suspension, flowing calmly between densely wooded, bamboo-fringed banks, just high enough to conceal the surrounding country. No houses, or nearly none, are to be seen, but signs of a continuity ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... pounded or heated, and then it emits a fragrant odour. It has considerable lustre; becomes highly electric by friction; and will burn with a yellow flame. It is found in nodules of various sizes in alluvial soils, or on the seashore in many places, particularly on the shores of the Baltic. Amber is much employed for ornamental purposes, and is also used in the manufacture of amber-varnish. It will not dissolve in alcohol, but yields to the concentrated ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead
... Mesopotamia, whereas Egypt has yielded to us the most perfect examples of the flint-knapper's art known, flint tools and weapons more beautiful than the finest that Europe and America can show. The reason is not far to seek. Southern Mesopotamia is an alluvial country, and the ancient cities, which doubtless mark the sites of the oldest settlements in the land, are situated in the alluvial marshy plain between the Tigris and the Euphrates; so that all traces of the Neolithic culture of the country would seem to have disappeared, buried deep beneath city-mounds, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... at right angles to the scouring and grinding action of the glacial period. No long Sacramento Valley, stretching away to the south and west of the quartzite upheavals, has here retained and preserved the spoils of those long ages of attrition and denudation. The alluvial gold has mostly been carried, by the action alluded to, into the sands and beneath the waves of the Atlantic Ocean; and it is only at the bottom of the numerous little lakes which dot the surface of the country, that the precious metal, in this, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... of Osaka in Japan, attributed the disease to a microscopic spore found largely developed in rice, and which he had also detected in the earth of certain alluvial ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... marched as usual, and soon passed Nzasa close to the river, which is only indicated by a line of trees running through a rich alluvial valley. We camped at the little settlement of Kizoto, inhospitably presided over by Phanze Mukia ya Nyani or Monkey's Tail, who no sooner heard of our arrival than he sent a demand for his "rights." One dubani was issued, with orders than ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... against the tyrants of the earth, rose from all the varying soils of France, as if the dragon's teeth had been sown broadcast, and had yielded fruit equally on hill and plain, on rock, in gravel, and alluvial mud, under the bright sky of the South and under the clouds of the North, in fell and forest, in the vineyards and the olive-grounds and among the cropped grass and the stubble of the corn, along the fruitful banks of the broad ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... by the mouth of a small river, which ran down through a very narrow alluvial flat, backed by precipitous rocks. On the right side of the river on entering, and on the level ground above mentioned, which extended back perhaps two hundred yards, until it was met by the rocky cliffs, was situated the village which, centuries back, must have been the town ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... of the Sahara. The light plays few tricks with it. Its monotony is wearisome rather than impressive, and the fact that it is seldom without some form of dwarfish vegetation makes the transition less startling when the alluvial green is finally reached. One had always half expected it, and it does not spring at a djinn's wave out of ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... thinned, openings in the wood appeared, then wide and naked clearings, then extensive fields of the hardy holcus, Indian corn, and maweri or bajri, with here and there a square tembe or village. Still nearer ran thin lines of fresh young grass, great trees surrounded a patch of alluvial meadow. A broad river-bed, containing several rivulets of water, ran through the thirsty fields, conveying the vivifying element which in this part of Usagara was so scarce and precious. Down to the river-bed sloped the Mpwapwa, roughened in some places by great ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... industry; a policy to make the resources of the state serve general interests would have been established, and the good of the many had been kept in view. Cotton-growing, and tobacco-planting, and rice-cultivating, had been encouraged and fostered. Those rich alluvial bottoms, so fertile and yet so uncultivated, had given out their rich harvests to some purpose—untaxed prosperity would have rewarded the hand of the hardy husbandman. India would then, besides proving herself the greatest exporting empire in the world, have clothed, ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... torrent. There was no neighbor for ten or fifteen miles on either side of me. The river twisted down in long curves between narrow bottoms bordered by sheer cliff walls, for the Bad Lands, a chaos of peaks, plateaus, and ridges, rose abruptly from the edges of the level, tree-clad, or grassy, alluvial meadows. In front of the ranch-house veranda was a row of cottonwood trees with gray-green leaves which quivered all day long if there was a breath of air. From these trees came the far-away, melancholy cooing of mourning doves, and little owls perched in them ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... their flat or gently-sloping-surfaces never fail to introduce, into the midst of desolation and barrenness, the elements of fertility, even where the habitations of men may not have been raised. These alluvial promontories, however, threaten, in some places, to bisect the waters which they have long adorned; and, in course of ages, they will cause some of the lakes to dwindle into numerous and insignificant pools; which, in their turn, will finally be filled up. But, checking these intrusive calculations, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... in regard to gold mining was in Ballarat, when a well-known miner and business man in that pretty town took me round the old alluvial diggings and pointed out the most celebrated claims. These (in 1879) were, of course, deserted or left to an occasional Chinese "fossicker," who rewashed the rejected pay dirt, which occasionally has enough gold in it to satisfy the easily-pleased Mongolian. I went with my friend that ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... garish mid-day atmosphere brought him in the afternoon to a detached knoll a mile or two west of Talbothays, whence he again looked into that green trough of sappiness and humidity, the valley of the Var or Froom. Immediately he began to descend from the upland to the fat alluvial soil below, the atmosphere grew heavier; the languid perfume of the summer fruits, the mists, the hay, the flowers, formed therein a vast pool of odour which at this hour seemed to make the animals, the very bees and butterflies drowsy. Clare was now so familiar with the spot that he knew ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... to prevent a catastrophe which might bring ruin and destruction on their new colony. In Nova Scotia, as well as in other parts of North America, large level spaces are found covered with a rich alluvial soil, from which spring up waving fields of wild grass. From this the human settler draws an abundant supply of hay for his stock in winter, and ought to feel deeply indebted to the persevering beaver for the boon. They are known as "wild meadows," and are of frequent ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... Nelson Rivers. The surrounding country is flat and swampy and covered with willows, poplars, larch, spruce, and birch-trees; but the requisition for fuel has expended all the wood in the vicinity of the fort and the residents have now to send for it to a considerable distance. The soil is alluvial clay and contains imbedded rolled stones. Though the bank of the river is elevated about twenty feet it is frequently overflown by the spring floods, and large portions are annually carried away by the disruption of the ice which, grounding in the stream, have formed several muddy islands. These ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... appalling spectacle. The river, whose stream washes on three sides the base of the proud eminence on which the castle is situated, curves away from the fortress and its corresponding village on the west, and the hill sinks downward to an extensive plain, so extremely level as to indicate its alluvial origin. Lower down, at the extremity of this plain, where the banks again close on the river, were situated the manufacturing houses of the stout Flemings, which were now burning in a bright flame. The bridge, a high, narrow combination of arches of unequal size, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... ice-free country inland. The Derwent carrying off the water from some of these hills found its outlet gradually blocked by the advancing lobe of a glacier, and the water having accumulated into a lake (named after Hackness in the map), overflowed along the edge of the ice into the broad alluvial plain now called the Vale of Pickering. Up to a considerable height, probably about 200 feet, the drainage of the Derwent and the other streams flowing into the Vale was imprisoned, and thus ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... Balichus and the Khabur. From this point on for the remaining distance of 800 miles, so far from receiving fresh accessions, it loses in quantity through the marsh beds that form on both sides. When it reaches the alluvial soil of Babylonia proper, its current and also its depth are considerably diminished through the numerous canals that form an outlet for its waters. Of its entire length, 1780 miles, it is navigable only for ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... through rich alluvial lands at this point and around a number of verdant islands in its leisurely course. Southward, along the old front line, the land is more level, where the river makes its bend in front of Peronne. Northward, generically, it rises into a region of rolling ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... from the tusks of the great mammoth or fossil elephant of the geologist. The remains of this gigantic animal are abundantly distributed over the whole extent of the globe. They exist in large masses in the northern hemisphere, deeply embedded in the alluvial deposits of the tertiary period. Humboldt discovered specimens on some of the most elevated ridges of the Andes; and similar remains have been found in Africa. In the frozen regions of the far ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... slight observation of him sufficed to show that, like a Norman peasant, he invariably held the upper hand in business matters. He was an authority on wine-making, the leading science of Touraine. He had managed to extend the meadow lands of his domain by taking in a part of the alluvial soil of the Loire without getting into difficulties with the State. This clever proceeding gave him the reputation of a man of talent. If Monsieur de Bourbonne's conversation pleased you and you were to ask who he was of a Tourainean, "Ho! a sly old fox!" ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... nothing of low or venal has any place in them; nothing pusillanimous, nothing unsocial and austere. I speak of them as they were; before Superstition woke up again from her slumber, and caught to her bosom with maternal love the alluvial monsters of the Nile. Philosophy, never fit for the people, had entered the best houses, and the image of Epicurus had taken the place of the Lemures. But men cannot bear to be deprived long together of anything they are used to, not even of their fears; ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... poplars, larch, spruce, and birch-trees; but the requisition for fuel has expended all the wood in the vicinity of the fort, and the residents have now to send for it to a considerable distance. The soil is alluvial clay, and contains imbedded rolled stones. Though the bank of the river is elevated about twenty feet, it is frequently overflown by the spring-floods, and large portions are annually carried away by the disruption ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... long, bipinnate, and composed of numerous bluish-green leaflets. Flowers white, borne in loose spikes in the beginning of summer, and succeeded by flat, somewhat curved brown pods. It prefers a rich, strong soil or alluvial deposit. ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... fierce, variable streams, which have buried the lower levels under great stretches of shingle, patched with jungles of hippophae and tamarisk, affording cover for innumerable wolves. Great lateral torrents descend to these rivers, and on alluvial ridges formed at the junctions are the villages with their pleasant surroundings of barley, lucerne, wheat, with poplar and fruit trees, and their picturesque gonpos crowning spurs of rock above them. The first view of Nubra is ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... the remains of animals and vegetables, and consequently formed after their creation;—the Tertiary formation, composed of layers of clay, sand, gravel, and marl, and containing peculiar organic remains;—and the Alluvial formation, constituted of parts of previous rocks separated by water, &c., and ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... their plan of life and mode of settlement. The illustrations should be drawn from the Village Indians, to which class the Mound-Builders undoubtedly belonged. Not knowing the use of wells, they established their settlements on the margins of rivers and small streams, which afforded alluvial land for cultivation, and often within a few miles of each other. In the valley of the Rio Chaco, in New Mexico, there were several pueblos within an extent of twelve miles, each consisting of a single joint-tenement house, ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... of the "villas" in which the great landed proprietors resided. The wealth of remains which it has furnished is merely a by-product of the "coprolite" digging, and it is probable that equally systematic digging would have like results in almost any alluvial district in the island. We may therefore regard it as fairly established that these districts were as thickly peopled under the Romans as at any other period of history, and that the agricultural population of our island ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... Hai-Cheng and the sea made the worst going we had encountered in Manchuria. You soon are convinced that the time has not been long since this tract of land lay entirely under the waters of the Gulf of Liaotung. You soon scent the salt air, and as you flounder in the alluvial deposits of ages, you expect to find the salt-water at the very roots of the millet. Water lies in every furrow of the miles of cornfields, water flows in streams in the roads, water spreads in lakes ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... mountains by its immense rivers. The valleys of the Indus (1800 miles long), the Ganges (1600 miles long), and the Brahmapootra (1500 miles long) include an area of 1,125,000 square miles, a part of which, the Indus-Ganges plain, consists of a great stretch of alluvial soil whose fertility is as rich as that of any portion of the globe. One hundred and eighty millions of people live in this plain. So finely pulverised is its soil that for a distance of almost 2000 miles not even a pebble ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... valley, at depths varying from fifty to two hundred feet, the sides nearly always sheer cliff; at intervals were nullahs, down which ran streams of snow water from the hills to the river, or fans of alluvial deposit brought down by floods in previous years. On the flank of one such fan we found the village of Gasht, which we reached by 3.30 P.M. The Levies had already occupied the knoll at the lower end of the village from whence the enemy had before been ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... proceed; for I have observed within fifteen years the total drying up of streamlets by the removal of the forest, and these streamlets had evidently once been rivulets and even rivers of some size, as their banks, cut through alluvial soils, plainly indicated. ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... sail] from the Baltic down to Greece. Now the whole of that tract of country is flat and level, and from the sands near Koningsberg, through the calcareous loam of Poland and the Ukraine, evidently alluvial and ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... next mile, the trace led through heavy bottom-timber, such as we had traversed, after leaving the settlement of Swampville. The black earth, of alluvial origin, was covered deeply with decayed vegetation; and the track of horses and cattle had converted the path into mud. At intervals, it was intersected by embayments of wet morass—the projecting arms of a great swamp, that appeared to run parallel with the creek. ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... be security for the good government not only of the area included in the scheme, but of the whole course of the river above it. These Asiatic rivers are tricky things: they run for hundreds of miles through alluvial plains which are as flat as your hand. Here at Amarah, 200 miles from the mouth of the Tigris, we are only 28ft. above sea-level. Consequently the river's course is very easily altered. Look at Stanford's map of this region and see how the Euphrates has lost itself ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... army and the Arab troops passed in succession Yeddie, a large walled city twenty miles from Angoumou, Badagry, and several other towns built on an alluvial soil which has a dark ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... defence of Arminian doctrine. A voice shouts "Carstairs Junction," with a command of the letter r, which is the bequest of an unconquerable past, and inspires one with the hope of some day hearing a freeborn Scot say "Auchterarder." The train runs over bleak moorlands with black peat holes, through alluvial straths yielding their last pickle of corn, between iron furnaces blazing strangely in the morning light, at the foot of historical castles built on rocks that rise out of the fertile plains, and then, after a space of sudden darkness, any man with a soul counts the ten hours' ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... establishments. It may be regarded as the granary of the colony, being capable by itself of supplying nearly all the wants of the settlement. The depth of soil in some parts is as much as 80 feet; and it is truly prodigious in point of fertility. These incalculable advantages are due to the alluvial deposits of the Hawkesbury River, which descends in cascades from the summits of the Blue Mountains, and precipitates itself upon the plain loaded with a thick mud of a quality eminently suitable for promoting vegetable growth. Unfortunately ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... Geology of the epoch of man. Late tertiary and quaternary periods. Glacial phenomena. River drift. Diluvial and alluvial deposits. Physical geography of the quaternary. Prehistoric ...
— Anthropology - As a Science and as a Branch of University Education in the United States • Daniel Garrison Brinton
... luck, which was discharged, after we got there, for lack of evidence. There was no work suitable to our instincts; so me and Liverpool began to subsist on the red rum of the country and such fruit as we could reap where we had not sown. It was an alluvial town, called Soledad, where there was no harbour or future or recourse. Between steamers the town slept and drank rum. It only woke up when there were bananas to ship. It was like a man sleeping through dinner until ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... seems very anxious that they should learn to cultivate the soil, own farms, and live like white men. After talking a couple of hours with these old people, I go to see the farms. They are situated in a very beautiful district, where many fine streams of water meander across alluvial plains and meadows. These creeks have a considerable fall, and it is easy to take their waters out above and ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... Narenta is but thinly populated, a circumstance easily accounted for by the noxious vapours which exhale from the alluvial and ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... of hope rang in Billie's breast. She might have reached the lava. If so, there was a chance that she might be alive. For though the wind had sweep enough here, the fine dust-sand of the alluvial plain could not be carried so densely into this rock-sea. Perhaps she had slipped into a fissure and ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... they were camped, the valley had been, at some distant period, a lake which had subsided after depositing a rich layer of silt, through which the stream had cut its way subsequently. Over this rich alluvial deposit the forest had spread luxuriantly, and it was only the skill of the experienced prospector that could discover the possibilities of the enormous stretches of river silt which Nature had so carefully hidden beneath the tangled, ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... and were probably connected with those of Safed, crossing the Jordan valley north of that lake; owing to this the waters of the Lake of Merom (Huleh) were pent up, and formerly covered an extensive tract, now formed of alluvial deposits. ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... of the ripening of Greek Art in the fifth century before Christ." After speaking of the fortunate balance and interaction of races which resulted in the Greek Art of that era, he goes on to speak of the exceptionally favouring circumstances of the people: "Here are no vast alluvial plains, such as those along which, in the East, whole empires surged to and fro in battle; no mighty flood of rivers, no towering mountain walls: instead, a tract of moderate size; a fretted promontory thrust ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... tablelands and pretty rich alluvial valleys," Foster answered with a smile. "The province depends ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... quite different from those of the peaty marshes on the opposite side of the district, belonging to an alluvial soil, washed down from the chalk hills. The great reed-mace adorns the Itchen, and going along the disused towing path of the canal there is to be found abundance of the black and golden spikes of the sedge, and the curious balls of the bur-reed, ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... of Loudoun vary greatly in both geological character and productiveness, every variety from a rich alluvial to an unproductive clay occurring within her boundaries. In general the soils are deep ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... coast of Alaska may be said to be perhaps a million years younger than any land on this continent, for it is still in the glacial period. The vast alluvial plains and valleys of the interior are rimmed in to the southward and shut off from the Pacific by a well-nigh impassable mountain barrier, the top of which is capped with perpetual snow. Its gorges, for the most part, run rivers of ice instead of water. ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... grows wild throughout the Middle West, usually along small water courses and alluvial lands. There are perhaps one hundred and fifty on a creek corner on ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... tributaries, and I think are not found on the west side further south than the parallel of 46 degrees N. latitude." (The latitude of this place is 46 degrees 16' 50".) "They alternate, even where most abundant, with much larger tracts of fertile country." Again he says— "As might be expected from its alluvial character, there is no pine timber in the valley of the Red River, but the oak and elm there attain to a size which I do not think I have ever seen elsewhere." In another place he remarks that "the pineries along the Crow Wing River are among the most extensive and valuable found on the ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... between the masses of stone, and he still desperately pulled to divide them, so that the torrent could escape through. The eyes of this object rolled in pain, but he gave no sign of relinquishing his hold, and again the painful whisper skipped through the abyss, "Who goes back from the alluvial?" Mr. Waples got a breathful of air from an explosion of bubbles, and boldly ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... vegetation. The dry land, which is only exposed during the hot season, is the result of the decay of vegetable matter. The ashes of the grass that is annually burnt, by degrees form a soil. We are even now witnessing the operation that has formed, and is still increasing, the vast tract of alluvial soil through which we have passed. There is not a stone nor even a small pebble for a distance of two hundred miles; the ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... and charitable, so that at death he became one of the judges of hell. His city in time got overwhelmed with the encroaching ocean, but its walls were not overthrown, nor were the rooms encumbered with the weeds and alluvial of the sea. One day a dwarf, named Vamen, asked the mighty monarch to allow him to measure three of his own paces for a hut to dwell in. Baly smiled, and bade him measure out what he required. The first pace ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Mexico have not a hillock three hundred feet high to obstruct their flow up the Mississippi eastward and northward, until they reach the State of Illinois. And the men that do business in the cities of this prosperous State, or till its fertile and alluvial soil, that was lifted up, not many geologic ages ago, from beneath the bottom of the sea, are so rich they do not know how rich they are. But it is a peril to be rich. Jesus, Paul and Solomon unite in saying so, and it is especially a peril when wealth comes suddenly. ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... pointed out Asmack not far off,—a thin old black man who must once have been a stately giant, but bent forward now as if searching the earth for his own grave. He had got to his feet, from a squatting position in the coal-stained, alluvial clay of this strange desert, and was gazing toward us, his few rags fluttering in the warm wind. Beside him stood a mere youth of fifty or so, and two or three young men, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... examining a great river-system, and finding everywhere adaptations which reveal the design of the Creator. "He would see special adaptation to the wants of man in broad, quiet, navigable rivers, through fertile alluvial plains that would support a large population, while the rocky streams and mountain torrents were confined to those sterile regions suitable only for a small population of shepherds and herdsmen.') is new to me, and admirable; but your other metaphor, in which ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... in this part of the Hudson are low, being rich, alluvial meadows, bordered by trees and bushes; most of the first being willows, sycamores, or nuts. The fertility of the soil had given to these trees rapid growths, and they were generally of some stature; though not one among them had that great size which ought to mark the body and branches of a venerable ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... are, indeed, six times as numerous on the north as on the south of a line drawn across the main island from the coast of Ise through Orai. The neighbourhood of the sea, at heights of from thirty to three hundred feet, and the alluvial plains are their favourite positions. So far as the technical skill shown by the relics—especially the pottery—is concerned, it grows higher with the latitude. The inference is that the settlements of the aborigines in the south were ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... some time at a place called Long Creek, on the margin of a broad and rapid stream, which might well have borne the more dignified appellation of river—the land on its borders was the flat, rich "intervale," so highly prized, formed by alluvial deposits. There are, I believe, two descriptions of this intervale,—one covered with low small bushes, and, therefore, more easily cleared—the other with a gigantic growth of the butternut, the oak, and the elm. This where we lived was of the latter description. A few of the stately monarchs ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... we leave this broad alluvial bottom to enter the canon through which the river, ages ago, began to cut its course. These ridges of limestone, loess and drift rise a hundred feet or more above the level of the plain from which the river suddenly turns aside. They are thickly covered with timber. There is ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... transit lines, the confluence of two or more streams of trade, and easy communication. The final limit to the size and importance of the great city has been the commercial "sphere of influence" commanded by that city, the capacity of the alluvial basin of its commerce, so to speak, the volume of its river of trade. About the meeting point so determined the population so determined has grouped itself—and this is the point I overlooked in those previous vaticinations—in ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... Mr. Riches to the Treasury to see the nuggets which had been collected by the Local Government to be shown at the Exhibition. Some of them were fine specimens, especially the last great find at Teetulpa—a solid alluvial lump of gold. There was also a splendid piece of gold quartz, brought in only yesterday from Mount Pleasant. We next visited the post-office, and were shown all over that establishment by Mr. Todd, the Postmaster-General. There I saw for the first time the working ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... the tales is, perhaps, a less extravagant invention than we are at first inclined to think. A lake, nearly as large as the Victoria Nyanza, once covered the marshy plain where the Bahr-el-Abiad unites with the Sobat and with the Bahr-el-Ghazal. Alluvial deposits have filled up all but its deepest depression, which is known as Birket Nu; but in ages preceding our era it must still have been vast enough to suggest to Egyptian soldiers and boatmen the idea of an actual sea opening ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the first glimpse the aspect of the Atlantic coast to the south of Brazil gave little promise of the wealth—that is to say, of the gold—sought by the pioneers, since its shores were low, marshy, and alluvial. ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... originality disturbs the adaptive process, removes the mind of the poet from the thoughts of other men, and occupies it with its own heated and flashing thoughts. Poetry of the second degree is like the secondary rocks of modern geology,—a still, gentle, alluvial formation: the igneous glow of primary genius brings forth ideas like the primeval granite, simple, astounding, and alone. Milton's case is an exception to this rule. His mind has marked originality, probably as much of it as any in literature: but it has as much of molded recollection as any ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... obtained when these have been fertilized and sufficient moisture is present. On stiff clays the growth is too slow to produce crops highly satisfactory either North or South, and in dry weather it is also difficult to obtain a stand of the plants. The alluvial soils of river bottoms in the South produce good crops. The vegetable soils of the prairie do not grow the plants very well, and the adaptation in slough or swamp soils is even lower. Good crops will not be obtained on soils underlaid with hardpan which comes up near the surface, ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... [Footnote 150: Modern alluvial accumulations are rapidly increasing on some points of this coast, owing to the enormous mass of fresh water, charged with earthy matter, that here mingles with the sea. The surface of the water at the mouth ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... walls of the fortress wore so thick and so high, that he made very little impression. At last his whole supply of stones—for stones served in those days instead of cannon balls—was exhausted, and as the town was situated in an alluvial district, in which no stones were to be found, he was obliged to send ten or twelve miles to the upland to procure a fresh supply of ammunition. All this consumed much time, and enabled the garrison to recruit themselves a great deal ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... sandy, alluvial soil, impregnated with salt, is naturally best adapted to the growth of Asparagus; and, in such soil, its cultivation is an easy matter. Soils of a different character must be made rich by the application ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... but he had seen enough of it to recognize that prospecting is an art. Men certainly strike a vein or alluvial placer by the merest chance now and then, but the trained man works from indication to indication until, though he is sometimes mistaken, he feels reasonably sure as to what waits to be uncovered by the blasting charge or shovel. Grenfell's previous ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... to anchor. I was greeted by the natives. The Greek population are armed, and the number of Turks in the surrounding district does not exceed fifteen. Opposite to us is the pass of Thermopylae, of which pass there is now no remains, the sea having receded and a considerable plain of alluvial soil now exists where the Pass must have been. The part of Thessaly opposite the Negropont is the ancient Myseria and the first scene of the memorable Argonautic Expedition. Volo was Iolcos, from which Jason embarked his band of adventurers. ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... of three parallel ranges of hills running transversely across it—the Mendips and their outliers in the N.E., the insignificant Poldens in the centre, and the Quantocks and Exmoor in the W., with the Blackdowns occupying the S.W. corner. The intervening basins are filled with a rich alluvial deposit washed down from the hills or left by the receding sea. The Mendips spread themselves across the E. end of the county in a N.W. direction from Frome to Weston-super-Mare, where they lose themselves in the Channel, to re-appear as the islets ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... the grandest of all grasses, and is sufficiently hardy to endure most of our winters. It is, however, desirable to give it some protection. It requires a deep, rich, alluvial soil, with plenty of room and a good supply of water. Plants may be raised from seed sown thinly in pots during February or March, barely covering it with very fine soil, and keeping the surface damp. Plant out at end of May. They will flower when three or four years old. ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink |
