"Shale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... southern exposure they were covered with grape-vines, planted with the utmost precision and regularity. Every corner and cranny among the rocks was utilized. The original planting must have been difficult, for the soil was covered with slabs of shale. The cultivator should develop excellent lungs in scaling those hillsides. The leaves had fallen and the bare vines varied in hue from sepia brown to wine color, with occasional patches of evergreen to set off the whole. ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... foam, brawled among the rocks, for the track had been dug out of a steep hillside. Festing knew this was difficult work; one could deal with rock, although it cost much to cut, but it was another matter to bed the rails in treacherous gravel, and the fan-shaped mounds of shale and soil that ran down to the water's edge showed how loose the ground was and the abruptness of the slope. Above, the silver mist drifted about the black firs that clung to the side of the mountain, and in the distance ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... is not always a criterion of its permeability; a very fine grained marble, containing about 0.6 per cent. cell space, transmitted water and oil more freely than a shale that would hold 4 per cent. of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... exceedingly difficult. A dense forest growth of cedar and tamarack pushed to the very edge of the water, and the rare open beaches were composed of smooth rocks too small to afford secure footing, and too large to be trodden under. The girl either slipped and stumbled on insecure and ankle-twisting shale, or forced a way through the awful tangle of a swamp. As the canoeing at this point was not at all difficult, her utmost efforts could not keep her abreast ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... treacherous, gloomy, and engulfing. Creeks become rivers, rivers impassable torrents, and marshes bottomless abysses. Pits of quicksand develop in most unexpected places. Driven from smooth lake margins, the trailers' ponies are forced to climb ledges of rock, and to rattle over long slides of shale. In places the threadlike way itself becomes an aqueduct for ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... short cut across the country they had mounted the top of a long, slender ridge, which reached down into the valley like a finger. Now her guide pulled up his horse so suddenly that it slid forward on stiff legs, its hoofs plowing the loose shale. ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... have produced this singular-looking, black, inflammable rock? How many times was this question asked before Science could return an answer? This she can now do with confidence. Coal was once growing vegetable matter. On the surface of the shale, immediately above the coal, you will find innumerable impressions of leaves and branches, as perfect as artist ever drew. But how could this vegetable matter ever accumulate in such masses as to make beds of coal ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... vast rolling prairies stretch away for hundreds of miles, gradually ascending on the side towards the mountains, where the highlands are sparsely covered with pinyon and cedar. The lofty banks through which the Arkansas occasionally passes are of shale and sandstone, rising precipitously from the water. Ascending the river the country is wild and broken, until it enters the mountain region, where the scenery is incomparably grand and imposing. The surrounding ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... And, of course, each instance of this kind would be pounced upon by a tribal medicine-man or some other jealous enemy, and used to discredit me. A few days after telling the Sodom and Gomorrah story, I was on a walk-about with Yamba in my mountain region, when I suddenly discovered that shale existed in very considerable quantities, and I thereupon conceived the idea of demonstrating to the blacks that, not only was the Bible narrative a true one, but that it was quite possible to ignite stone; and I would even show them how ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... glimpse. But sometimes glimpses make more vivid memories than longer acquaintance. At the end of our hour we left Vence and hurried down the broad road of red shale past meadows thick with violets. We went through the deep pine-filled ravine over which we had crossed on the viaduct. Then the ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... the little spring shelved in by shale at the lower edge of the swell, we found a tiny cairn built of clumps of sod and bits of shale. Fastened on it was a scrap from Bill's ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... that terrible climate, with no house to cover his head, would seem an ordeal impossible for human endurance. Between the autumn of 1022 and the spring of 1024, that is to say during two winters, he lived in a cave in the west of the island. A steep shale slide was below a cliff, and above this a hollow in the rock. He built up the mouth of the cave, and hung grey wadmal before the entrance, so that none below could notice anything peculiar, or any one living there. ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... great voice came pealing down the cliff, waking the echoes on the shore, and with a sort of incredulous joy Mrs. Beauchamp listened to the sturdy steps coming slowly, surely, carefully down, with a little ripple of shale following them. ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... alert, we closed the land, sprang on to the rocks, and at once set about the tedious task of breasting the hill. Hill climbing, under the vertical sun of North Australia, is by no means an enjoyable undertaking, more particularly when the loose shale and rock gives way at every stride, bringing down an avalanche of rubbish on the heads of the rearmost of the party. Encumbered with our carbines, we made but slow progress, and it was nearly six o'clock before we attained ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... reached one end of the many small valleys into which the larger vale was divided. They had been following the trail of the cattle that had been driven off—it was plain enough until they reached a rocky and shale-covered defile between two small hills. Then, for some reason or other, all "sign" came to an abrupt end. There were no further marks of hoofs in the earth, and none of the ordinary marks to indicate that cattle and horses had ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... inside repressed their roars of laughter. One of the wheels had come loose, half a mile off the nearest town. Their entry into Harwich was thereby delayed until half-past nine at night. Full of consideration for the new mates now fast wedded to his heart by an accident. Matthew Shale proposed to Matthew Weyburn, instead of the bother of crossing the ferry with a portmanteau and a bag at that late hour, to sup at his house, try the neighbouring inn for a short sleep, and ship on board his yawl, the honest Susan, to be rowed ashore off the Swin to Felixstowe ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the beds are prehistoric. They represent geological periods. Mine is the oldest. It is formed in strata of Old Red Sandstone, volcanic tufa, ignis fatuus, and bicarbonate of hornblende, superimposed upon argillaceous shale, and contains the prints of prehistoric man. It is in No. 149. Thousands of scientists come to see it. They consider it holy. They want to blast out the prints but cannot. Dynamite rebounds ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fragments of clothing. The needles of hypodermic syringes sometimes break and a portion remains embedded in the tissues. As a result of explosions, particles of carbon, in the form of coal-dust or gunpowder, or portions of shale, may lodge ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... clerk corrected himself. "Well, there's another way out. The Producers & Developers Shale and Oil Company have a suite of offices that run into the Rockford Building. They've built an alley to connect between the two buildings. ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... this kind (half an acre in area) have been found in such situations. They are masses which have been dislodged, by fissures and landslides, from the crater's walls and have tumbled into the cavity. Pieces of sandstone, limestone and shale occur in the agglomerates mixed with volcanic materials, and very often have been baked and partly recrystallized by contact with the hot igneous rocks and the gases discharged by the volcano. At Vesuvius such blocks of altered limestone are rich ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the one that the Chief's horse directly behind would bump me off the trail. It was a cheerful situation. The Canyon walls closed in upon us, and the trail grew worse, if that could be possible. The firm rock gave way to shale that slipped and slid under the feet of the horses. It was so narrow that one slip of a hoof would send the horse crashing on the rocks hundreds of feet beneath. Still this is the only path it has been possible to make down to the Indian retreat. ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... destroyed; (3) limestone highly crystallized, composed of fossil shells and very hard; (4) sandstone, made under the sea from previous rock powdered, having huge concretionary masses with a shell or a pebble as a nucleus around which the concretion has taken place; (5) shale from the sea also; (6) conglomerate, or drift, deposited by ice in the famous glacial cold snap; (7) alluvium soil deposited in fresh water and composed partly of organic matter. In our second illustration some of these layers, or strata, may ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... is usually on hand for the collection of tiny toll. Narrow bridges, rude steps cut in the face of the cliffs, trails along narrow ledges, over rocky ridges, down across gulches, and anon through loose shale on ticklishly sloping banks, characterize the passage through the canon. The sun is broiling hot, and my knee swollen and painful. It is barely possible to crawl along at a snail's pace by keeping ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... sleeked by the flesh of the valley) juts forth, like the scrags of a skeleton, and crumbles in low but rugged cliffs into the flat domain of sea. Here the landing is bad, and the anchorage worse, for a slippery shale rejects the fluke, and the water is usually kept in a fidget between the orders of the west wind and scurry of ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... and, happening to slide on a piece of shale at that moment, I sat down unexpectedly and the horse ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of his speed, and following a winding route, with which he was evidently familiar, as he avoided the water and the bogs, and kept on firm ground. I made an attempt to come up with him; but in my haste trod upon a piece of loose shale, which, sliding beneath me, threw me upon the ground, and badly wounded my right foot, so that for the moment I could proceed ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... natives. Yesterday, while prospecting on the southeastern side of the main ridge, I was surprised to find a part of a metal pot, evidently of cast iron. Quite a number of articles, of no particular value were lying near, but within the fragment of the pot, and protected by a shale of rock, was the enclosed scrap, which I thought might interest you, as you have a leaning in the direction of finding out hidden and abstruse things. Probably, you can decipher what it says. All the men are well, and are feeling jolly. We may be ready to return in a week. I hope the old ship ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... to the station or timber-yard. The very stumps and roots will be dragged out for sale; the earthy banks, raw and torn, will fall in, muddying and clogging that pure mountain brook; and the hillside, turning into sliding shale, will dam it into puddles with the refuse from the quarries above. And thus, for less guineas than will buy a new motor or cover an hour of Monte Carlo, a corner of the world's loveliness and peace will be gone as utterly as those chairs and tables ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... area in pre-Cambrian times was, in its southwestern extension, part of the floor of a sea which covered much of what is now the Indian Peninsula. In the northern shallows of this sea were laid down beds of conglomerate, shale, sandstone and limestone, derived from the denudation of Archaean rocks, which, probably, rose as hills or mountains in parts of Peninsular India and along the Tibetan edge of the Himalayan region. These ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... the seacoast need have nothing to fear from the ascent. In some spots they contract to an arm's length of space, outside of which limit they drop sheer away; elsewhere they stand up on end, zigzag in lacets each more hair-raising than the last, or fill to demoralization with loose boulders and shale. A fall on the part of your horse would mean a more than serious accident; but Western horses do not fall. The major premise stands: even the casual tourist has no real reason for fear, ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... de Malvoisie (the Crusader) suggested, by his accent and gestures, that he must have come from the East—how far East, it boots not to inquire. Miss FLORENCE DARLEY was a good Lady Alice, and Mr. J. A. SHALE an efficient "Craven." Later on an operatic performance is threatened. If the thrilling series of arrangements on the back of the Programme is to be accepted as authentic, the members of the Club will ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... my feet touched bottom. I pulled myself out upon a weed-covered rock, and along it to a slate-strewn foreshore overhung by a low cliff of shale, grey and glimmering in the darkness. But even in the darkness a ridge of harder rock showed me a likely way. I remembered that the cliff hereabouts was of no great height and scalable in a score of places. Very cautiously, and ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... be built over a natural spring of inflammable gas, and to be constantly illuminated therewith. What moral could be drawn from this? It is carburetted hydrogen gas, and is cooled from a soft shale or slate, which is sometimes bituminous, and contains more or less carbonate of lime. It appears in the vicinity of Lockport and Niagara Falls, and elsewhere in New York. I believe it indicates coal. At Fredonia, the whole village is lighted by it. Elsewhere, a farm-house ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Our frontispiece shows an interesting group, about ten miles from the foot of the canyon. These are situated only about forty feet above the bed of the creek, but still in a secure position. Here a bed of shale had been weathered out of the sandstone, leaving a sort of horizontal groove four feet high and from four to six feet deep. In this a row of minute houses had been built. They had been made to occupy the full height and depth of the crevice, so that when one ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... stole, Nimrod with a carbine, I with the rifle, along a treacherous, shaly bank which ended, twenty feet below, in the steep rocky bluffs that formed the face of the cliff. Every step was an agony of uncertainty as to how far one would slide, and how much loose shale one would dislodge to rattle down over the cliff and startle the antelope we hoped were there. To move about on a squeaking floor without disturbing a light sleeper is child's play compared with our progress. A misstep would have sent ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... crop production are on limestone, basalt, dolemite, dolerite, diorite and gabbro formations, whereas sandstones, aplites, granites, pierre shale, cretacious rocks and volcanic formations weather into inferior soils. Gneiss can be sometimes good, sometimes unfavorable ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... Hotchkiss, Lewiston Sandstone (Medina) Hudson River Bluestone Co., Ulster county. Silver medal Bluestone International Graphite Co., Ticonderoga Graphite International Pulp Co., Gouverneur Talc International Salt Co., Ithaca Salt Interstate Conduit & Brick Co., Ithaca Brick Jamestown Shale Paving Brick Co., Jamestown Brick Jewettville Pressed Brick & Paving Co., Jewettville Brick R. Jones, Prospect Graphite J. F. Kilgour, Lordville Bluestone F. H. Kinkel, Bedford Feldspar Quartz A. Gracie King, Garrisons Granite Francis Larkins, Ossining ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... lying so still on the dirty white mounds had a stealthy, crouching look, and the large soft leaves of a plane-tree flapped helplessly against the shale with the air of important people ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... answer but sat looking off across the jumbled foothills, rock-studded and gray with sage. Some distance from them a bare shale-slide extended for half a mile along a sidehill, barren and devoid of all vegetation. Here and there, far off across the country, vivid patches on the slopes indicated thickets of willows and birch growing below spring seeps. A ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... skeleton of these monster Dinosaurs is recovered. While our western states, in certain places, are rich in fossil remains, there is very seldom a complete skeleton unearthed. At best there are but a few bones, or the impressions of bones, in the sandstone rocks or shale. But from these bones, from the impressions of those that have been eaten by time, and by their knowledge of what sort of anatomy was needed to keep these wonderful creatures on earth, it is possible for scientists to almost completely and perfectly restore ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... northeast, and to the southeast is uninterrupted. Mountain range rises beyond mountain range, until only the snowy summits are visible in the great distance, and one knows that beyond the last of them lies the open sea. The near-by peaks and ridges, red with granite or black with shale and gullied from top to bottom with snow and ice, the broad highways of the glaciers at their feet carrying parallel moraines that look like giant tram-lines, stand out with vivid distinction. A lofty peak, that we suppose is Mount Hunter, towers above the lesser summits. The two arms of the ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... from its picturesque elements. In the "Seven Lamps" I defined the picturesque to be "parasitical sublimity," or sublimity belonging to the external or accidental characters of a thing, not to the thing itself. For instance, when a highland cottage roof is covered with fragments of shale instead of slates, it becomes picturesque, because the irregularity and rude fractures of the rocks, and their grey and gloomy color, give to it something of the savageness, and much of the general aspect, of the slope of a mountain side. But as a mere cottage ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the town, and rode down the crest of long, gently-sloping ridges, which seemed interminable. The rock over which we passed was red sandstone, mottled and streaked with green, red shale, and occasional patches of conglomerate. Crossing a little stream by a pretty bridge, we made an abrupt ascent, and soon saw the little town, Cuaquitepec, at the base of the ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... we examined some of the old red sandstone which underlies all that part of Cape Breton Island, found some good specimens, and some very plain and deep glacial scratches. There is also some coal and a good deal of shale ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... evidently understood by the others, for they could be heard tearing along down the shale ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... that I could, and followed Gunson, who showed me the way he had descended by the help of the rocks, and projecting roots of the dwarf firs which began to grow freely as soon as the slaty shale ceased. ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... difficult matter where all vegetation runs up like Jack's famous beanstalk, and where the old proverb about the steed starving whilst his grass is growing falls completely to the ground. There are numerous drives, made level by a coating of smooth black shale, and bordered by a double line of syringas and oaks, with hedges of myrtle or pomegranate. In some places the roads run alongside the little river—a very muddy torrent when I saw it—and then the oaks give way to great drooping willows, beneath whose trailing branches the river swirled angrily. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... guard had been smashed down by a most unconventional attack, and Walter himself had been knocked senseless by a swing on the side of the jaw, Bill Shale leaped gaily ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... said the sheriffe, Thou sholdest have had a knights fee: But seeing thy asking hath beene soe bad, Well granted it shale be. ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... of coal mines, which have their depot here. The States Railway Company are the great owners of mines in this district. They confine their attention to iron and coal. There are extensive paraffine-works in Oravicza; the crude oil is distilled from the black shale of the Steirdorf coal, yielding five per cent of petroleum. At Moldova, where we were recently, the same company have large sulphuric acid works, employing as material the iron pyrites of the old mines. Moldova had formerly the reputation of producing ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... issues: air polluted with sulfur dioxide from oil-shale burning power plants in northeast; however, the amount of pollutants emitted to the air have fallen steadily, the emissions of 2000 were 80% less than in 1980; the amount of unpurified wastewater discharged ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... The King's Messenger climbed into his carriage and the journey was resumed. Along the shores of jade-tinted lochs, through far-stretching deer forest and grouse moor, past brawling rivers of "snow-brew," and along the flanks of shale-strewn hills, the "Navy Special" bore its freight ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... beginning of an exclamation as she saw his arm rising, but she smothered her cry for her good sense told her that this experienced man would not endanger the lives of himself or his guests. The coal had been taken out very cleanly, and above them they saw not coal but shale. ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... toes and five fingers to the early amphibians of the sub-carboniferous times. The first tangible evidence of these five toes upon the earth is, to me, very interesting. The earliest record of them that I have heard of is furnished by a slab of shale from Pennsylvania, upon which, while it was yet soft mud, our first five-toed ancestor had left the imprint of his four feet. He was evidently a small, short-legged gentleman with a stride of only about thirteen ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... measures of Coalbrookdale, with their alternating beds of coal, clay, and iron ore, are rich in specimens of the fauna and flora of the carboniferous age; the best places for discovering them being the spoil banks of the mines, where shale, and ironstone nodules, will be found the most productive. One of the richest beds yielding fossils is the Penneystone, which may be seen on the surface near Coalbrookdale and Ketley; remains of the Megalicthys, Gyracanthus, ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... sailor's sleep was prompt and profound. It seemed to him but a few minutes after he had laid his head on the pillow when Jack Shale's voice again ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... splash in the water beneath us—he had lost his balance, slid down the inclined plane, and been drowned. He never stirred a limb nor uttered a cry. His fate discouraged and alarmed us two survivors exceedingly. If help was coming, we now felt it would never come in time. We dug into the shale with the handles of our lamps and with our fingers, to make our position more secure. We did not venture to speak of our late companion's fate to one another. Horror overwhelmed us, so enfeebled had we become through famine and fatigue. We had devoured our leather belts, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... away to the north-east of the site of old Camp Almy a ridge of rock and shale stretches down from the foothills of the Black Mesa and shuts off all view of the rugged, and ofttimes jagged, landscape beyond—all save the peaks and precipitous cliffs of the Mogollon, and some of the pine-crested heights that hem the East Fork. Time was, toward ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... masses are in a chaotic confusion of separate heaps, which at a distance resemble volcanic cones. We rode up precipitous paths edging upon deep chasms between these conical hills, and emerged upon metamorphous rocks and shale mingled in curious irregularity. The strata of shale were in some instances nearly vertical, proving the disturbance that had been occasioned by a subsequent upheaval. About 200 feet above this formation we entered upon ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the reason. Dean gathered from what she could tell that a gas of some sort was formed, perhaps by the decomposing vegetation. Perhaps it combined with the sparkling white shale. But all this was of no consequence compared with his own problems. He did not argue the matter but followed ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... followed the guide along a narrow path covered with fragments of shale, with Table Rock above and the deep abyss below. A cold, damp wind blew against me, succeeded by a sharp pelting rain, and the path became more slippery and difficult. Still I was not near the sheet of water, and felt not the slightest dizziness. I speedily ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... responded the ancient, "that such a kind-hearted gent may never meet with it. Ah, I do trust that you never may, which is to say, so to speak, as I do trust as you'll never meet that black doctor. If ever a man, had the evil eye, that black doctor's got it, and old Mother Shale what lives in the cottage on the heath down against the windmill, she warned me, she did, three days after he come here. 'Mr. Corder,' she says, 'that black doctor has the evil eye!' And never was a truer word spoke. He's been the bane and blight of ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer |
