"Excavate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Usually, the floor of the cave beneath a few inches of sand is rock. Only in the great cave under the point have I found sand to any depth. The formation in some cases is little more than a hardened clay, but to excavate it would require long toil, probably blasting—and I have no explosives. And I go always on the principle that Captain Sampson and his two assistants had not time for any elaborate work of concealment. Most likely ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... the eye will strike; Highways all Russia will unite And form a network left and right; On iron bridges we shall gaze Which o'er the waters boldly leap, Mountains we'll level and through deep Streams excavate subaqueous ways, And Christian folk will, I expect, An inn at ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... The significance of these stories is entirely bound up with the locality; they possess an interest only for those who still sacrifice to Jehovah on the same altar as Abraham once did, under the same sacred oak of Moreh or Mamre. In the same way the patriarchs discover or excavate the caves, or springs, or wells, and plant the trees, which their posterity still count sacred or at least honourable, after the lapse of thousands of years. In some cases also striking or significant formations of the earth's surface receive a legendary explanation from the patriarchal ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... a Mormon in the neighbourhood, who invited me to excavate a large mound close to his house. He would even help to dig, he said, and I was free to take whatever I might find inside of it. He was sure that there would be no difficulty about the mummies I might want to remove from the ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... can be tested by experiment. Following the example of Mr. Tegetmeier, I separated two combs, and put between them a long, thick, rectangular strip of wax: the bees instantly began to excavate minute circular pits in it; and as they deepened these little pits, they made them wider and wider until they were converted into shallow basins, appearing to the eye perfectly true or parts of a sphere, and of about the diameter ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... passed these cliffs, and reached the plain beyond, upon which we continued our route near the shore, and rested for the night at ten hours and a quarter, under a palm-tree, in the vicinity of a deep brackish well, which we were obliged to excavate, in order to procure some water for our camels, they having drank none since we quitted Wasta. From hence the promontory of Om Haye bore S.W. b. S. This plain, which is the extremity of a valley descending from the western mountain, is ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... least till the day (if that day ever came) when it might be removed to some churchyard. They had no tools to dig a deep hole with; and if there was a hole, it must be deep: but they found they could excavate a space in the bank, under the trunk of one of the large buried forest-trees. They could line this hole with hewn stones brought from the shattered wall of the house, and could close it in also with a stone,—thus making the space at once a coffin and a grave, as secure from beast or bird ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... Msul in 1853, and was collecting his men for work, he discovered that Rawlinson, who knew nothing about the lease of the mound which Rassam held, had given the French Consul, M. Place, permission to excavate the northern half of the mound, i.e., that part of it which he was most anxious to excavate for the British Museum. He protested, but in vain, and, finding that M. Place intended to hold Rawlinson to his word, devoted himself to clearing out part ...
— The Babylonian Story of the Deluge - as Told by Assyrian Tablets from Nineveh • E. A. Wallis Budge
... village told me that hardly an hour's walk from there was a place in the woods among the mountains where an enormous quantity of bones were piled up in the sand and gravel. Ha! I exclaimed, the day is beginning to break. I went out there with a few peasants, had them excavate a little, and, behold! we came across bones to my heart's content. So that is the place where Germanicus had the remnants of the Roman legions buried six years after the battle of Teutoburg Wood, when he directed his last expeditions against Hermann. And I have ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... line; lead. bathymetry. [instrument to measure depth] sonar, side-looking sonar; bathometer[obs3]. V. be deep &c. adj.; render deep &c. adj.; deepen. plunge &c. 310; sound, fathom, plumb, cast the lead, heave the lead, take soundings, make soundings; dig &c. (excavate) 252. Adj. deep, deep seated; profound, sunk, buried; submerged &c. 310; subaqueous, submarine, subterranean, subterraneous, subterrene[obs3]; underground. bottomless, soundless, fathomless; unfathomed, unfathomable; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... malignant sores or ulcers on any part of the body, the doctors treated them by applying dirt or earth, and in warm weather would excavate a place in the ground and put the patient in it, either in a sitting or recumbent position, as the nature of the case required, and cover the affected part with earth for several hours, daily. Sometimes, by this mode of ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... been enriched and plowed twice deeply, as I have already suggested, little more is necessary in planting than to excavate a hole large enough to receive the roots spread out in their natural positions. Should no such thorough and general preparation have been made, or if the ground is hard, poor, and stony, the owner will find it to his advantage to dig a good-sized hole three or four feet ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... the site has been filled up to a probable depth of several feet, and a number of Navaho burials have been made on it. These are shown on the plan by shaded spots. Owing to the soft ground underneath, it was easier to excavate a hole and wall it up than to construct the regular surface cist, and the former ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... free as possible from the local attraction of the rocks in the neighbourhood, Webb resolved to take several sets of observations on the ice-sheet. In order to make the determinations it was necessary to excavate a cave in the glacier. This was done about three-quarters of a mile south of the Hut in working shifts of two men. A fine cavern was hewn out, and there full sets of magnetic observations were taken ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... the pride of the Ilians, must have stood on the highest point of the hill, and I therefore decided to excavate this locality down to the native soil, and I made an immense cutting on the face of the steep northern slope, about 66 feet from my last year's work. Notwithstanding the difficulties due to coming on immense blocks of stone, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the Turks it was difficult. The Turks were beautifully corrupt. By paying for it I could get permission to excavate on any property owned by Christians. But the minute I touched Moslem places the Turks became fanatical. The Arabs, now, are different—fanatics, too, but with a new sort of fanaticism—new to them, I mean—the kind ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... of our countrymen, and their skill in naval architecture has been put in requisition by the Emperor of Russia and the Sultan of Turkey. The steam machines invented by our countrymen to drive piles, load vessels, and excavate roads, are most ingenious and useful. The use of steam, as a locomotive power, upon the water and the land, is admirably adapted to our mighty rivers and extended territory. From Washington to ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Magnetic Observatory. For several years past, various plans have been under consideration for preventing large changes of temperature in the room which contains the magnetic instruments. At length I determined to excavate a subterraneous room or cellar under the original room. The work was begun in the last week in January, and in all important points it is now finished."—"In the late spring, some alarm was occasioned by the discovery that the ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... Eldorado looming beautifully in the mirage of The Desert, which would speedily replenish their exhausted treasures, and put the Government of Tripoli in easy pecuniary circumstances. A pretext was soon found to excavate in this newly discovered Desert mine. "The people of Ghadames," said the Pashas of Tripoli, "are rebels—they sympathized with the Arabs—they did not come forward to help us to exterminate the Arabs—they ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... 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 in a similar way the entire city underneath modern Resina? In this way a perfectly unique underground museum would be formed, which would have the merit of leaving magnificent Roman art treasures exactly in their proper places in the villas. Such a work ought ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... They consist of shafts connected together by galleries. These pits vary in size from twenty to sixty feet in diameter, and in some cases were as much as thirty feet deep. From the bottom of these shafts they would excavate as far as they dared to the sides. They made no use of timbers to support the roof, and so these side excavations were not of great extent. In these old workings the miners sometimes left behind them their ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... owning any land containing mineral, coal, stone or clay, and over any portion of which shall pass any state, county or township road or public highway, shall have the right and are hereby authorized to drill, excavate, mine or quarry through or under any such road; provided, however, that when any excavation is to be made in such manner that the top or highest level of such excavation will be extended within thirty feet vertical distance of such road, then and in that case before said work shall be commenced, ...
— Mining Laws of Ohio, 1921 • Anonymous
... within my own knowledge, says Mr. Mann, of a person who spent a fortune in mining for coal, when a work on geology, which would have cost but a dollar, and might have been read in a week, would have informed him that the stratum where he began to excavate belonged to a formation lower down in the natural series than coal ever is, or, according to the constitution of things, ever can be found. He therefore worked into a stratum which must have been formed ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... because the red plume on the top of his head proclaims the sex. It seems not to be generally known to our writers upon ornithology that certain of our woodpeckers—probably all the winter residents—each fall excavate a limb or the trunk of a tree in which to pass the winter, and that the cavity is abandoned in the spring, probably for a new one in which nidification takes place. So far as I have observed, these cavities are drilled out only by the males. Where the females take up their ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... deposits) in the depths of the ocean? How many more to twist and bend them and raise them to their present height? And what inconceivably long persistence of the wear and tear of frost and snow and torrent has it required to excavate in their hard bosoms these deep, broad valleys thousands of feet below us, and to leave these strangely moulded mountain peaks still high above us? And that beauty of the sun-lit sky and of the billowy ice-field and of the colours of the lake below and of the luminous haze ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... same sons of Sagara, accepted this command of their father, and once more began to search through the entire world. Now these heroes saw a rift on the surface of the earth. And having reached this pit, the sons of Sagara began to excavate it. And with spades and pickaxes they went on digging the sea, making the utmost efforts. And that same abode of Varuna (namely the ocean), being thus, excavated by the united sons of Sagara and rent and cut on all sides round, was placed in a condition of the utmost distress. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... by preference, a partly decayed tree in which to excavate a hole for its nest, because the digging is easier, and the sawdust and chips make a softer lining than green wood. Both male and female take turns in this hollowing-out process. The one that is off duty is allowed twenty minutes for refreshments, "consisting ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... these holes. The sign is reliable; in a few hours, thanks to the signs of the Bolboceras, I obtain a handful of specimens of the Hydnocystis. It is the first time I have ever found this fungus in the ground. Let us now capture the insect—an easy matter, for we have only to excavate the burrows. ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... to our villa that we called 'Ragnall' after this house, are the remains of a temple which were almost buried in the sand. This temple George obtained permission to excavate. It proved to be a long and costly business, but as he did not mind spending the money, that was no obstacle. For four winters we worked at it, employing several hundred men. As we went on we discovered that although not one of the ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... anything rather than expire of boredom. She and Rex had been married a year and were living at home. Rex and Mr. Carter helped excavate down in the business district, as the working class wouldn't lift a finger as long as the Government ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... fore paws are three or four inches in length, and are useful implements for digging. It is astonishing to see the result upon soil that would require a pick-axe to excavate a hole. Upon the hard sides of such pits as those made in search of white ants, the claw-marks are deeply imprinted, showing the labour that has been expended for a most trifling prize, as the nest when found would only yield a few mouthfuls. I have never ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... is no chance of either." I replied. "My idea is this. The inside of the inclosure is already deep under a frozen drift, and from the look of the weather there will be more snow in plenty within a few hours. We will excavate a tunnel beneath it, starting from one of the little windows that give air to the cellar, and leading to some part of the south stockade. Then in a day or two, when the night is dark and other conditions favorable, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon |
