"Basaltic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plateaus, into which many great chasms are cut, the best known and largest of which is the great Canon of the Colorado. North and east of the Great Basin is the Columbia River Basin characterized by basaltic rolling plains and broken mountain country. To the west, the floor of the Great Basin is lifted up into the region of eternal snow by the Sierra Nevada Mountains, which north of Nevada are known as the Cascades. On the west, the ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... Rapids 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 have constructed a portage road on the west ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue
... dell'Isola.” The village of St. Lussurgiu is literally built in a 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 two hills, called “pizzè-ogheddu,” and “pizzè ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... table at a game 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
... 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 ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... having been produced by earthquakes, owing to the 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 are quite of a different character, being of a pacific and rather ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... gun, with the view of producing a still stronger effect of the same kind. When we had fairly satisfied ourselves with contemplating the cave, we all entered the boat and sailed round by the Clamshell Cave (where the basaltic columns are bent like the ribs of a ship), and the Rock of the Bouchaille, or the herdsman, formed of small columns, as regular and as interesting as the larger productions. We all clambered to the top of the rock, which ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... appeared, only Conseil and I were taken ashore by the skiff. The soil's nature was still the same: volcanic. Traces of lava, slag, and basaltic rock were everywhere, but I couldn't find the crater that had vomited them up. There as yonder, myriads of birds enlivened this part of the polar continent. But they had to share their dominion with huge herds of marine mammals that looked ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... coast of Van Diemen's Land, from the solitary Mewstone to the basaltic cliffs of Tasman's Head, from Tasman's Head to Cape Pillar, and from Cape Pillar to the rugged grandeur of Pirates' Bay, resembles a biscuit at which rats have been nibbling. Eaten away by the continual action of the ocean which, pouring round by east and west, has divided the peninsula from the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... was submarine and subterranean; cool, dimly-illuminated grottoes, some in basaltic, columnar rock, some in emerald-glowing stalactite, invited all the fantastic creatures of the sea, both fabled and real, who were promenading about on the floor of the deep, to a sweet, life-long siesta in their softly-gleaming recesses. On the second floor luxuriant equatorial palm-groves grew ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... their future revival and rehabitation; some of them of great size, as Um-el-Jemal (probably the Beth-gamul of Scripture), a city covering as large a space as Jerusalem, with its high and massive basaltic town walls, its squares, its public buildings, its paved streets, and its houses with their rooms, stairs, revolving and frequently sculptured stone-doors, all nearly as complete and unbroken, as if its old inhabitants had only deserted it yesterday. ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... favourable circumstances, 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. Another kind, in the ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... 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 ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Tradition relates that the castle was destroyed by the Emperor Henry V., in the twelfth century. At the foot of the mountain is the sweet little Island of Nonnenwoerth, of about one hundred acres, and the ruins of a convent. The rock here is basaltic, and the production of volcanic action. Never did Nature present a fairer picture than we gazed upon at this spot. The villages around are pictures of happiness and content, and the scenery such as only the Rhine can exhibit. Passing by the charming, rural-looking ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... 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 ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... imagine a more beautiful and impressive scene than that presented by these long alleys of imperial pines. They grow so thickly one behind another, that we might compare them to the pipes of a great organ, or the pillars of a Gothic church, or the basaltic columns of the Giant's Causeway. Their tops are evergreen and laden with the heavy cones, from which Ravenna draws considerable wealth. Scores of peasants are quartered on the outskirts of the forest, whose business ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... biscuit-box, containing a paper on 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 ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... 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 a large two-funnel liner, ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... even practicable; but fortune favours the brave. Her Majesty has described the landing. "At three we anchored close before Staffa, and immediately got into the barge, with Charles, the children, and the rest of our people, and rowed towards the cave. As we rounded the point the wonderful basaltic formation came into sight. The appearance it presents is most extraordinary, and when we turned the corner to go into the renowned Fingal's Cave the effect was splendid, like a great entrance into a vaulted hall; it looked almost awful as we entered, and the barge heaved ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... river flows through, he wandered away to the north, and followed up the Gilbert River, thus duplicating, only further to the south, the eccentric course of Leichhardt. The dividing watershed was crossed on the basaltic plateau at the head of the Burdekin, and this stream was traced to the Suttor junction, where Leichhardt first struck it. They travelled on up the Suttor, and also up the Belyando, connecting with Major Mitchell's track. Their course then lay through the country ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... 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
... exaggeration of what Blumenbach did that an unfair writer of later times has attempted to deprive Cuvier of the glory of having accomplished this object upon the broadest possible basis. From Goettingen he visited the Rhine, for the purpose of studying geology, and in particular the basaltic formations of the Seven Mountains. At Mayence he became acquainted with George Forster, who proposed to accompany him on a journey to England. You may imagine what impression the conversation of that active, impetuous and powerful man had upon the youthful Humboldt. They went to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... stretches swept by the volcano-breath of the desert, through acacia barrens and across basaltic ridges the two lonely figures struggled on and on. They fell, rested, slept a nightmare sleep under the furious heat, got up again and dragged themselves once ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... 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
... 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 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... receiving the temporal reward, and without 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 over, receives his baptism when he is taken into the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... 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
... 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 at night several roost together in one tree; but in the early part ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... 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
... Roman Catholic institution be in Mexico without its mystery and miracles? In this instance, the legend runs to the effect that the angels built as much each night upon the walls of the church while it was erecting as the terrestrial workmen did each day. It is of basaltic material, supported by massive buttresses, and as a whole is surpassingly grand. High up over the central doorway of the main front is placed in carved stone the insignia of the order of the Golden Fleece. The interior is as effective and elegant as that ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... 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 ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... 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
... far down its rocky sides, and that the profound blackness of the abyss was now broken by a minute green glow, like the light of a glow-worm. And almost immediately the limb of a huge heavenly body of blazing green rose over the basaltic undulations of the distant hills, and the monstrous hill-masses about him came out gaunt and desolate, in green light and deep, ruddy black shadows. He became aware of a vast number of ball-shaped objects drifting as thistledown ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... through which these materials have been erupted; the dome, of a variety of trachytic lava, which has been extruded in a molten, or viscous, condition from a central pipe, and in such cases there is no distinct crater. There are other forms of volcanic mountains, such as those built up of basaltic matter, of which I shall have to speak hereafter, but the two former varieties are the most prevalent; and we may now proceed to consider the conditions under which the crater-cone ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... and over a spur of the mountain to the valley of the Yellowstone, which we followed up eight miles to our present camp. Along on our right in passing up the valley was a vast natural pile of basaltic rock, perpendicular, a part of which had been overthrown, showing transverse seams in the rock. Away at the right in the highest range bordering the valley was Pyramid mountain, itself a snow-capped peak; and further up the range was ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... 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 ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... 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 ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... the union of the organic acids with the inorganic bases of alkalies, earths, and oxides which have become soluble, and been brought to the surface from below by capillary attraction. I may also mention, that the basaltic plateaux upon the sandstone rocks of Central and Southern India are often surmounted with a deposit, more or less deep, of laterite, or indurated iron clay, the detritus of which tends to promote fertility in the soil. I have never myself seen any other deposit than this ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman |
