"Excavation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... searching for these lavadores or washing places, they dig in the corners of some little brook, where they judge, from certain tokens, that the grains of gold are lodged. To assist in carrying away the earth or mud, they let in a stream or current of water into the excavation, and keep stirring up the soil, that the water may carry it away. On reaching the golden sand, they turn the stream another way, and dig out this sand, which is carried on mules to certain ponds or basons, which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... at a brisk 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 ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the ground, found it impossible to overtake them before they had all entered their den. He was determined, nevertheless, to attain his object, and assembling some people from the neighbouring village with pickaxes, they began to dig in the usual way into the hole. Having made an excavation of six or eight feet, the garrison evacuated the place—the wolf, the three whelps, and the boy, leaping suddenly out and taking to flight. The trooper instantly threw himself upon his horse, and set off in pursuit, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... A meadow beyond the Tiber, in which an excavation was made, supplied with water from ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... "In the excavation of a bed of coal these petrified trees are not unfrequently cut off below, when the slight taper of the trunk permits them to ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 31, June 10, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... 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, ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... the 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
... 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 these appliances ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... he had laid out was six feet square; and when he had thrown out all the sand and gravel to this depth, in order to save any unnecessary labor he began to dig in the middle of the excavation, for this was directly under the centre of the projecting rock. If Harvey Barth's statement was exactly correct, the bag would be found where Leopold was now at work. Faster and faster he plied the shovel, the deeper he went, and, when he judged that the lower hole was nearly a foot deep, his ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... aside or dries up its source. The most common cause of the intermittence of such a waterfall is the formation of a crevasse higher up, across the watercourse which supplied it, and which now begins another excavation. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... looks like a combination of a modern tack-hammer and a medieval back-scratcher—and fit it to its haft. Then you lie flat upon your face on the wet grass, and having scratched up some small lumps of turf, proceed to build these into a parapet. Into the hole formed by the excavation of the turf you then put your head, and in this ostrich-like posture await further instructions. Private Mucklewame is of opinion that it would be equally effective, and infinitely less fatiguing, simply to lie down prone ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... at that town in the course of three days. She also raised both banks of the river to an amazing height and thickness. At some distance above Babylon, and near the river, she dug a reservoir in the marsh, of such depth as to drain it. The width of this excavation was such as to make its circuit four hundred and twenty stadia. The earth removed from it was taken to raise the banks of the river; this done, she brought stones, with which the sides of the lake were lined. Both these works—the diverting of the river and the reservoir—were formed ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... an excavation into the grave of Shakespeare was made in the summer of the year 1796, in digging a vault in the immediate locality, when an opening appeared which was presumed to indicate the commencement of the site of the bard's ...
— Shakespeare's Bones • C. M. Ingleby
... columns in the north hexastyle with the roof over these last columns, the rest of the roof of this graceful portico fell during the siege of Athens, in 1827. Lately, much has been done in the way of excavation; the buried base of this tripartite temple has been cleared; the walls, which had been built to make it habitable, have been removed; the abducted Caryatid replaced by a modern copy, the gift of Lord Guildford, and the whole prepared ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... in loud tones, probably for the benefit of Miss Rebecca Jones. And lest the intelligent Protestant reader should fear he is being introduced to unorthodox regions, it may be as well to mention that the "purgatory" in Mr. Jabez Gum's kitchen consisted of an excavation, two feet square, under the hearth, covered with a grating through which the ashes and the small cinders fell; thereby enabling the economical housewife to throw the larger ones on the fire again. Such wells or "purgatories," as ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... very rarely that the ants are seen at work on these mounds; the entrances seem to be generally closed; only now and then, when some particular work is going on, are the galleries opened. The entrances are small and numerous; in the larger hillocks it would require a great amount of excavation to get at the main galleries; but, I succeeded in removing portions of the dome in smaller hillocks, and then I found that the minor entrances converged, at the depth of about two feet, into one broad, elaborately-worked gallery or mine, which was ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... to see those wonderful "Salt Pans," which were close to our camping ground. I descended by a steep path some six hundred or seven hundred feet to the bottom. It is an immense amphitheatre at the base of thickly wooded hills. It is larger in extent than the vast open excavation formed by the "Kimberley" Mine at Kimberley. The salt and soda brine is perpetually oosing from the bottom, and is continually being scraped up with a sort of wooden scraper into heaps, where, after a time, by the action of the atmosphere, it becomes ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young
... eyes beheld the negroes dragging one of their number from the excavation under the watchful eye and threatening muzzle of Lopez's deadly rifle. One of the unfortunate negroes had thoughtlessly broken his resolve and had spoken. He had paid dearly for his mistake. Under the stern command of the rifle ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... 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 oceans ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... addressing one 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 join ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... He manifests interest in everything, even to the smallest detail, which can have any bearing upon human improvement. I remember a half hour's conversation with him once over a cupping glass, which he had gotten from an excavation in the Roman ruin called the Saalburg, near Homburg. He always appeared to me most deeply concerned with the arts of peace. I have never heard him speak much of war, and then always with abhorrence, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... excavation the sand was still running in tiny rivulets. Listening, I could hear it pattering far, far down ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... Fred returned Bill had decided at which point the excavation should be made, and he said, designating a spot hardly more than a dozen yards from where ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... and he could feel his blood tingling, he fell to work systematically, groping about the excavation the dead man had made where the snowslide had rent apart the forest and scored out the rock for him. Here and there he smashed a fragment of it with the back of the axe, or picked up a discoloured stone of unusual gravity and compared it with the pieces he took out of a little bag, until at last ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... A deeper excavation of the clay beds brought to light a much finer class of clays, which proved so excellent for the purposes of manufacturing general pottery, terra cotta ware, drain tiles and sewer pipe, that in connection with the brick works, a factory for making that kind of ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... than that. Well need excavation equipment, and labor. Lots of labor," Conn said. "It's a couple of hundred feet below the surface; from the plans, I'd say they just dug a big pit, built the headquarters in it, and filled it in. There are two entrances, a vertical shaft and a ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... which are very difficult of approach by the hunter, on the other hand breed on the open plain. The swans' nests are so large that they may be seen at a great distance. The building material is moss, which is plucked from the ground within a distance of two metres from the nest, which by the excavation which is thus produced, is surrounded by a sort of moat. The nest itself forms a truncated cone, 0.6 metre high and 2.4 metres in diameter at the bottom. In its upper part there is a cavity, 0.2 metre deep and 0.6 metre broad, in which the four large grayish-white eggs ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... which were first urged against Sir Charles Lyell's noble views on "the modern changes of the earth, as illustrative of geology;" but we now seldom hear the agencies which we see still at work, spoken of as trifling and insignificant, when used in explaining the excavation of the deepest valleys or the formation of long lines of inland cliffs. Natural selection acts only by the preservation and accumulation of small inherited modifications, each profitable to the preserved being; and as modern geology has almost banished such views as the excavation of ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... reached the entrance to the chamber they heard the sounds of a pick. When they came nearer and looked in they saw the detective poking away at heap of "gob" which lay in one corner of the excavation. He worked industriously, and apparently without fear of discovery. Now and then he stooped down to peer into a crevice in the wall, ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher
... in crevices on the cliffs. The eggs are a buffy white color and are faintly marked with light brown, some of these being in the shape of spots and others lengthened. Size 2.40 x 1.40. Data.—Sanak Islands, July 1, 1894. Two eggs on the ground under a tuft of grass and in a slight excavation ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... Elgin, availing himself of these favourable circumstances, obtained in the summer of 1801, access to the Acropolis of Athens for general purposes, with a concession to "make excavations and to take away any stones that might appear interesting to himself." The result (shortly stated) was the excavation of the once celebrated "Elgin marbles," about which, if we are to credit the report from which we glean this information, his lordship would seem to have expended (including the interest of capital) some ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... it. It was crossed by a shallow billabong which had been dammed when the dividing fence was erected; but the first flood in the Lachlan had burst an opening in the embankment, so that even at the end of the previous winter there was no water in the paddock, except a drop of sludgy stuff in the excavation. Hence the grass. There was no stock in the Trinidad, and no one in charge. There were two station men, with a team of bullocks and scoop, cleaning out the dam and repairing the bank; but they would n't see anything. Also, Mr. Smythe was away in Melbourne, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... populace remained in the booth, but we were joined by all our friends of the town, and once more were a large party. We were bound for a merienda and a carnesada, where bullocks would be roasted whole on spits over a bed of coals in a deep excavation. It took a Californian only a few hours to sleep off fatigue, and we were as fresh and gay as if we had gone to bed at ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... he was, sitting in the C.P.R. Hotel at Winnipeg, at a time of year when he was generally in Paris or Rome, investigating the latest Greek acquisitions of the Louvre, or the last excavation in the Forum; picnicking in the Campagna; making expeditions to Assisi or Subiaco; and in the evenings frequenting the drawing-rooms ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the way, if many realize the persistence and vigor of the roots of a tree of the "suckering" habit? Some years ago an ailanthus, a tree of vigor and beauty of foliage but nastiness of flower odor, was cut away from its home when excavation was being made for a building, which gave me opportunity to follow a few of its roots. One of them traveled in search of food, and toward the opportunity of sending up a shoot, over ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... against the belt. Each plate fit into a shallow excavation in the hull, fitting so tightly that the plates were all but invisible when they were in place. Tom felt himself pulled in tightly as the plate gripped the belt against the metal, and the whirring of ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... made, others already out of shape and of no value. The places of concealment were soon forgotten, and the stores hidden therein reposed beyond the reach of men until the day when the chances of excavation brought ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... are tempted to pause where you are in order to celebrate, ask yourself, "Is this really the celebration stage?" Probably you will find you have only laid the corner-stone, or made an excavation for the foundation of your success. You would not think of having a housewarming because you had finished the basement walls. Nor would you consider it an occasion for especial jollification the day you erected the scantlings around the first floor joists. Not until the walls are up and ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... we've got to stick it. All the same, he's got some digging to do before he can draw the money, and I'm ready to lay a monkey that he does it himself. What's more, the last thing he'll want is to be disturbed. In fact, any interference with his work of excavation will undoubtedly shorten his life. Properly organized innocent interference will probably affect his reason. Our course of action ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... an excavation partly natural, partly artificial, in a bank of rock overgrown by brambles. There was a rough stone door on hinges, and a little window high up, and two apertures, through one of which the people ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... speaking, he rose; and taking Helen by the hand, led her into an inner excavation of the rock, where a bed of dried leaves lay on the ground. "Here, gentle lady," said he, "I leave you to repose. In the evening I expect a lay brother from St. Oran's Monastery, and he will be your messenger to the ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... goes on with the excavation. After he's blasted out a hole big enough for a terminal tunnel he jabs in a hunk of cotton soaked with sulphuric acid, and then ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... an excavation large enough for the body was no difficult task;— the earth being soft, and easily removed from the trunks, roots, and branches of buried trees, which seemed to run all through the interior of the bank. But the ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... sly smile. Stepping to the side of the grassy bank, and slipping aside a small door concealed by the grass, he disclosed a walled excavation, filled ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... the rose beds, but met with no success. After that he tried two or three shrubberies without avail, and then embarked on a frantic but thorough excavation of the tennis lawn. We were taking tea on the lawn at the time, and our attention was first drawn to Excalibur's bereavement by a temporary but unshakable conviction on his part that the bone was buried immediately underneath ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay
... temples and other buildings which abound in these localities, and have thus acquired a considerable degree of professional skill in masonry work; while the Bandhaiya, who take their name from Bandhogarh, confine themselves to the excavation of tanks and wells. The exogamous divisions of the caste are also by no means clearly defined; in Mirzapur they have a system of local subdivisions called dih, each subdivision being named after the village ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... it uptown toward Longacre Circle. The street was as usual in a state of chronic excavation. His foot slipped and he fell into a trench while trying to cross. When he emerged it was with a pound or two of Manhattan mud on his corduroy suit. He looked at himself again with a sense that his garb did not quite measure up to ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... snow, making a sort of a ridge pole, and then with Paul's assistance unrolled the tent and spread it across. While Paul held the edges of the somewhat awkward canvas in place on top of the snow wall Roy piled snow on the ends of the canvas and just as it was too dark to see more the excavation was thoroughly roofed except in one corner where the irregular canvas did ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... in the Trans-Tiber have chosen just that place which was excavated for the building of the Circus and various houses along the Tiber. Now, when the city is perishing, the adherents of Christ are praying. Beyond doubt we shall find a countless number of them in the excavation; so my advice is to go ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... 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, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... more intent on which than on the management of his spirited horses he nearly brought us to grief. After some narrow escapes of being capsized over the heaps of stones scattered along the new road, now in the course of construction, we came to a dead lock in an excavation; and one of the horses, though mettlesome enough, hung in the collar, refusing to draw. It was said to be an Irish horse, but how or when it got to Sardinia was as much a myth as the immigration of some of the various races by which the island ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... one of these small hamlets through which we passed Ruskin with a gang of his pupils in flannels started roadmaking, and for days and weeks were to be seen at their arduous task of digging and excavation, toiling and moiling with pick, spade, and barrow, while Ruskin stood by, applauding and encouraging them in their task of making and beautifying the roads of these villages ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... words. A small picture presented the interior of an immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and without interruption or device. Certain accessory points of the design served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of intense rays ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... vicinity is the tomb of Jehoshaphat,—a cavern which is more commonly called the Grotto of the Disciples, from an idea that they went frequently thither to be taught by their Divine Master. The front of this excavation has two Doric pillars of small size, but of just proportions. In the interior are three chambers, all of them rude and irregular in their form, in one of which were several gravestones, removed, we may suppose, from the open ground for greater security. Like all the rest, they were flat slabs ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... in the fulfillment of the pledge. Gratifying progress has been made during the past year, and especially during the past four months. The greater part of the necessary preliminary work has been done. Actual work of excavation could be begun only on a limited scale till the Canal Zone was made a healthful place to live in and to work in. The Isthmus had to be sanitated first. This task has been so thoroughly accomplished that yellow fever has ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... 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 observed, "why not excavate ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... 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 through the barbed wire fence that marked the boundary of her own estate, ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... from the first on fresh fish alone, and grew and fattened considerably. We had her carried down daily in a hand-barrow to the sea-side, where an old excavation admitting the salt water was abundantly roomy and deep for her recreation and our observation. After sporting and diving for some time she would come ashore, and seemed perfectly to understand the use of the barrow. Often she ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... row of fine elms along the towing path on the right. Here, at the west front, the recently-cleared moat at once attracts attention. Until within the past year or two the gravel forecourt extended right up to the palace walls, but excavation revealed that the course of the moat, and the very walls of the moat, and the old bridge approach to the Gatehouse were still plainly traceable. The rubbish with which long since the moat had been filled—possibly when William the Third made his alterations to the ...
— Hampton Court • Walter Jerrold
... woods, although he thought he still heard at intervals the sound which had alarmed him, he reassured himself and resumed his flow of spirits as if a little ashamed even of his panic. He stopped the Countess to look at the pretext of this excursion. This was the rocky wall of the deep excavation of a marl-pit, long since abandoned. The arbutus-trees of fantastic shape which covered the summit of these rocks, the pendant vines, the sombre ivy which carpeted the cliffs, the gleaming white stones, ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... west front cannot be long postponed. The difficulty of the work is realized when we consider that it takes a whole month to underpin 4 feet of foundation. Owing to the cramped space and the darkness three weeks are spent in excavation; after which the divers require a week to place the concrete and cement in position. That so national a heritage will be saved, for the delight of our own and the instruction of future generations, must be the wish of all true lovers of the great ...
— Winchester • Sidney Heath
... rounding off the roof, 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 invariably made ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... fault," he 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
... Foster and Whitney, in their survey of the copper-lands, found a pine-stump ten feet in circumference, which must have grown, flourished, and died since the mound of earth upon which it stood was thrown out. Mr. Knapp discovered, in 1848, a deserted mine or excavation, in which, under eighteen feet of rubbish, he found a mass of native copper weighing over six tons, resting on billets of oak supported by sleepers of the same material. The ancient miners had evidently ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... often known by the name of Tripitaka[602] or Three Baskets. When an excavation was made in ancient India it was the custom to pass up the earth in baskets along a line of workmen[603] and the metaphorical use of the word seems to be taken from this practice and ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... 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
... to Herodotus, with whose account Diodorus Siculus and Mela agree, was entirely an artificial excavation, made by king Moeris, to carry off the overflowing waters of the Nile, and reserve them for the purposes of irrigation. It was, in the time of Herodotus, 3,600 stadia or 450 miles in circumference, and 300 feet deep, with innumerable canals and ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... as the hog of wallowing in mud. When he comes upon a marshy spot he lies down and rolls about until he has worn out a large and shallow excavation into which the water oozes through the damp soil. Lying down again he rolls and turns until he is plastered from head to tail with mud. Though it cannot be said that it adds to his attractiveness, yet the coating no doubt serves ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... 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 ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... 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; ...
— Roman Britain in 1914 • F. Haverfield
... always uncommonly gay, and any slight exaggeration will be pardoned in view of the fact that old prejudices have to be violently overturned, and the stigma of melancholy and ponderous sobriety torn from the national name. It would be a matter of little surprise to some good persons if the products of excavation in the Nile Valley consisted largely of antique black ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... like all I had ever seen upon Barsoom, was built in a large excavation. Only the highest seats, which formed the low wall surrounding the pit, were above the level of the ground. The arena itself was far ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... The excavation in which he stood was nearly forty feet square. His torch showed him the passage by which he had entered, and opposite this a flight of steps leading sharply upward. Here and there, leaning against the walls, ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... which I will briefly describe. It consisted of 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 feet apart. The extreme distance between the outer end of the rows, which stretched ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... Island, surrendered to Captain Hudson of 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 besiegers advanced ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... 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
... 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 year 1966 B.C. The story of the Flood, ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... our southern California species, 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
... 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 for less than twelve ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... it the architect's fault. For see what you expect of an architect. He must know about digging deep holes; and about sheath-piling, that he may retain the loose soil and keep it from smothering the workmen at the bottom of his excavation; and he must know the best machines to use for drilling rock and the best method for removing it; he must know about all the stones in the country and the best way of making concrete; he must be familiar ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... (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 ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... buried. Our feet had hardly trodden the lava flagging of the narrow streets when we came in sight of the laborers who were exhuming the inanimate city. They were few in number, not perhaps a score, and they worked tediously, with baskets to carry away the earth from the excavation, boys and girls carrying the baskets, and several athletic old women plying picks, while an overseer sat in a chair near by, and smoked, and ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... now nothing more than a gaping excavation choked with ashes and charred timbers; and though still rumours of police interest in the origin of the fire persisted, nothing in the papers linked the name of Michael Lanyard with their activities. His disappearance and Lucy Shannon's seemed to be accepted as due to death in the holocaust; the ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... Then the excavation deepened and the dirt flew, and the beams went up and the joists across, and all the day from dawn till dusk the hammers of the carpenters clattered away, working overtime ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... and cases, and under these the sailors and some of the scientists, with the two invalids, Rickenson and Blackborrow, found head-cover at least. Shelter from the weather and warmth to dry their clothes was imperative, so Wild hastened the excavation of the ice-cave in the slope which had been started before ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... erect, the rest either lie at full length on the sward, close to the mystic ring, or at some considerable distance from it. Here and there are distinct evidences of recent digging, and at the base of one of the horizontal stones is an excavation of no little depth. ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... excavation, pit, perforation, rent, fissure, opening, aperture, delve, cache, concavity, mortise, puncture, orifice, eyelet, crevice, loophole, interstice, gap, spiracle, vent, bung, pothole, manhole, scuttle, scupper, muset, muse; cave, holt, den, lair, retreat, cover, hovel, burrow. Antonyms: imperforation, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Antilochus, and of Telamonian Ajax. Marathon he had already visited, and marked "the perpendicular cut" which at Fauvel's instigation had been recently driven into the large barrow; and he had, perhaps, read of the real or pretended excavation by Signor Ghormezano (1787) of a tumulus at the Sigean promontory. The "mind's eye," which had conjured up "the shattered heaps," images a skull of one who "kept the world in awe," and, after moralizing in Hamlet's vein on the humorous catastrophe of decay, the poet concludes with the Preacher ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... 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 Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... about in search of other antiquities. Naturally enough, the Indians thought that they expected to find treasure; and with a view of getting the first chance themselves, they cut down the calendar, and made this large excavation behind it. ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... For a moment the level of the water around us sank again, as it poured into the immense excavation where the grove had stood, but in an instant it was reinforced from all sides and began ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... sulci of man. The surface of the brain of a monkey exhibits a sort of skeleton map of man's, and in the man-like apes the details become more and more filled in, until it is only in minor characters, such as the greater excavation of the anterior lobes, the constant presence of fissures usually absent in man, and the different disposition and proportions of some convolutions, that the Chimpanzee's or the Orang's brain can ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... lost heart and hope, and frankly 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, ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... 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. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... 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 History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... of such an ethical snarl reduced him to inanity. He stayed to dinner. Charity had not expected him to stop. She had planned an evening's excavation into her correspondence and had not changed her street dress. She was surprised and childishly delighted to have him with her—then childishly ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... 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 kept much of that to himself, not willing that tattling tongues should spread ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... 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 needed ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... stones had been filled with creek sand and the whole rammed hard. On this a solid platform of two-inch planks had been laid by the sawyers and at intervals of three feet long, thin stakes, sharpened at the top, had been driven deeply into the ground just at the ends of the excavation. Thus all had been prepared for the erection of the sod ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... since the work was risky he had helped the men. Now he was rather highly-strung. Below him, the water spirited [Transcriber's note: spurted?] through the joints in a wall of thick planks and ran into the excavation, where a few men, sunk nearly to the knees in mud, were working. A forge stood on the top of the bank and the smith leaned on the crank of the blower. He was a short, strongly-built man, and ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... the right place!" shouted Steel Spring, from his excavation, stopping his labors to watch our movements; "you will find nothing there, I gives you varning. Come and hassist me, and we shall ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... shrank 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, ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... 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 'Valley' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in question, 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. This, I think, no one will deny 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 ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... 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 steeped! But the signal to get under way is hoisted at the mainmast ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... his 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... lose my 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 acquires. Rose, my sister, picked up out of a rubbish heap a little bronze ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... teach them how to eat it. "The manner in which hasty-pudding is eaten, with butter and sugar or molasses, in America, is as follows: the hasty-pudding being spread out equally on a plate, while hot, an excavation is made in the middle with a spoon, into which excavation a piece of butter as large as a nutmeg is put, and upon it a spoonful of brown sugar, or, more commonly, molasses. The butter being soon melted by the heat of the ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... 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 fresh air. By degrees, a mound of saw-dust was formed ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... and sculptors enough in that army at his heels, and whatever appealed to him was copied on the spot. So much was copied that a park of ten square miles was just large enough to form the open-air museum which he had designed, one which centuries of excavation have ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... consisted of a plan of his own cell 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 ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... his body very early yesterday morning in a deep excavation near East Kensington Station. It is one of two shafts that have been made in connection with an extension of the railway southward. It is protected from the intrusion of the public by a hoarding upon the high road, in which a small doorway has been cut for the convenience of some ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... straight for the one place in the Quarry Wood which commanded a clear view of the entrance to the mansion. The two men were skirting the disused quarry, now a rabbit warren, which gave the locality its name; they followed the rising edge of the excavation, treading on a broad strip of turf, purposely freed of encroaching briers lest any wandering stranger might plunge headlong into the pit. Near the highest part of the rock wall there was a slight depression in the ground; and here, except during ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... to the floating body, .. and hailing the pequod to give notice of his intentions, at once proceeded to reap the fruit of his unrighteous cunning. Seizing his sharp boat-spade, he commenced an excavation in the body, a little behind the side fin. You would almost have thought he was digging a cellar there in the sea; and when at length his spade struck against the gaunt ribs, it was like turning up old Roman tiles and pottery buried in fat ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... fire cover is first secured in the lying position, each man scooping out a depression for his body and throwing the earth to the front. In this position no excavation can be conveniently made for the legs, but if time permits the original excavation is enlarged and deepened until it is possible to assume a sitting position, with the legs crossed and the shoulder to the parapet. In such a position a man presents a smaller target to shrapnel bullets ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... as it was the holiest city of pagan Ireland. Now it is a group of irregular mounds that the casual observer would readily mistake for natural hills, but for ages the name clung to the place until at last the attention of antiquaries was attracted, interest was roused, investigation made, excavation begun, and the site of Tara ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... earth. Thus a whole army of gnomes were noiselessly at work to destroy and defend the beleaguered city. The mine advanced towards the gate; the besieged delved deeper, and intersected it with a transverse excavation, and the contending forces met daily, in deadly encounter, within these sepulchral gangways. Many stratagems were, mutually employed. The citizens secretly constructed a dam across the Spanish mine, and then deluged their foe with hogsheads of boiling water. Hundreds were thus scalded to death. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of powder kegs was an excavation in the ground, but, alas! no powder was left. All had gone to cause that great explosion that had borne such a near approach to an earthquake. Of course, Big Tom and his men were a humiliated lot, as there is a great deal of ambition among these hardy boatmen to deliver ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... systems of dikes which intersect its northern shore, and have probably cut up the whole tract of rock over the space now filled by that wonderful sheet of fresh water in such a way as to destroy its continuity, to produce depressions, and gradually create the excavation which now forms the basin of the lake. How far the same causes have been effectual in producing the other large lakes I am unable to say, never having had the opportunity of studying their formation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... rested his musket against a tree, and taking the scalp from between the ramrod and the stock, where he had introduced it, knelt by the body, and spreading out the humid skin to its fullest extent, applied it to the bleeding excavation. As he had suspected, they corresponded exactly, making all due allowance for the time they had been separated, and he had no longer a doubt that the mutilated boy was Mr. Heywood's help, Wilton. A much more important discovery than this, however, resulted from his vain endeavor to recognise ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... the temporary 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, ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace, Francis Mason and S. H. Woodard
... 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, but with more voracious appetites ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... directed their way towards the palace. They approached the cellar by a small door, and then began to dig in the ground at the foot of the cellar wall. After a few hours of steady work, they succeeded in making an excavation leading into the interior. Zaragoza entered, and gathered up as many bags of money as he and Luis could carry. During the night they made several trips to the cellar, each time taking back to their house as much money as they could manage. For a long time the secret way was not ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... grounds instead of boarding about with people whose standards of living were very little if at all higher than those of their homes. Accordingly volunteers were called for, and the students made an excavation under their new brick building which was made into a basement kitchen and dining-room. As Mr. Washington says in "Up from Slavery," "We had nothing but the students and their appetites with which to begin a boarding department." ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... back to the barn for the spade, which already had fresh earth on it—the evidence of an early morning excavation privately made by Mrs. Smithers in a spot where she had dreamed gold was hidden. He went off to the orchard with it, whistling, his progress being furtively watched with great interest by the sour-faced ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... 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 of fragments knocked from sarcophagi, which, massive as they were, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... 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 sufficient time—the Egyptian. This most ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... was agreed to halt there. Attaining the locality, however, they were amazed to find all the traces of a previous occupation. Several sheds, formed of bamboo hurdles set up against the ground with sticks, like traps, were grouped together. Under each was a hearth, a simple excavation, two feet across and a few inches deep, and filled with ashes. A few arrows, feathers and rude pieces of pottery were scattered around. They greeted these Indian relics as Crusoe did the footprints of the savages. Nor was it more reassuring ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... excavation were carried out many secrets micht be discovered, but noo folks prefer to travel an' dig i' the remotest pairts o' the ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease |
