"Excavation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... introduced during the migrations after the Dorian invasion. Men could carry the ashes of their friends to the place where they finally settled. [Footnote: Helbig, Homerische Epos, p.83] The question may, perhaps, be elucidated by excavation, especially in Asia Minor, on the sites of the earliest Greek colonies. At Colophon are many cairns unexplored by science. Mr. Ridgeway, as is well known, attributes the introduction of cremation to a conquering northern people, the Achaeans, his "Celts." ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... of whom so lately I had been one—I was not at all conscious. I might have been at work on some new planet for all they touched my new life. I could see them peering over the wooden rail around our excavation as they stopped to stare down at us, but I did not connect them with myself. And yet I felt closer to this old city than ever before. I thrilled with the joy of the constructor, the builder, even in this humble capacity. I felt superior ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... of a boat-hook stands the coffin on end in the excavation; the lid crumbles, exposing the remains ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... subdued and replenished, turned into arable land and pasture, with all the wildness and the irregularity ploughed and combed out of it; but still one comes upon some piece of dingle, where there is perhaps an awkward tilt in the ground, or some ancient excavation, or where a stream-head has cut out a steep channel, and there one finds a scrap of the old forest, a rood or two that has never been anything but woodland. So with shyness; many of our old, savage qualities have been smoothed ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... this stupendous excavation that impressed me with solemn thoughtfulness; it lies about sixty feet from the surface of the earth, and is divided into three apartments with arched roofs, the farthest of which is designated the Barons' Chamber. Time flowed back upon my memory as I sat in the niches ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... and they liked his cheerfulness and his interest in what they were doing and planning. On Saturdays he helped Roger build a hot bed in the sunniest spot against the side of the kitchen ell. They found that the frost had not stiffened the ground after they managed to dig down a foot, so that the excavation was not as hard as they had expected. They dug a hole the size of two window sashes and four feet deep, lining the sides with some old bricks that they found in the cellar. At first they filled the entire bed with fresh stable manure and straw. After it ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... afternoon trying to decide how to secure the most sun. Falkner, weary of the whole matter, listened to the glib young architect. Another windy day in April they returned to the lot to look at the excavation. The contracts were not yet signed. Lumber had gone soaring, and there was a strike in the brick business, the kind of brick they had chosen being unobtainable, while hardware seemed unaccountably precious. Already it was impossible to build the house ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... land on Cape Cod were once blown away. This wind excavation was ten feet deep. It was not an extraordinary wind, but extraordinary land. It was made of rock ground up into fine sand by the ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... and sometimes others are formed. Yet there are reasons for believing that the old village ruins on open sites, now almost obliterated, mark the first period in the occupancy of the canyon, perhaps even a period distinctly separated from the others. Excavation on these sites would ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... this part of the subject, and further added his opinion, that the lake came to be there in consequence of the wearing away of the rocks at the junction of the stratified with the primitive formation, thus creating an excavation in the surface, which in time became filled with water and formed the lake. This cause he also assigned for the existence of a remarkable "chain of lakes" that extends almost from the Arctic Sea to the frontiers ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... burial vault of great antiquity. Either it was an imitation of like chambers in Egypt, or they were imitations of it. The excavation had been done with chisels. The walls were niched, giving them an appearance of panelling, and over each of the niches there had been an inscription in raised letters, now mostly defaced. The floor was a confusion ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... I had found the tomb of a great warrior among the Mayas, I resolved to make an excavation, notwithstanding I had no tools or implements proper for such work. After two months of hard toil, after penetrating through three level floors painted with yellow ochre, at last a large stone urn came in sight. It was opened in presence of Colonel D. Daniel Traconis. It contained ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... my hands began to feel like baseball mitts, but still I dug. Crusoe had ceased to importune me; vaguely I was aware that he had got tired and run off. I toiled on, pausing now and then for breath. I was leaning on my spade, rather dejectedly considering the modest excavation I had achieved, when I felt a little cool splash at my feet. Dropping my spade I whirled around—and a shriek echoed through the cave as I saw pouring into it the dark insidious ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... by bridges of shores which Nature had made separate, the draining of Nature's marshes, the excavation of her wells, the dragging to light of what she has buried at immense depths in the earth; the turning away of her thunderbolts by lightning rods; of her inundations by embankments, of her ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... the navy; and on the same day the broken remains of Lincoln's cavalry, which had been re-collected, were again routed by Tarleton. Clinton's third parallel was erected close to the canal; and this canal was drained by means of another excavation. Consternation and despair seized upon the inhabitants of the town, but still Lincoln and the garrison resolved to hold out. Hostilities were recommenced with additional fury, and an incessant fire was kept up for two days, in the midst of which ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... island provided with a fringing reef, such as the Mauritius, the reef would present the aspect of a terrace, its seaward face, 100 feet or more high, blooming with the animal flowers of the coral, while its surface would be hollowed out into a shallow and irregular moat-like excavation. ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Plantagenets the royal forests were sixty-eight in number. In the forest of Arden it was said that down to modern times a squirrel might leap from tree to tree for nearly the whole length of Warwickshire. The excavation of ancient pile-villages in the valley of the Po has shown that long before the rise and probably the foundation of Rome the north of Italy was covered with dense woods of elms, chestnuts, and especially of oaks. Archaeology ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... across which planks were laid as a temporary roadway. Beneath these planks, which were taken up and put down as required, the rock was excavated to a depth of 9 feet, and the balks supported upon stout props. Then from the driftway or rough boring beneath well holes were bored to the upper excavation, and through them the strong upright iron pillars designed to support the roof of the new tunnel station were passed, bedded and securely fixed in position. No sooner were they in situ than the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... used in the process of excavation remained, and round it was a portion of the chain so old and rusty as to be worthless for any purpose whatever. Lengths had from time to time been broken off by boys, who would unwind a portion, and then, three or four pull together until the rust-eaten links gave way; ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... that excavation they made an oak wheel, a sort of circle strongly bolted and of enormous strength; in its centre a hole was pierced the size of the exterior diameter of the Columbiad. It was upon this wheel that the foundations of the masonry were placed, ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... from Mardon, but none the less did the process of excavation go on. It often happens that a man loses faith without knowing it. Silently the foundation is sapped while the building stands fronting the sun, as solid to all appearance as when it was first turned out of the builder's hands, but at last it falls suddenly with a crash. It was ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... road leading from Penrith to Appleby. The whole neighbourhood abounds in interesting traditions and vestiges of antiquity, viz., Julian's Bower; Brougham and Penrith Castles; Penrith Beacon, and the curious remains in Penrith Churchyard; Arthur's Round Table, and, close by, Maybrough; the excavation, called the Giant's Cave, on the banks of the Emont; Long Meg and her daughters, near ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... the north of us, leading westwards from the main valley, we found a beautiful mausoleum tomb,—a building, not an excavation in rock,—containing six sarcophagi, or ornamented stone coffins, ranged upon ledges of masonry, along three sides of the chamber. These were very large, and all of the same pattern—the lids remaining upon some of them, but shifted aside. ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... frightful whirlpools and eddies. These deep pools are to be filled at the same time that the reefs are cut away, and it is estimated that nearly three million cubic feet of loose stonework will be needed for this purpose alone. In addition to the excavation, artificial banks and breakwaters, for modifying the course of the stream, are to be built; so that it is estimated that the masonry to be executed in this section will amount to about five ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... or shipwreck or polar expedition brings out some hero who keeps the whole company in heart. Last year there was a terrible colliery explosion at Courrieres in France. Two hundred corpses, if I remember rightly, were exhumed. After twenty days of excavation, the rescuers heard a voice. "Me voici," said the first man unearthed. He proved to be a collier named Nemy, who had taken command of thirteen others in the darkness, disciplined them and cheered them, and brought them out alive. Hardly any ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... construction of a species of coffer-dam across the shore at right angles and up to the keel of the ship at the point where the tide came up to, just by the mizzen-chains; so that the water should not get down into the excavation that the men were digging until this should be deep enough to float the vessel, or, at all events, assist in easing her off the beach—for, if flooded prematurely, the labour would ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... noticed a spot where the ground was moist. He got his digging stick and proceeded to make a hole in the ground. He had not dug long when the water suddenly burst forth in great abundance and soon filled the excavation he had made. He hastened back to the camp and announced his success. When they left the Carrizo Mountains it was their intention to go to [¢]epéntsa, the La Plata Mountains, to hunt for food, and their halt at Tse'-biçà ï was designed to be ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... worthy of belief, these expenses were covered by the treasure Muhammed el-Ikshid himself discovered. In fact, el-Massudi, who died at Cairo in the year 346 of the Hegira, relates that el-Ikshid, knowing much treasure to be buried there, was greatly interested in the excavation of the subterraneous tombs of the ancient Egyptian kings. "The prince" he adds, "was fortunate enough to come across a portion of those tombs, consisting of vast rooms magnificently decorated. There he found marvellously wrought figures of old and young men, women, ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... gone by, in fact, and the last of the column had halted, there came to the ears of Henri and his friend the dull blow of picks, the scrape of spades against flints and stones, and the rattle of earth as it was thrown out of an excavation. ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... told Colonel Rose that they could do no more. The party was therefore disbanded, and the yet sanguine leader, with Hamilton for his sole helper, continued the work alone. Up to this time thirty-nine nights had been spent in the work of excavation. The two men now made a careful examination of the northeast corner of the cellar, at which point the earth's surface outside the prison wall, being eight or nine feet higher than at the canal or south side, afforded a better place to dig than the latter, being free from water and with clay-top ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... phenomenon. She had accepted this submergence as philosophically as all her other trials, and now, in extreme old age, was rewarded by presenting to her mirror an almost unwrinkled expanse of firm pink and white flesh, in the centre of which the traces of a small face survived as if awaiting excavation. A flight of smooth double chins led down to the dizzy depths of a still-snowy bosom veiled in snowy muslins that were held in place by a miniature portrait of the late Mr. Mingott; and around and below, wave after wave of black silk surged away over the edges of a capacious ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... and that of Dantes, with the passage which united them. In this passage he proposed to drive a level as they do in mines; this level would bring the two prisoners immediately beneath the gallery where the sentry kept watch; once there, a large excavation would be made, and one of the flag-stones with which the gallery was paved be so completely loosened that at the desired moment it would give way beneath the feet of the soldier, who, stunned by his fall, would be immediately bound and gagged by Dantes before ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... discovered and claimed, I will try to give you a faint idea of how they work them. Here, in the mountains, the labor of excavation is extremely difficult, on account of the immense rocks which form a large portion of the soil. Of course no man can work out a claim alone. For that reason, and also for the same that makes partnerships desirable, they congregate in companies of four or ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... size and little artistic interest. The second type is that of tombs cut in the vertical cliffs of the west bank of the Nile Valley. The entrance to these faces eastward as required by tradition; the remoter end of the excavation pointing toward the land of the Sun of Night. But such tunnels only become works of architecture when, in addition to the customary mural paintings, they receive a decorative treatment in the design of their structural forms. ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... boughs of apples, just beginning to assume their various tinges of red, yellow, or russet, offered a strong temptation to the cattle in the adjoining pasture. Incidentally I inquired regarding an old excavation which I had noticed on the hill near an unfrequented road. This excavation had apparently once served for a cellar, although most of the stones had been removed, and the sheep easily ran down its now sloping ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... bobby had been Egypt, his liberal checks had assisted in many an excavation, and his knowledge of her relics was remarkable. Inserting a steel paper cutter in a crack he deftly pried open the upper half of the mummy's front. Beneath lay the mass of wrappings in which thousands of years ago the priests of the Nile had swathed some lady of wealth and rank. It was a ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... for the Turkish government. But the most important finds have been at Niffer, the ancient Nippur, in Northern Babylonia, where the American expedition has brought to a close its long work of systematic excavation. Here Mr. Haynes has dug down to the very foundations of the great temple of El-lil, and the chief historical results of his labours have been published by Professor Hilprecht (in The Babylonian Expedition ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Miss Mehitable made a fruitful excavation into a huge chest in the attic, and emerged, flushed but happy, with ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... on the south side, with tight fences for protection on the east and west. As this is designed for winter use, it is a great saving of comfort to the creatures. The barn-yard should be hollowed out by excavation, until four or five feet lower in the centre than on the edges. The border should be nearly level, inclining slightly toward the centre, to allow the liquid in the yard to run into it for purposes of manure. The front of ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... neck and died, and as a result of this the other Romans ceased to care for anything. Then indeed the barbarians withdrew to their camp; for it was already growing dark; but on the following day they planned to assail the fortifications by an excavation, as follows. ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... washed, and carried off through long sluices by the water, leaving the gold behind. Square acres of earth on the hill-sides may thus be swept away into the hollows without the aid of a pick or a shovel in excavation. Water performs all the labour, moving and washing the earth in one operation, while in excavating by hand the two processes are of necessity entirely distinct. The value of this method and the yield of gold as compared with the older one can hardly ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... and then proceed to work gradually downwards, extracting the chalk, whenever practicable, in blocks suitable for building purposes, which being worth from three to four shillings the square yard help to reduce the cost of the excavation. When any serious flaws present themselves in the sides or roof of the galleries, they are ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... reached the desired point, an opening was made to the surface, when it was found we were still in the street, outside the fence, and within a few yards of the sentries. Not discovered by this mishap, the hole was quickly filled with a pair of old pants and some straw, and the work of excavation ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... Excavation has provided an extraordinarily full archaeological commentary to the legends of Egypt and Babylon; and when I received the invitation to deliver the Schweich Lectures for 1916, I was reminded of the terms of the ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... In another moment I had gone down the gangway and was making for the shed. Just then I felt if I didn't speak to somebody who wasn't under the spell of the Corydon, I would go crazy. I slipped into an excavation and skinned my knees. I fell over some stacked rails and barked my shins. I heard something scuttling in the darkness. I saw the night-watchman on the Corydon standing at the galley door, looking out. And then, looking ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... breast, against his lips. There was blood in the hair of the woman; there was blood in the hair of the man. A yard away, near an irregular depression in the beaten earth which formed the cellar's floor—fresh excavation with a convex bit of iron, having jagged edges, visible in one of the sides—lay an infant's foot. The colonel held the light as high as he could. The floor of the room above was broken through, the splinters pointing ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... peat-stack, out of the dark hole made by the excavation of last winter's stock of fuel, came the voice of Jock ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... out to make the necessary excavation. The side of a bushy knoll was chosen as a suitable site. First we carefully transplanted the bushes that grew in the square we had marked out for the cave, and cutting the sod into squares, piled it all neatly to one side. Then we shoveled away the top-soil ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... of a sand quarry, where I knew we could dig in safety, and easily cause a miniature landslide, which would cover all traces of our hidden treasure. I promised to join them in an hour—the time I judged it would take them to make so large an excavation, and returning to my room, gathered my jewels and papers into a little valise, and put them beside my fur coat and my kodak. A few other trinkets and innumerable photographs were locked away in my desk, and perceiving that it would be utterly ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... which builds the cork-type door, including observations of them at night, when they are particularly active, indicates that the construction of the tube involves other material than the silken lining employed by many burrowing spiders. In the excavation of the tube and retention of the walls, the spider appears to employ a glairy substance, which thoroughly saturates the soil and renders the interior of the tube of almost cement- like hardness. It is then plastered with a thick jet of ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... saw four large barrels that had stood on the sidewalk slowly topple over the side of an excavation and roll out ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... at this manifestation, We-lo-lon-nan-nai offered up a silent prayer, and, divesting himself of his robe, told his followers to bury him in the hot mud up to his head. They complied with his orders, and he remained in the excavation, which was made large enough to receive his entire body, for a whole day; and when taken out at night all his pains were gone, and he seemed to his warriors to have recovered his youth. Many of them who were suffering with different ailments then tried the efficacy of the hot water and the mud, ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... (Pl. IX, fig. 1) is a compound organ made up of 15 to 25 separate lobules like so many separate kidneys, but all pouring their secretion into one common pouch (pelvis) situated in an excavation in the center of the lower surface. While the ox is the only domesticated quadruped which maintains this divided condition of the kidney after birth, this condition is common to all while at an early stage of development in the womb. The cluster of lobules making ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... electric train cars within an hour, and while there is not much to see it is still an excursion well worth making. Dr. de Petra, of the chair of Archaeology in the University of Naples, and formerly the Director of the National Museum, is warmly in favor of the proposed excavation of this buried city, as is Professor Spinazzola of the San Martino museum, who believes that Italy may well become one vast museum of antiquities. "As the theatre of Herculaneum is actually at present a subterranean excavation," he ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... suppose that I go to some person and falsely tell him that I have a client serving a term in Sing Sing for burglary who has confided to me the whereabouts of the secret hiding-place of his loot. All that is necessary is some one to put up sufficient money to cover the expense of transportation and excavation—and it can be divided between us. For this purpose he intrusts me with several hundred dollars, with which I make off. I have stolen the money fast enough, but I can never ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... interested in the numerous ducks, in the cats, in the companies of macaws and cockatoos that climbed down from their perches and strutted across the swards. I came upon a badger and her brood, and at my approach they disappeared into an enormous excavation, and behind the summer-house I happened upon a bear asleep and retreated hurriedly. But on going towards the house I heard a well-known voice. "That is Augusta Holmes singing her opera," I said; "she sings all the different parts—soprano, contralto, tenor, and ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... counter attack from the Bolo, as our force was much smaller than his, and spent the first part of the night making trenches. An excavation deeper than eighteen inches would have water in the bottom. We were very cold, as it was October in Russia, and every man wet to the skin, with no blankets or overcoats. About midnight the British sent up two jugs of rum, which was immediately issued, contrary to military regulations. It made ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... on, but when I got to the end of the grove, on the green sward near some laurel and juniper bushes, I came on an excavation apparently just made, the loose earth which had been dug out looking quite fresh and moist. The hole or foss was narrow, about five feet deep and seven feet long, and looked, I imagined, curiously like a grave. A few yards away was a pile of dry brushwood, ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... down owing to England's fiscal policy of the early nineteenth century days. Lead-smelting and shot-making was carried on at a spot a few miles to the eastward. It was a great delight to see the melted metal poured through a sieve at the top of a tower and raining down into an excavation with water at the bottom. I remember the manager of the works once showing me an immense ingot of silver. It was lying on a table in his office between two flannel shirts, the edges of which were just able to meet over its sides. There was a small lake and a trout stream ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... plain, and the sand had been blown into small hills not over three or four feet high. I followed the track till it led to the top of one of these small hills where a small well-like hole had been dug and in this excavation was a kind of Indian mummy curled up like a dog. He was not dead for I could see him move as he breathed, but his skin looked very much like the surface of a well dried venison ham. I should think by his looks ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... the wish or pleasure of an Englishman, who has more frequent need to solicit than exclude the sun; but Pope's excavation was requisite as an entrance to his garden, and, as some men try to be proud of their defects, he extracted an ornament from an inconvenience, and vanity produced a grotto where necessity enforced a passage. It may be frequently remarked of the studious and speculative, that they are proud of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... into a bason, and among fragments wrinkled over with masses of ice as white as snow, or rather, as Dorothy says, like congealed froth. The water fell at least ten yards from us, and we stood directly behind it, the excavation not so deep in the rock as to impress any feeling of darkness, but lofty and magnificent; but in connection with the adjoining banks excluding as much of the sky as could well be spared from a scene so exquisitely beautiful. The spot where we stood was as dry as the chamber ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... in extraordinary numbers, were found all over the country. They lie either scattered and single, in which case they are never hatched, and are called by the Spaniards huachos; or they are collected together into a shallow excavation, which forms the nest. Out of the four nests which I saw, three contained twenty-two eggs each, and the fourth twenty-seven. In one day's hunting on horseback sixty-four eggs were found; forty-four of these were in two nests, and the remaining twenty, scattered ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... both of finds and of publications, is smaller than in 1913. In part the outbreak of war in August called off various supervisors and not a few workmen from excavations then in progress; in one case it prevented a proposed excavation from being begun. It also seems to have retarded the issue of some archaeological periodicals. But the scarcity of finds is much more due to natural causes. The most extensive excavations of the year, those of Wroxeter and Corbridge, yielded little; they were ...
— Roman Britain in 1914 • F. Haverfield
... pace for about half an hour, he reached a spot where an excavation appeared to have been begun, at some not very distant period. There was a hollow space in the earth, looking exceedingly like a deserted cellar, being enclosed within old subterranean walls, constructed of thin Roman bricks, and made accessible by a narrow flight of stone ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... reluctance that I suffered myself to be called away from this spectacle, which I could have wished to examine more closely. The postilion, when questioned, said that he knew nothing about such a phenomenon, but that there was in the neighborhood an old stone-quarry, the excavation of which was filled with water. Now, whether this was a pandemonium of will-o'-the-wisps, or a company of luminous creatures, I ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... winter-quarters in a cavity of a ledge of rocks, about twelve miles from Ontonagon, Lake Superior, in the neighborhood of the Minnesota Copper Mine. In order to capture their game, they procured a pick and shovel, and commenced an excavation by removing the vegetable mould and rubbish that had accumulated about the mouth of what proved to be a small cavern in the rock. At the depth of a few feet they discovered numerous stone hammers or mauls; and they saw that the cavern was not a natural one, but had been worked out by human agency, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... grassy mounds of the hill side;—the rocks above are torn by their glaciers into rifts and wounds that are never healed; and the ice itself blackened league after league with loose ruin cast upon it as if out of some long and foul excavation;—can we blame, I say, the peasant, if, beholding these things daily as necessary appointments in the strong nature around him, he is careless that the same disorders should appear in his household or his farm; nor feels discomforted, though ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... which has since proved to be the eastern wall of the north transept of the Saxon Church. The workmen also came upon a plaster floor, on which were remains of burnt wood, reddened stone, and other evidences of a conflagration. As the work of excavation proceeded at intervals, fresh discoveries were made. The walls of the north transept, choir, and part of the south transept, can be traced. Just outside the eastern wall can be seen portions of two Saxon tombs which were originally ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... precious relics, and when I called for them would say, every day, "Domane—domane," or try to put me off with some substitute—as if a boy could be deceived in such a matter! I once found in the neighborhood of a recent excavation a semi-transparent tourmaline of a cool green hue when held to the light; it had once been set in the ring of some Roman beauty. It had, from long abiding in the earth, that wonderful iridescent surface which ancient glass ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... bound in thick boards, with leather covering upon the same; curiously stamped with arabesque, and other bizarre, ornaments. In the interior of this binding, next to the leaves, there was sometimes an excavation, in which a silver crucifix was safely guarded by a metal door, with clasps. The exterior of the binding had oftentimes large embossed ornaments of silver, and sometimes of precious stones [as a note in the Appendix to the History of Leicester, by Mr. Nichols, p. 102, indicates—and as Geyler ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... purpose of improving and enlarging the harbor, but little or no progress has yet been made. Vauban long since pointed out the mouth of the Orne as singularly well adapted for a naval station; and Napoleon, in pursuance of this idea, actually commenced the excavation of a basin under the walls of the town, and intended to deepen the bed of the river, thinking it best to make a beginning in this direction. All idea, however, of prosecuting such a plan is for the present abandoned.—Other ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... some natives in Southern India were engaged in making an excavation under the superintendence of an English officer, when they discovered the remains of one of the largest fossil turtles ever found. They had penetrated the soil for several feet, when their implements struck against a hard substance which was at first supposed to be solid rock, but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... distance is from twelve to fourteen miles. One of the mines is quite picturesque, being cut into the solid rock, under a roof supported by great columns of the valuable ore. The workmen, with their picks and barrows, passing to and fro, as seen from the top of the excavation, look like German pictures of tiny gnomes and elves delving for precious minerals. The yield from the ore is about eighty per cent., and of very superior quality. The return road passes down the hill, whence is the splendid view of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... accurate note of extraordinary and striking events." Everything was written down. Scribes are seen everywhere on the monuments, taking accounts of the products of the farms, even to every single egg and chicken. "In spite of the ravages of time, and though systematic excavation has scarcely yet commenced," says Bunsen, "we possess chronological records of a date anterior to any period of which manuscripts are preserved, or the art of writing existed in any other quarter." Because they were thus fond of recording everything, both in pictures and in ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... caisson open at the top, whose sides, when it is sunk in position, emerge above the water-level, and which is either provided with a water-tight bottom or is carried down, by being weighted at the top and having a cutting edge round the bottom, into a water-tight stratum, aided frequently by excavation inside; (2) A bottomless caisson, serving as a sort of diving-bell, in which men can work when compressed air is introduced to keep out the water in proportion to the depth below the water-level, which is gradually ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... between the strata of Dover and the hills west of Calais; and by M. de la Beche, between the strata of the coast of Dorset and Devon, and those of Normandy, it may be inferred that the English Channel is a submarine valley, which owes its origin in a great measure to diluvial excavation, the opposite sides having as much correspondence as those of ordinary valleys ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... came a letter from her husband, remonstrating in a rather sharp tone on what her own letters—and probably an account from some other source—had told him of her life at Brighton; insisting on the need for economy, owing to his own heavy expenses in the great excavation he was engaged upon; and expressing the peremptory hope that she would make the money he had left her ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... siege of Constantinople, in 608,) erected by Mahomet II. after the capture of the city, as is said, in consequence of the place of his sepulchre having been revealed to one of his favourites in a dream; he immediately ordered an excavation to be made, and very soon, either by hazard or imposture, a marble slab ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... pit, they concluded that they would have to continue the excavation. But to their intense astonishment the officer in charge ordered them to throw all the excavated soil back again into the hole! This was one of the most glaring examples of performing a useless task, merely ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... of the crew who had acted as quartermaster on board the yacht, "take three men and mount guard over any trench or other excavation you may find in the valley between those mounds. Let no Arab even approach the place. Use force if necessary, but try and avoid any shooting. I shall ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... quotation:—'In 1810, as Sir Carnaby Haggerstone's workmen were digging in Flodden Field, they came to a pit filled with human bones, and which seemed of great extent; but, alarmed at the sight, they immediately filled up the excavation, ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... and followed by the others started for the hole. It was as they had guessed. Venturing too close to the brink of the excavation, old Mr. Bell had slipped, and the former hermit was floundering about like a grampus in the water when his rescuers appeared. Luckily, it was not deep, and they soon had him out of it and on his ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... accumulated or washed out on the surface from a great dinosaur bed beneath. A Mexican sheep-herder had collected some of these petrified bones for the foundations of his cabin, the first ever built of such strange materials. The excavation of a promising outcrop was almost immediately rewarded by finding a thigh-bone nearly six feet in length which sloped downward into the earth, running into the lower leg and finally into the foot, with all the respective parts lying in the natural position as in life. This ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... more eagerly. An hour later we had opened the hole to a depth of twenty feet. Our shovels were clanging on the gray iron of the rock from space. The mist had grown thicker as the excavation deepened; we looked at the stone through a screen ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... attention of all the Indians in that immediate neighborhood, and there were plenty of them there for all offensive purposes. De Rudio jumped down the creek bank and hid in an excavation while a hail of bullets spattered the water ahead of him and raised a dozen little clouds ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... living witnesses of the result of this excavation are still at Cholula, and the fact is mentioned in several American works; my inference from the fact is the ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... agreeable and beneficial as the house of a friend. It is gratifying to Surya himself. It also contributes to growth to the deities. It is the foremost of all things that lead to fame (with respect to the person who causes it to be excavated). The wise have said that the excavation of a tank contributes to the aggregate of three, Righteousness, Wealth and Pleasure. A tank is said to be properly excavated, if it is made on a piece of land that is inhabited by respectable persons. A tank is said to be subservient ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... shaft at East Avenue was a fairly simple matter. Rough 6 by 12-in. sheet-piling, forming a rectangle, 127 by 34 ft., braced across by heavy timbering, was driven about 28 ft. to rock as the excavation progressed. Below this, the shaft was sunk into rock, about 27 ft., without timbering. As soon as the shaft was down, on September 30th, 1904, bottom headings were started westward in Tunnels A, B, and D. When these had been ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace, Francis Mason and S. H. Woodard
... of an ant peculiar to the country also attracted our attention. Instead of a mound these insects made a habitation or excavation under the surface, about six feet in diameter, and it was quite smooth, level and clean, as if constantly swept. It was also nearly as hard as stone; and the only access to it was by one or two small holes. This surface was, to us, on ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... Hammer and Composition of the Anvil-Bed—To obtain a foundation for the hammer an excavation was made to a depth of 26 feet until a bed of solid rock was reached, and upon this there was then spread a thick layer of beton, and upon this again there was placed a bed of dressed stones in the part that was to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... mine at all. It's nothing but an excavation filled with damn fools and owned by idiots; still, I s'pose it serves Gordon's purpose." After a pause he continued: "They tell me that snakes eat their own young! Gordon ought to call that mine the Anaconda, for ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... begun to percolate into the hole, and ere we had gone much deeper, it flooded it so that we found it impossible to continue the excavation. Then we resorted to our sounding rod again for a last ray of hope, and almost immediately it struck something hard! ...
— Money Island • Andrew Jackson Howell, Jr.
... creatures were at work perforating the wooden columns which supported the verandah. They poised themselves on their shining purple wings, as they made the first lodgment in the wood, enlivening the work with an uninterrupted hum of delight, which was audible to a considerable distance. When the excavation had proceeded so far that the insect could descend into it, the music was suspended, but renewed from time to time, as the little creature came to the orifice to throw out the chips, to rest, or to enjoy the ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... Miss Brewster, as well as a score or more of others of our countrymen, then or since distinguished, in art and letters at home and abroad. We remained some days in Naples, and during the time went to Pompeii to witness a special excavation among the ruins of the buried city, which search was instituted on account of our visit. A number of ancient household articles were dug up, and one, a terra cotta lamp bearing upon its crown in bas-relief the ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... Excavation.—A hole may be dug deeply beneath the tent floor, partly for the purpose of a store-room, and partly for that of a living-room when the weather is very inclement. This was practised before Sebastopol in the manner shown in the fig. p. ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... assembled in the dining-room, Sibyl attired in a fresh muslin, and Bessie and Hugh somewhat dusty after their morning in the studio. Tom and Gem came in with flushed faces;—the B. B.'s were to return after dinner and finish the excavation, and the afternoon was to ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... Penon. The great Desague was begun in 1607, when the Marquis of Salinas was viceroy of Mexico; and the operations were commenced with great pomp, the viceroy assisting in person, mass being said on a portable altar, and fifteen hundred workmen assembled, while the marquis himself began the excavation by giving the first stroke with a spade. From 1607 to 1830, eight millions of dollars were expended, and yet this great work was not brought to a conclusion. However, the limits of the two lakes of Zumpango and San Cristobal, to the north of ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... time, thinking "of that" as deeply as his somewhat disorganized mental state would permit. For Transley had announced, with his usual directness, that he wanted so many men and teams for a house excavation in the most exclusive part of the city. So far they had been building in the cheaper districts a cheap type of house for those who, having little capital, are the easier deprived of what they have. The shift in operations caused Linder ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... shops, and except that they were roofless, just as if they had been occupied but yesterday, although near eighteen centuries have passed away since the awful calamity which sealed the fate of their inhabitants. The facilities for excavation being great, both on account of the lightness of the material and the little depth of the mass, much of the city has been exposed to view. Street succeeds street in various directions, and porticos, theatres, temples, magazines, shops, and private mansions, all remain to attest the mixture of ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... depression, dip; hollow, hollowness; indentation, intaglio, cavity, dent, dint, dimple, follicle, pit, sinus, alveolus^, lacuna; excavation, strip mine; trough &c (furrow) 259; honeycomb. cup, basin, crater, punch bowl; cell &c (receptacle) 191; socket. valley, vale, dale, dell, dingle, combe^, bottom, slade^, strath^, glade, grove, glen, cave, cavern, cove; grot^, grotto; alcove, cul-de- ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to obtain from Philip all such tools as would be needful for the task of excavation. Although the young man himself had small hopes of Cuthbert's success, he was interested in spite of himself in the proposed plan, and would have been more so had he known how much had been already discovered. But Cuthbert ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... clouds, whose color seemed brightened by the light reflected from the mass of snow that covered the earth, floated in a sky of the purest blue. The road wound along the brow of a precipice, and on one side was upheld by a foundation of logs, piled one upon the other, while a narrow excavation in the mountain in the opposite direction had made a passage of sufficient width for the ordinary traveling of that day. But logs, excavation, and everything that did not reach several feet above the earth lay alike buried beneath the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... of men began to throw up by hand, the levees that were to serve as banks for the turning basin, the lock and other portions of the canal. This levee would keep the liquid material, dredged out, from running back into the excavation. The turning basin, 950 feet by 1,150 feet, was an expansion of the original industrial basin. Situated several hundred feet from the lock, its purpose is to enable ships entering the canal from the river, and passing through the lock, to turn in, as well as to furnish a ...
— The Industrial Canal and Inner Harbor of New Orleans • Thomas Ewing Dabney
... fact, Mawruss, the English-reading public never seems to get tired of seeing pictures of building operations, just so long as there is one of them Kings in it laying the corner-stone or turning the first sod of the excavation." ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... mineral product, and have been worked with a great expenditure of labour and for a very long period; for the caves are so many and so large that, even with modern appliances, it would have needed thousands of men for many decades to excavate them in the hard agglomerate of sand and pebbles. The excavation had been made, however, not with powder and dynamite, but with chisel and pickaxe; the caves must therefore have been the work of thousands of years. There was only one people who could here have expended upon such a work sufficient strength for a ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... of a horse-shoe shape brought to light in excavation have a depth of 14, and a breadth of 11, Greek feet; the width of the entrances is not specified. Whether these dimensions and the proportions of the corridor suffice for our recognizing them as elephants' stalls, remains to be settled by a more accurate investigation. The partition-walls, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... trees showed like a black fringe. They alone attracted the eye; the slope, of a dusty, dirty grey, stretched out bare and devastated, dotted by a few bushes, among which peeped fragments of ancient walls. All was instinct with the ravaged, leprous sadness of a spot handed over to excavation, and where only men of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... sang out to hold on, as the shovel was touching him. Sure enough this was the case, for the next shovelful of rubbish that was lifted revealed the top of his head! We cleared the way to his mouth as carefully as we could, and then gave him a drop of brandy before going on with the work of excavation. His comrade was found in a stooping position, and was more severely bruised than old Harvey, but both of them lived to tell the tale of their burial, and to thank God for their deliverance. Yes," continued the captain, detaching his candle from the ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... upon the site of the Cathedral. But alas, Lucius is a myth, his cathedral a church never built with hands. We know nothing of any Christian church in Roman Winchester, and though we may be sure that such a building certainly existed, no excavation has so far laid bare its foundations. Indeed we are almost as ignorant of Roman as we are of Celtic Winchester. Even the lines of its walls are conjectural, we suppose them to be the same as those of the Middle Age, yet such foundations of Roman buildings as have been ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... stone on this road. Large numbers of men or oxen then drag the stone along by means of ropes attached to it. Other labourers assist the work from behind with levers, and replace the rollers in front of the stone as fast as they pass out behind. Those who have seen the modern Arabs in excavation work move huge blocks with wooden levers and palm-leaf rope will realize that for the building of the dolmens little was ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... canal under it when completed. This we saw in the case of a new railroad bridge near Sungkiang. The bridge was completed and the water had just been turned under it and was being compelled to make its own excavation. Great expense had been saved while traffic on the ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... which felt damp, although blood did not flow from it. No blood flowed from the stigmas excepting upon the 3rd of March, the day of the finding of the holy Cross. She had also a vision of the discovery of the true cross by St. Helena, and imagined herself to be lying in the excavation near the cross. Much blood came in the morning from her head and side, and in the afternoon from her hands and feet, and it seemed to her as though she were being made the test of whether the cross was really the Cross ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... from the buttress (as an excavation in 1900 showed), and may perhaps be a relieving-arch, to take the weight off a weak place in the foundations. Yet it was not intended, apparently, to be filled up. The stones forming the right edge of the hole are coigns, and have mason-marks on their sides. At the back of the hole the masonry appears ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... with my feet towards the fire. I gradually got warmer, and at the same time somewhat melancholy. What a curious Christmas Eve! Certainly I had never passed one in such a place. The walls were made of a greyish, friable earth, which still showed the marks of the pick that had been used for the excavation. The furniture was simple and not very comfortable. At the back was the bed, made out of a little straw already well tossed over by a number of sleepers. This straw was kept in by a plank fixed to the ground and forming the side of the modest couch. ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... the other shovelling away the debris. The low temperature, however, made the work very exhausting; and by lunch time they had only succeeded in excavating a hole some twenty-five feet long—or the distance between the two masts—by six feet wide and four feet deep. They had widened this excavation by a couple of feet and sunk it some four feet deeper by six o'clock that evening; and then they knocked off work for the day, returning to the Flying Fish stiff, and exhausted with their unwonted exertions, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... careful consideration of various methods for sinking the well, it was decided to build the wall and then to excavate the material from within, trusting to the weight of the wall to force it down. Sixteen feet of the wall were laid securely bolted together, before the excavation was commenced. A derrick with a boom fifty-five feet in length was set up near the wall, so that the sweep of the boom commanded the interior of it. Iron buckets containing fourteen cubic feet each were obtained, and a six-horse power hoisting engine purchased. With ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... Hooper's version, the denoument was brought about by the aid of a clergyman. Men of this profession have always been considered the most efficient guardians against the powers of darkness. He, with the help of Mrs. M——, made the excavation in the cellar which brought to light the half-consumed skeleton. Here, unfortunately, is a gap in the evidence. The remains were pronounced by medical authority to be human, but was that authority reliable? was that doctor skilled in comparative anatomy? If not, the bones ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... about the old city, and a gunner piloted me through the galleries of the rock as far as a stranger is permitted to go. There is no excavation in the world, for military purposes, at all approaching these of Gibraltar in conception or execution. Viewing the stupendous works, it became hard to realize that one was within the Gibraltar of his little ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... and "Mac" in the office, "Scotty" and I outside. A deep conference ensued and, as if I had not had good luck enough already, it was decided that we two should go through the "cut" itself. It was like offering us a salary to view all the Great Work in detail, for virtually all the excavation of any importance on the Zone lay within ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... Egyptians never advanced. Neither effective military occupation nor effective administration of Syria by an Egyptian military or civil staff was so much as thought of. Traces of the cultural influence of Egypt on the Syrian civilization of the time (so far as excavation has revealed its remains) are few and far between; and we must conclude that the number of genuine Egyptians who resided in, or even passed through, the Asiatic province was very small. Unadventurous by nature, and disinclined to embark on foreign ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... hook. But it suddenly occurred to him that, the plesiosaurus being to all intents and purposes an extinct and antediluvian animal, the only remains of it in existence must necessarily consist of such fossilised fragments as had been accidentally discovered in the course of excavation, and that the complete skeleton of such a gigantic specimen as that before him would be regarded as a priceless acquisition by the curator of the Natural History Museum at South Kensington; so he at once resolved to take the necessary steps for its preservation. ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... morning the Mexican came driving his team into the camp. Lee sent him to Pat Carrigan, who gave him a scraper and set him to work on the ditch. Toward noon the engineer encountered him moving dirt from the deepening excavation; the sight had an amusing feature. The man, Pedro Saurez, laboured in his own field building the canal at about the spot where he had warned Bryant ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... to a shattered sapling and staring down into a gaping aperture that looked big enough for the excavation of a church cellar. All around were evidences of a most tremendous explosion or upheaval, some trees being actually shattered and others leaning over as ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler
... with a single perforation, in the upper and outer part behind. Opening oval, margin smooth; a short spinous process at the upper and outer angle; a sharp short spine in the middle of the upper border of the middle cell, at a bifurcation. Ovicell ? in form of a very shallow excavation in the upper part of the ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... a large circle of stout stakes, driven into the ground perpendicularly, close together. There was one opening, at the entrance of which a strong tree trunk was placed about a foot from the ground, and at the inner side an excavation was made sufficiently deep to prevent the buffalo from leaping back when once in the pound. From this entrance, on either side, gradually widening, extended two rows of bushy posts, stuck into the ground about fifty ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... chloroform. These agents had been known so short a time that no one was specially familiar with their action. Without knowing whether I could take chloroform administered by myself, and at the same time perform with skill the excavation of extremely sensitive dentine or tooth-bone, as if no anaesthetic had been taken, and not be conscious of pain, was more than the experience of medical men at that time could assure me. But, having a love for investigation of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... becoming unduly stout. And Archie had picked out a site below the new house on fairly level ground, but Adelle wanted to have the court cut out of the steep hillside above the pool. Having found what she considered to be the right spot, which would necessitate much expensive excavation and building of retaining walls, she followed a little worn path through the eucalyptus grove over the brow of the hill, curious to discover where it led. After a time she emerged on the other side of the hill, and getting ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... also on top of the ground without any excavation. Spread a layer of manure evenly one foot in depth and large enough to extend around the frame three feet each way. Pack this down well, especially around the edge, put on a second and third layer until you have a well-trodden and compact bed of manure at least two and one half feet in depth. Place ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... thence, with Isabella Colonna, Teresa Sclafani, and that exquisite creature Lauretta Acton, who afterwards became Madame Minghetti, and many another! Now it would be a night ascent of Vesuvius, in eruption, and then again a moonlight excavation at Pompeii. Show me the man who would not have fallen in love in such company, beneath that exquisite sky, environed and intoxicated by the indefinable enchantments in which the landscape and the very air you breathed were ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... musket and pistols were again examined and found in order. With these precautions, I began to remove the stones, taking care to mark their relative positions so that I might replace them exactly; and, in about ten minutes work at excavation, I came upon two barrels, one of which was filled with bundles of silk, linens, and handkerchiefs, while the other contained a chronometer, several pieces of valuable lace, and a beautifully bound, gilt, and ornamented Bible. One bundle, tied in a Madras handkerchief, particularly ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... excavation were carried out many secrets micht be discovered, but noo folks prefer to travel an' dig i' the remotest pairts o' the earth, ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... Antenna-cleaner: a fringed excavation on the interior base of the 1st segment of the anterior tarsi of Hymenoptera which, when covered by the movable process from the end of the tibia, forms an opening through which the antennae may be drawn: similar structures ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... mortgages that had, from far back, buried them beneath the ashes of rage and remorse, a shroud as thick as the layer once resting on the towns at the foot of Vesuvius, and actually making of any present restorative effort a process much akin to slow excavation. Just so he might with another turn of his humour almost wail for these brightest spots of his lost paradise, declaring that he was an idiot not to be able to bring himself to face the sacrifices—sacrifices resting, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... already an excavation more than a foot in depth and several yards in circumference. Whatever it was the strange girl had been after she was not quite sure ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... speaking in their chronicle of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, tell us 'there are many villages and houses, with numerous inhabitants.' The ruins still found in the Isles are called 'casas hondas' ("deep houses"); because a central excavation was surrounded by a low wall. The castle of Zonzamas was built of large stones without lime. In Port Arguineguin (Grand Canary) the explorers sent by Alfonso IV. (1341) came upon 300 to 400 tenements roofed with valuable wood, and so clean inside that they seemed stuccoed. ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... woman, as stout and strong as the men, and clad in a short, loose, linsey gown, from beneath which peeped out a pair of coarse leggins, was adjusting a long wooden trough, which conveyed the liquid rosin from the "still" to a deep excavation in the earth, at a short distance. In the pit was a quantity of rosin sufficient to fill a ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... days of the race to account for sunrise and sunset, storm-winds and thunder, the origin of the earth and of mankind. The tales men told in the face of these mysteries were naturally inspired by awe and fear. The universal myth of a great flood is perhaps the earliest tale of terror. During the excavation of Nineveh in 1872, a Babylonian version of the story, which forms part of the Gilgamesh epic, was discovered in the library of King Ashurbanipal (668-626 B.C.); and there are records of a much earlier version, belonging to the ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... This interesting excavation, but little known even to the Parisians, has now been transformed into a public garden, in the quarter between the Pantheon and the Jardin des Plantes, and is well worth visiting. The ancient Mont Lucotitius still heaves itself under the modern Parisian pavement, and the ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... space with a sharp pointed knife. The walls of the space or opening should be as clean in line as possible, also quite vertical. A small keen-edged chisel may be found advantageous, as, by its aid, using it with the angular or sharpened side downwards, the floor of the excavation can be reduced to a fair level. This hollowing-out should not be too deep, leaving as much as possible of the bare wood uncut, only enough being removed for a good holding surface. If this is done neatly, ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... explorations appeared in Comptes rendus (Feb. 29th, 1864) and Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London (June 21st, 1864). He died, however, on the 4th of May 1865, of inflammation of the lungs supervening on a severe cold contracted during excavation work at La Palisse, leaving a half-finished book, entitled Reliquiae Aquitanicae, being contributions to the Archaeology and Palaeontology of Perigord and the adjacent provinces of Southern France; this was issued in parts and completed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... any mark of antiquity—such as the presence of large trees or even deep-rooted brushwood;—that they were arranged in regular order, suggesting a military encampment rather than the abode of savages; that they were of uniform size, with few exceptions; that on excavation they yielded fragments of hard wood, unglazed pottery, and a Japanese dirk, and, finally, that their site corresponded with that of military encampments established in Yezo and the Kuriles by the Japanese ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... taking breath when he reached the foot of the staircase, and when he saw that the excavation sank deeper and deeper still. "Are we going down to the centre of the earth? The heat is increasing to such a degree that we cannot be far from ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... twin. "It's coming. Such fine basketball courts! And tennis courts! And a running track, too! I heard somebody say that they would begin the excavation for the building next week. I tell you, Central High will have the finest field and track and gym ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... make up the sides of the bright cavity into which he looked. He saw the various strata of clay, sand, gravel, exactly as he would have seen them in a circular hole cut accurately and smoothly into the earth. No stone or lump protruded from the side of this apparent excavation, the inner surface of which was as smooth as if it had been cut down with ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... had willing labourers on the part of the gentlemen. Antommarchi says, "The Emperor urged us, excited us, and everything around us soon assumed a different aspect. Here was an excavation, there a basin or a road. We made alleys, grottoes, cascades; the appearance of the ground had now some life and diversity. We planted willows, oaks, peach-trees, to give a little shade round the house. Having completed ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... earmarks of a disordered mind, and various experiences are repeated over and over, while much is so vague and incoherent as to defy comprehension. Nevertheless, from reading it myself, I venture to predict that if an excavation is made in the main basement, somewhere in the vicinity of the foundation of the great chimney, a collection of bones will be found which should very closely resemble those which James Crayden once ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... even these may be braced up, if inclined to cave in. There are cases where the soil contains so much running sand, and is so saturated with water, that no precautions will avail to keep up the banks. Ditches in such ground will sometimes fall in, until the excavation reaches a width of 8 or 10 feet. Such instances, however, are very rare, and must be treated as the ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... said nothing. It was a thing he did not like to contemplate. They had dug over more than half the floor of the cavern, and had seen no signs of where Stults, years before, had made an excavation to hide his gold. The cave looked as if it had not been ...
— The Young Treasure Hunter - or, Fred Stanley's Trip to Alaska • Frank V. Webster
... snapped back; "then I suppose it was mine! I suppose I fell down the elevator shaft just to please mother, eh? Maybe you think I dropped into the excavation just to pass the time away? Have you an idea that I dove down into the earth because I wanted to get back to the mines? Wasn't your fault, indeed! Maybe you think I fell in the well simply because I wanted to give an imitation of the old oaken ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... these early days a muro or excavation of the earth, roofed with timber, was often used as a residence. ...
— Japan • David Murray
... necessarily in immediate connection. It may be set back a short distance from the revetted bank; but it is, in effect, the requisite parapet. The flood river and the low river cannot be brought into register, and compelled to unite in the excavation of a single permanent channel, without a complete control of all the stages; and even the abnormal rise must be provided against, because this would endanger the levee, and once in force behind the works of revetment would tear them ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... I regret to say, was brought about by the luckless Jack. As has been said, he was engaged in constructing a boat, the particular operation he was now intent upon being the excavation or hollowing out. Now three-legged stools are not the most secure seats in the world. That, I think, no one can doubt who has any practical acquaintance with them. Jack was working quite vigorously, the block from which the boat was to be fashioned being held firmly between his knees. His knife ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger |
