"Basaltic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the other pointed in the direction Lizard was to steer. Many of those on board shut their eyes as they drew near the roaring breakers. The tide was running out strong. Such a wind as was then blowing would alone have enabled the boats to stem it. Tall basaltic cliffs rose up on either hand, while the foaming rollers, as they came in, appeared ready to engulf the two boats. Now the launch rose to the summit of a high sea, now downward she glided, the breakers hissing and foaming so close to her that it seemed ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... of Tasmania is very picturesque. Grand basaltic headlands tower along the coast, while inland are lofty mountains, broad lakes, untrodden jungles, and wide-spreading plains covered with rich and ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... needle to the pole, Tho' mountains rise between, and oceans roll. Where round the Orcades white torrents roar, 430 Scooping with ceaseless rage the incumbent shore, Wide o'er the deep a dusky cavern bends Its marble arms, and high in air impends; Basaltic piers the ponderous roof sustain, And steep their massy sandals in the main; 435 Round the dim walls, and through the whispering ailes Hoarse breathes the wind, the glittering water boils. Here the charm'd BYSSUS with his blooming bride Spreads his green sails, ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... a large, rapid volume of water, like the Colorado, charged with sand and gravel, is very great. According to Major Dutton, in the hydraulic mines of California, the escaping water has been known to cut a chasm from twelve to twenty feet deep in hard basaltic rock, in a single year. This is, of course, exceptional, but there have, no doubt, been times when the Colorado cut downward very rapidly. The enormous weathering of its side walls is to me the more wonderful, probably because the forces that have achieved this task ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... first object which caught our eye was a sheet of foam, above a mile in length and half a mile in breadth. Enormous masses of black rock, of an iron hue, started up here and there out of its snowy surface. Some resembled huge basaltic cliffs resting on each other; many, castles in ruins, with detached towers and fortalices, guarding their approach from a distance. Their sombre colour formed a contrast with the dazzling whiteness of the foam. Every rock, every island, was covered with flourishing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... Cape St. Vincent, which is of basaltic formation, at the distance of more than eighty leagues. It is not distinctly seen at a greater distance than 15 leagues, but the granitic mountain called the Foya de Monchique, situated near the Cape, is perceptible, as pilots allege, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... the waves increased in size, and coursed to all directions, as if distorted by the sunken reefs. The eastern jamb is formed by Tiran Island; the western by the sandy Ras Nasrani, whose glaring tawny slope is dotted with dark basaltic cones, detached and disposed like great ninepins. Beyond this cape the Sinaitic coast, as far as Ras Mohammed, the apex of the triangle, is fretted with little indentations; hence its name, El-Shurum—"the Creeks." Near one of these baylets, Wellsted chanced upon "volcanic ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... Livingstone sprang, as he has himself recorded, from the island of Ulva, on the west coast of Mull, in Argyllshire. Ulva, "the island of wolves," is of the same group as Staffa, and, like it, remarkable for its basaltic columns, which, according to MacCulloch, are more deserving of admiration than those of the Giant's Causeway, and have missed being famous only from being eclipsed by the greater glory of Staffa. The island belonged for many ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... 9. Basaltic Rocks, Campaspi River, near Port Phillip. Drawn on stone by George Barnard from a sketch by G. Hamilton, Esquire. M. and N. Hanhart, Lithographic Printers, 64 Charlotte Street, Rathbone Place. Published by T. & ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... parallel lines but on different bases, and where it was evident that every seed, plant, tree, and thing of life perished in one common vortex of ruin, animal as well as vegetable life will make its appearance in obedience to this law, as soon as the rains shall again descend, cool the basaltic and other rocks, and the life-giving power referred to by Isaiah once more become operative. There is no more doubt of this in the mind of the learned naturalist, than in that of the most devout believer of the Bible, from which this ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... basin; but there was one fertile island, of a small conical shape, bearing nearly due east as you enter. From the appearance of this island there can be no doubt whatever that it is of volcanic origin; as it in all respects resembles Mount Lyell and the other basaltic conical hills which we afterwards found in the fertile district of Glenelg; we did not however land on it, but merely ran close by, and then continued our ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... containing a paper on which I had hastily written the schooner's name, the date of her arrival, and the names of all those who sailed on board,—we pulled ashore. A ribbon of beach not more than fifteen yards wide, composed of iron-sand, augite, and pyroxene, running along under the basaltic precipice—upwards of a thousand feet high—which serves as a kind of plinth to the mountain, was the only standing room this part of the coast afforded. With considerable difficulty, and after a good hour's climb, we succeeded in dragging the figure-head we had brought ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... Mont-Dore valley decreased rapidly, and I entered the gorge of the Dordogne, where basaltic rocks were thrown up in savage grandeur, vividly contrasting with which were bands and patches of meadow, brilliantly green. Yellow spikes of agrimony and the fine pink flowers of the musk-mallow mingled with the wiry broom and the waving ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... frowning cliffs of the hill ranges. Bold, bare, scarred, seamed with fissures, their precipice rocks gave the impression of ten thousand feet rather that only so many hundreds. Late in the afternoon we landed against a formation of basaltic blocks cut as squarely up and down as a dock, and dropping off into as deep water. The waves chug-chug-chugged sullenly against them, and the fringe of a dark pine forest, drawn back from a breadth of natural grass, lowered across the horizon like ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... adventurers, good and bad, had mapped out a general route over the wind-whipped passes, where the storm stands sentinel and guards the granite ways among the rough Rocky Mountains. They had followed the falls-filled Snake and the calmer Columbia, which plow for a thousand miles or more among basaltic bastions buttressing the mountain sides, or through the lava lands where cavernous chasms yawn and abysmal depths echo back the sullen roar of ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan |
