"Volcanic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... took place between several rocky islands, that have probably been detached from the mainland by volcanic action, and the shore. The torpedoes were tried on dummy vessels, while a troop of soldiers stood guard at all the approaches to the place in order to prevent inquisitive individuals as well as Chilean spies, from learning the nature of the work going on. ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... justice form a queer commentary on the philosopher who, like Voltaire's Mamres in the White Bull, continued to 'meditate profoundly' in placid disregard of facts. He was in fact proposing that the lava boiling up in a volcanic eruption should arrange itself entirely according to his architectural designs. But his proposal to become a gaoler during the revolution reaches the pathetic by its amiable innocence. On 26th August 1792, Bentham was one of the men upon whom the expiring ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... he burst out with volcanic fury, "no, no; I am too hot. We can lose them; tell Serigny they were never found; tell him Yvard carried them off; tell him he never had them. We ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... carbonic acid gas is not an uncommon phenomenon in volcanic districts," I continued, "as I take this to be; but it is odd what should have started it. It has sometimes been known to follow earthquake shocks, when there is a profound disturbance of ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... Greek poetess living on the island of Lesbos, about 600 B. C. Delos is one of the Grecian Archipelago, and is of volcanic origin. The ancient Greeks believed that it rose from the sea at a stroke from Neptune's trident, and was moored fast to the bottom by Jupiter. It was the supposed birthplace of Phoebus, or Apollo. The island of ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... their moral aspect, indicated that the development of the builder's art in Samaria had not followed any known historical scheme, but had been conducted along sporadic lines of imitation, and interrupted at least once by a volcanic outbreak of the style named, for some inscrutable reason, after Queen Anne. On the edges of the hill, looking off in various directions over the encircling vale, and commanding charming views of the rolling ridges which ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... orange-coloured waters, the strong effluvium of the waves intoxicating the brain, the wild headlands of Africa—each the dwelling of a necromancer—the Maldives, filled with mermaids and sea-monsters, the volcanic blaze that guarded the entrance to the Red Sea, the fiery mountains of Aden, the Hadramant, or region of Death, the Babelmandeb, or Gate of Tears, the Isle of Perim, and the Cape of Burials, wild, black, and terrific—fill the Arab imagination with wonders ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... lying upon the hills looked like the scorched and withered scoria of a volcanic region, and even the natives, judging from the specimen I had seen to-day, partook of the general misery ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... by a long and tortuous passage through which the "Great River" rushes with a force and a roar like the cataracts of the Rhine, only on a vastly greater scale. In some bygone age volcanic forces tore asunder a mountain range, and the waters of the great stream furrowed out a channel; but the obstructing rocks, so far from being worn away, remain as permanent obstacles to steam navigation and are a cause of frequent shipwrecks. Yet, undeterred ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... energetic work in all the spheres of life and thought. While they had political ground more or less firm under their feet, and for the most part enjoyed peace and liberty, the Jews in the Christian lands of Europe stood upon volcanic soil, every moment threatening to swallow them up. Exposed constantly to persecutions, they lived more or less isolated, and devoted themselves to one-sided though intense intellectual activity. Sombre shadows and ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... Hence, we see that the materials of the interior of the earth must be either metallic or very compressible. To assign a metallic nucleus to the earth, is repugnant to analogy; and it is not rendered even probable by facts, as we find volcanic emissions to contain no heavier elements than the sedimentary layers. Besides, there are indications of a gradual increase of density downwards, such as would arise from the compressibility of the layers. Seeing, therefore, the equilibrium of the whole mass, and ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... the Sierra. On the western slope it is first met at an elevation of about 2000 feet, and extends nearly to the upper limit of the timber-line. Thence, crossing the range by the lowest passes, it descends to the eastern base, and pushes out for a considerable distance into the hot, volcanic plains, growing bravely upon well-watered moraines, gravelly lake basins, climbing old volcanoes and dropping ripe ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... from the simplest methods of interpretation, that leaving out of view certain patches of metamorphosed rocks, and certain volcanic products, all that is now dry land has once been at the bottom of the waters. It is perfectly certain that, at a comparatively recent period of the world's history—the Cretaceous epoch—none of the great physical features which at present mark the surface of the globe existed. It is certain ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... the only person in all the world who had stirred the heart of Anna Agar to something like a lasting affection. Once—years before—she had loved Seymour Michael with a sudden volcanic passion which had as suddenly turned to hatred. But under no circumstances could such a love have endured. Consistency, constancy, singleness of purpose were quite lacking in this woman's composition. It is rare, but when a woman does fail in this respect, ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... roomy platform decorated with flags, and carpeted. I stepped out on it, and saw below me millions of people blocking all the streets, and other millions caked together in all the windows and on all the house-tops around. These masses took me for General Grant, and broke into volcanic explosions and cheers; but it was a good place to see the procession, and I stayed. Presently I heard the distant blare of military music, and far up the street I saw the procession come in sight, cleaving its way through the huzzaing multitudes, with Sheridan, the most martial figure of the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... every scarped pinnacle and beetling crag scowled menacingly at your littleness and scowled defiance at your approach. One wondered by what titanic forces the country had been so ruthlessly crushed and crumbled and torn to shreds. Did any startled eye witness this volcanic frolic? What a sight it must have been to have watched these towering ranges split and scattered; to have seen the placid snowclad heights shivered, like fragile vases, to fragments; to have beheld the mountains tossed about like pebbles; to have seen the ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... Peruvians were at all obsequious or servile. They were a reckless, lawless, Godless gang, perpetually bearing themselves with the careless insolence which had characterized them at first, blasphemous of speech toward one another—but never toward the North Americans. Disputes arose among them with volcanic suddenness, and more than once knives were half drawn, only to be slipped back under the tongue-lashing of the hawk-nosed puntero, Jose, who damned the disputants completely and promised to cut out the bowels of any man daring to lift his blade clear ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... earth, of course, which most interests us. And however we look at it, that destiny is a gloomy one. Its heat may fail. Stupart, in fact, has established that its temperature is going down one and a half degrees every thousand years. Or its volcanic elevating forces may give out, so that the land will subside and the water wash over it from pole to pole. Or a comet may wipe up its atmosphere, the same as one sponge-sweep wipes up moisture from a slate. Or ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... diseases are prevalent; deforestation; overgrazing; desertification; poaching; overfishing natural hazards: recent volcanic activity with release of poisonous gases international agreements: party to - Biodiversity, Climate Change, Endangered Species, Law of the Sea, Ozone Layer Protection, Tropical Timber 83; signed, but not ratified - Desertification, Nuclear Test Ban, ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... described as a ferocious wild beast, stamping everything beneath its feet and spreading desolation on every side. The Vandal hordes of Northern barbarians, who, under Genseric overran the Western Roman empire early in the fifth century, are symbolized by a volcanic mountain cast into the sea and spreading its streams of molten lava in every direction. The fearful pest of Mohammedanism is a dense smoke issuing from the bottomless pit and darkening the heavens. The ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... applies to smaller portions of land; and Australia, Madagascar, Borneo, and Britain are among the larger examples. Their materials and form are equally various, and so is their origin; some having evidently been upheaved by volcanic eruption, others are the result of accretion, and still more revealing by their strata that they were formerly attached to a neighbouring land. The sudden emergence of Sabrina, in the Atlantic, has occasioned wonder in our own ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Khanikoff in 1862. More recently Major St. John has shown the magnitude of this range, which rises into summits of 15,000 feet in altitude, and after a course of 550 miles terminates in a group of volcanic hills some 50 miles S.E. of Bamm. Yet practically this chain is ignored on all ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Fernandez more than a month, when a cry came from the masthead of "Land ho!" It proved to be Chatham Island, one of the Galapagos, a group of volcanic islands almost under the line, some hundred miles away from the coast of Peru. We brought up in a fine bay, but the shore as far as we could see looked black and barren. There were, however, thick, low bushes of ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... a wonderfully rich district. Louis Agassiz first mapped it and wrote a most interesting essay on it. Here was a wonderful prehistoric lake, draining to the south through the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers, and thence to the Gulf of Mexico. By a volcanic rise of the land on the southern end, centuries ago, the current was turned and ran north, making what we call the Red River, emptying into Lake Winnipeg, which in turn has ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... at Greenwich was a "highly volcanic institution." They certainly seemed never out of trouble there. Behind its walls battle, murder and sudden death seemed the milder diversions. Mutiny was a habit, and they had a way of burning up parts ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... spot, nature has thrown up mountains of volcanic rock, which hold the winter's snow in everlasting supply to quench the thirst of plant, of animal and millions of ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... scoriae from his fountain, But down they come in volleying rain back to the burning mountain; We leave, like those volcanic stones, our precious Alma Mater, But will keep dropping in again to ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... one which formerly existed, but exists no longer. In volcanic regions it sometimes happens that the liquid lava, seeking the lowest ground, fills up the beds of the rivers which die and are replaced by water-courses running in other channels and in different directions. ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... out, and a village came into view, together with a ruined castle upon a mamelon, that rose like a volcanic cone from the plain. On the castle wall an immense wooden cross had been set, showing against the sky with an effect truly grand. The village was Vers, and the castle, which was built by the English, is called ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... violent nature of the volcanic eruption in Krakatoa in 1883, the peculiar beauty of those parts of the eastern seas where the event occurred, the wide-spread influences of the accompanying phenomena, and the tremendous devastation which ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... his son Benjamin Silliman, junior, of Yale College, sailed a few days ago for Europe, for the purpose chiefly of making a geological exploration of the central and southern portion of that continent. After visiting the volcanic regions of central France, they will make the tour of Italy, visiting Vesuvius and Etna, and will return to England in time to attend the meeting of the British Academy of Sciences, at Ipswich, in July. They will next visit Switzerland and the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... had knocked her about! Standing before the toilet-glass and looking at her bruises musingly, she tried to remember in what part of the room, and at which period of the long volcanic discussion, each one had been received. All the neck marks could be accounted for on the bed, when he was holding her down and shaking her; that graze above the knee, outside the right thigh had come when she rolled over by ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... at which we stopped, possessed at the least a qualified self-government. We had a good sight of its surface, approaching from the south and skirting at moderate distance westward, to reach the principal anchorage, Johanna Town, on the north. The island is lofty—five thousand feet—and of volcanic origin; bearing the family likeness which I have found in all such that I have seen. On a bright day, which we had, they are very picturesque to look on from the sea, with their deep gullies, ragged precipices, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... volcanic rock surrounded by reefs and is awash at high tide. A French possession since 1897, it was placed under the administration of a commissioner residing in ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... from this place of rest By night or early dawn back to the brink Of that volcanic crater where the best Sit tight, scarce caring if they swim or sink. Silent they bear it, as they quietly think The end approaching to their life at last, And face each other, with a smile or wink Outwardly stoic, tho' their hearts beat fast As, thumping ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... Yellow landscape, spatter cones, glittering streaks that might be metal in the volcanic ground—created by dusting ground mica on wet glue to catch the reflection of the sun. It ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins
... early convulsions of nature. The earth of the bluffs was streaked with layers of coal, or carbonized wood, and large quantities of lava and pumice-stone were strewn around, showing traces of ancient volcanic action. The journal ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... exquisite sea-flowers, shells, and fishes of magical gorgeousness of hue; of the brilliant white beach, fringing the glorious vegetation, cocoa-nut, bread-fruit, banana, and banyan, growing on the sloping sides of volcanic rocks; of mysterious red-glowing volcano lights seen far out at sea at night, of glades opening to show high-roofed huts covered with mats: of canoes decorated with the shining white shells resembling a poached egg; of natives clustering round, eager and excited, seldom otherwise than friendly; ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are such, that the ice will absolutely set fire to the potassium. I shew this to you to-day, in order to enlarge your ideas of these things, and that you may see how greatly results are modified by circumstances. There is the potassium on the ice, producing a sort of volcanic action. ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... said, "you ain't treated me right or I'd let you in on this strike. But you went off and left me and therefore you're out of it, and there ain't any extensions to stake. It's just a single big blow-out, an eroded volcanic cone, and I've covered it all with ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... to Apollo justifies himself for rejecting the favorite themes of myth and fiction: the mysteries of nature are more worthy of occupying the efforts of the mind. He has chosen one out of very many that needs explanation. The true cause of volcanic eruption, he says, is that air is driven into the pores of the earth, and when this comes into contact with lava and flint which contain atoms of fire, it creates the explosions that cause such destruction. After a second invitation to the reader to appreciate ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... scenery, while Pan, Pales, and the Fauns represent the supernatural. The shepherds defend their flocks from wolves and lions. But this factitious bucolicism is pervaded by a pathos, which, like volcanic heat, has fused into a new compound the dilapidated debris of the Theocritean world. And in the Latin elegy there is more tenderness than in the English. Charles Diodati was much nearer to Milton than had been Edward King. The sorrow in Lycidas is not so much personal as it is ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... the majority of the Azores, is of volcanic origin; and, looking at it from the sea, even when near in, it is not a very picturesque object, the conical hills and extinct craters giving it a ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... stop his mouth with cold chicken. While I was cautiously unfastening the hamper lid, Beauty remained quiet as a dormouse; and then he proceeded personally to assist the unfastening, with a vengeance. There was a bouncing volcanic eruption, a blood-curdling howl, a mixed-up whirling round the carriage, and then—smash!—bang through the window went Beauty!—leaving me doubled up on the seat, holding out half a chicken. It was a forty-feline-power hurricane, while ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... further destruction. Nothing in the line of the wind is safe. Fine impalpable ashes drift and fall like rain half a mile away. Sometimes they remain suspended in the air for hours, and come down presently when the fire is out, like volcanic dust drifting from the crater. This dust lies soft and silky on the hand. By the burning rick, the air rushing to the furnace roars aloud, coming so swiftly as to be cold; on one side intense heat, on the ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... busy mother rocking comfortably and reading early in the morning made Jo feel as if some unnatural phenomenon had occurred, for an eclipse, an earthquake, or a volcanic eruption would hardly have ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... revenge on the part of the workmen who idolized him. In their present rage, however, Tom could not at once restrain them. Time and again he was swept back from reaching Tim Griggs, who was easily the center of this volcanic ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... he looked around on the island, he noted evidences that it was of volcanic origin, and his heart misgave him, for he knew that such islands, created suddenly by a submarine upheaval, might just as suddenly be destroyed by an earthquake, or by sinking into the ocean. It was not a pleasant thought—it ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... not quite as imposing as I expected, but it was the summit, and we were soon surely moving down the western side, for at Pacific Springs the water ran to the westward, toward the Pacific coast. The next day we came to the nearly dry bed of the river—the Big Sandy. The country round about seemed volcanic, with no timber, but plenty of sage brush, in which we were able to shoot an occasional sage hen. The river bed itself was nothing but sand, and where there was water enough to wet it, it was very ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... German Reaction and 1914 was the attempted revenge for it. It is true that the French liberation of Italy was incomplete, the problem of the Papal States, for instance, being untouched by the Peace of Villafranca. The volcanic but fruitful spirit of Italy had already produced that wonderful, wandering, and almost omnipresent personality whose red shirt was to be a walking flag: Garibaldi. And many English Liberals sympathised ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... which more or less shines through them all, rather appear a thing put on for the occasion; no natural or possible mode of being, but something intended to look much grander than nature? Surely, all these stormful agonies, this volcanic heroism, superhuman contempt, and moody desperation, with so much scowling and teeth-gnashing, and other sulphurous humor, is more like the brawling of a player in some paltry tragedy, which is to last three hours, than the bearing of a man in the business of life, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... consumption of their coal, through the speed they had maintained, had been so great that there was only too much reason to fear that fuel would fail them. Anyhow, the strictest economy was necessary, and it was accordingly resolved that the voyage should not be much prolonged. Beyond the volcanic peak, moreover, the waters seemed to expand into a boundless ocean, and it might be a thing full of risk to be frozen up while the yacht was so inadequately provisioned. Taking all these things into account, it was agreed that further investigations ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... Many of us know Turkish baths; but then we take them gradually, whereas in the bastu one plunges into volcanic fires at once. Blinking in the dim light, I found that beside us was a brick-built stove, for which the fire, as I had noticed while disrobing, is in the outer chamber, and when the washing-woman threw a pail of water upon the surface of the great heated stones, placed ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... barren region of the earth, where seas of ice make thousands of square miles desolate and impenetrable, where icy masses, elsewhere glaciers, are here mountains, where volcanoes with terrible eruptions destroy whole regions of inhabited country in a few days with lava, volcanic sand, and boiling water, was developed to its highest degree the ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... probably washed down by storm from, the sides of the distant mountains whence these waters have their rising,—see you not how the tide is thick and heavy with an unfloatable cargo of red sand? Some sudden disturbance of the soil,—or a volcanic movement underneath the ocean,—or even a distant earthquake, . . any of these may be ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... and gallant young fellow, left fatherless in childhood; perhaps he came too early into power:—he came, at any rate, in very volcanic times, when Germany was all in convulsion; the Old Religion and the New having at length broken out into open battle, with huge results to be hoped and feared; and the largest game going on, in sight of an adventurous youth. How Albert ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... whose labours, we opined, would probably be over for the day by this time. The holy father lived about a mile up the steep hillside in a small one-roomed hut, more than half hidden by great rocks and boulders, which in primeval ages some volcanic upheaval had scattered around. It was not very easy to find the father's hut at all; he might have been a priest of Reformation days, so hidden and secluded was his dwelling, and after partaking of the old man's hospitality, it was well-nigh ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... its docks, on the seashore, with water in abundance for the ship-carpenters: it is now far from the head of the Elaic Gulf in a parched desert. Aden, when visited by the Portuguese Balthazar less than 300 years ago, was a perfect garden; but it is now a vast conglomeration of black volcanic rocks, with so little vegetation, that, on seeing flocks of goats driven out, I thought of the Irish cabman at an ascent slamming the door of his cab and whispering to his fare, "Whish, it's to desave the baste: he thinks that you are out walking." Gigantic tanks in great numbers ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit; for though a pleasant writer said, "Liceat perire poetis," when one of them, in cold blood, is said to have leaped into the flames of a volcanic revolution, "ardentem frigidus AEtnam insiluit," I consider such a frolic rather as an unjustifiable poetic license than as one of the franchises of Parnassus; and whether he were poet, or divine, or politician, that chose to exercise this kind of right, I think that ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Bombon had taken place two months before, and in the interval another great event occurred in favor of the independent army. General Sucre, who had come to help Bolvar in the movement, had taken several cities as he advanced towards Quito. On the 24th of May he fought a decisive battle on the volcanic mountain of Pichincha, by which the independence of Quito was secured. The battle of Pichincha made Sucre the greatest general in the Repblican army, after Bolvar. He captured 1,200 prisoners, several pieces of field artillery, guns and implements of ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... attaining to riper years and more mature understanding, may be inspired with a longing to inquire more deeply into this interesting subject. They may be stimulated to investigate, in a philosophical spirit, all the marvellous facts and phenomena connected with volcanic agency, and to speculate on their causes and modes of operation. Some also, on reaching their manhood, may be induced to ascend one or more of the nearer active volcanoes, and examine their phenomena for themselves. The facilities of travel ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... nor voice expressed anything. Only a keen reader of character might have asked whether all there was in that eye could live contented with this cool, austere, self-contained life; whether there would not be somewhere a volcanic eruption. But if there was any sea of molten lava beneath, the world did not discover it. Wild boys were sick of having Small held up to them as the most ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... nothing, esteems nothing of this poor visible present; but it was an additional recommendation to the Puritanic piety, that it had left a detestable memory behind it, and was in declared hostility with all contemporaneous ways of thinking. What could he better do, therefore, than borrow this old volcanic crater of Puritanism, and pour out from it his religion and his anger upon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... contribution to Christian thought, we need hardly say, was of a negative sort. It was destructive rather than constructive. Among the conventions and hypocrisies of society there were none which he more utterly despised than those of religion and the Church as he saw these. There is something volcanic, Voltairean in his outbreaks. But there is a difference. Both Voltaire and Byron knew that they had not the current religion. Voltaire thought, nevertheless, that he had a religion. Posterity has esteemed that he ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... Herr Katschuka saw what a flash flew over Athalie's face—a volcanic outburst of diabolical rage, a glow of flaming spite, a dark cloud of purple shame; the muscles quivered as if the face was a nest of snakes stirred up by a rod. What murderous eyes! What compressed lips! What a bottomless depth of passion ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... anger, may belch forth my putrid flesh with volcanic fury, but the out-stretched arms of God will receive my spirit as a token of approval of ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... ever been the theatre of igneous phenomena, and the three little islands of Thera, Therasia, and Aspronisi, which shut in the Bay of Santorin, are built up chiefly of volcanic materials.[246] In 1573 an eruptive cone suddenly appeared; in 1707 the inhabitants of Santorin saw rise up a short distance from their shores a rock that increased in size for several days and then suddenly split up. This splitting up was succeeded ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... encircled by high hills—the concave of the Mountains of the Moon—but because the lake's altitude is so much less than that of the adjacent plateau. Indeed, the waters of the lake are so low they would convey the impression that the trough they lie in has been formed by volcanic agency, were it not that Dr Livingstone has determined the level of the Nyassa to be very nearly the same as this lake; and the Babisa, who live on the west of the Nyassa, in crossing the country between the two lakes to Luwemba,[45] cross ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... strange people and distant lands. In listening, one becomes almost dizzy at the rapidity with which the scene and personnel change. The icebergs and the aurora borealis of the Arctic give place to the torrid waters and the Southern Cross of the South Pacific. A volcanic island, an Arabian desert, a tropical jungle, and the breadth and width of the ocean serve as the theatre, while a Fiji Islander, an Eskimo, and a turbaned Arab are actors in a half-hour's tale. In interest they rival Verne, Kingston, or Marryat. ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... itself, burst upon them, and a few minutes placed them on the summit. They stood within the crater, or what has been such, for, at present, the mountain discharges itself through a lofty cone which rises on one side of this strange, black, sulphurous amphitheatre. All around them, however, the volcanic vapours were steaming up from innumerable crevices, and the hot lava pouring out, moving slowly, with a dull red heat. No need here of further clothing. Their feet were burning where they stood. They had again exchanged the cold of winter, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... description of it, mixed with oil and lime, might be converted into excellent soap. Coal in considerable quantities has been discovered; and in many places we observed a species of red earth, much resembling lava, and which appeared to be of volcanic origin. We also found in different parts of New Caledonia quartz, rock crystal, cobalt, talc, iron, marcasites of a gold colour, granite, fuller's earth, some beautiful specimens of black, marble, and limestone ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... will also be found in the scenery of the islands of volcanic and non-volcanic origin. A volcanic belt passes from the north, through the Philippine Islands, down to the north end of Celebes. There is then a break; and again it commences in the island of Gilolo, passing through Borneo, Seram, and Banda, down to Timor; then ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... was silent. In Eda's mind such an affair was a kind of glorified fireworks ending in a cluster of stars, in Janet's a volcanic eruption to turn the world red. Such was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a hundred pounds," replied Richard, who seemed strangely calm in the very midst of this inexplicable and volcanic turmoil which he felt was seething all round him. He had won a hundred pounds—a fortune in those days for a country lad like himself; but for the moment the thought of what that hundred pounds would mean to him and to his brother Adam, was lost in the whirl ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... blocks quite unrolled and very difficult and dangerous to walk among; no water in the course, scarce any sign of water. And yet surely water must have made this bold cutting in the plateau. And if so, why is the lava sharp? My science gave out; but I could not but think it ominous and volcanic. The course of the stream was tortuous, but with a resultant direction a little by west of north; the sides the whole way exceeding steep, the expedition buried under fathoms of foliage. Presently water appeared in the bottom, a good quantity; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... yet in childhood's happy day, I learned upon its sun to smile, And in my breast there seemed the while Seething volcanic fires to play. A bard I was, and my wish alway To call upon the fleeting wind, With all the force of verse and mind: "Go forth, and spread around its fame, From zone to zone with glad acclaim, And earth ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... impetuous torrent foaming against rocks of opposition and of coquetry, rather than a tranquil stream flowing between the two banks of the church and the legal ceremony? Has she her own designs as she secretly prepares those volcanic eruptions to which, ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... exploded reminiscences, the old lady fed us with ham and omelette salted with tears. We had to eat, or hurt her feelings, but it was as if we swallowed the poor creature's emotion with our food, and the effect within was dynamic. I never had such a volcanic meal! Our French officer was the only calm one among us, but—he had been stationed in this liberated region for months. It's ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... sinners and the triumphant cries of folks that had "jist got religion"; and then again subsiding to a buzzy state, occasioned by the whimpering and whining voices of persons giving spiritual advice and comfort! How like a volcanic crater after the evomition of its lava in a fit of burning cholic, and striving to resettle ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... to the origin of the lunar craters there has been much discussion. Some have considered them to be evidence of violent volcanic action in the dim past; others, again, as the result of the impact of meteorites upon the lunar surface, when the moon was still in a plastic condition; while a third theory holds that they were formed by the bursting of huge bubbles during the escape into space of gases from ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... at the beginning of another. Cataclysm is to follow cataclysm. The pent-up forces are bursting out in many quarters; and not only will men be swallowed up or slain by thousands, 'new' land appear and 'old' subside, volcanic eruptions and tidal waves appal; but secrets of an unsuspected past will be uncovered to the dismay of Western theorists and the humiliation of an imperious science. This drifting ship, if watched, may be seen to ground upon the upheaved vestiges ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... workaday tasks: of currencies kept in effective relation, of development loans meshed together, of standardized weapons, and concerted diplomatic positions. The Atlantic Community grows, not like a volcanic mountain, by one mighty explosion, but like a coral reef, from the accumulating ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... with consternation. The strange apathy of the pavement and the sky, the remissness of the volcanic fires and the celestial thunderbolts in face of this staring profanity, lent the cosmos an air almost of accessory after the fact. Never had the congregation seen Heaven so openly defied, and the consequences did not at all correspond with their deep if ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... decision of the local Legislature, whatever might be the means to which they resorted for the attainment of that end. It may be doubted, however, whether any extraneous disturbance of this kind had much to do with the volcanic outburst of local passions which ensued, and which is now ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... of utterance, devoid of stratifying peculiarities, assignable to no age or epoch, and understood of all. A soul-shaking thought, prevalent throughout Christendom, was felt imaginatively by a highly endowed poet, and, like impetuous volcanic fires that fling heavenward mighty fragments and boulders of mountain in their red release, found magnificent expression in elemental grandeurs of language, shot through with the wild lights of hidden flames ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... returned Lacy, turning upon him almost fiercely. "Did ye find it superposed on quartz, or did you find it NOT superposed on quartz? Did you find it in volcanic drift, or did ye find it in old red-sandstone or coarse illuvion? Tell me that, and then ye kin talk. But this yer blank fossiliferous trap, instead o' being superposed on top, is superposed on the bottom. And ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... February, Mr. Adams remarked: "All the members of Congress are full of rumors concerning the volcanic state of the administration. The President has determined to remove Branch, but was told that if he did the North Carolina senators would join the opposition, and all his nominations would be rejected. The administration is split up into a blue and green faction upon ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... mood does No. 2 begin. In E flat minor it is variously known as the Siberian, the Revolt Polonaise. It breathes defiance and rancor from the start. What suppressed and threatening rumblings are there! Volcanic mutterings these: ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... illogical interruption. The latter asks the cause of volcanoes, and is impatient at being told it is "the divine vengeance;" the former asks the cause of the overthrow of the guilty cities, and is preposterously referred to the volcanic action still visible in their neighbourhood. The inquiry into final causes for the moment passes over the existence of established laws; the inquiry into physical, passes over for the moment the existence ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... fragments of silex which bore traces of the action of fire. This fire had not been lighted by accidental causes, for, says Mr. DeMortillet (Le Prehistorique, p. 90), the causes of instantaneous conflagrations can be only volcanic fires, fermentations, and lightning. "Now, in the entire region there is no trace of volcanic action, and neither are there any traces of turfy or vegetable deposits capable of giving rise to spontaneous inflammations—phenomena that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... have wondered that the children of Etna should dwell in its lovely paradise, as I thought how often, how terribly, the lava has poured forth upon it, the shower of ashes fallen, the black horror of volcanic eruption overwhelmed the land. Yet, sum it all, pang by pang, all that Etna ever wrought of woe to the sons of men, the agonies of her burnings, the terrors of her living entombments, all her manifold deaths at once, and what were it in comparison with the ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... of our young English readers who may not be acquainted with the ancient city of Herculaneum, some idea of it. None can be ignorant that near Naples is the celebrated volcanic mountain of Vesuvius;—that, from time to time, there happen violent eruptions from this mountain; that is to say, flames and immense clouds of smoke issue from different openings, mouths, or CRATERS, as they ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... throne. Gambrinus and his thirty thousand white-aproned priests of debauchery and licentiousness trembled in every saloon and bagnio throughout the union. No whirlwind, tornado or simoon of the desert ever startled a nation as her volcanic career. From ocean to ocean, from Canada to Texas. she faced a storm of relentless criticism and bitter sarcasm from political curs, clerical hirelings and editorial henchmen of the murderous liquor traffic such as no mortal ever faced before. A star of hope to the one hundred ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... of a vast spread of volcanic rock and scoriae, rent and broken into a thousand forms, and with sharp ridges and deep fissures, making it very difficult for foot-soldiers to get over, and quite impassable for cavalry or artillery. It was like a sea of hardened lava, with no signs of vegetation except a few clumps of bushes and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... unsanctified heart. It is dangerous to attempt to build a Christian character over a latent volcano. A once active volcano becomes inactive. The lava cools, the ashes settle, and the smoke drifts away. An enterprising farmer covers a considerable space of the once fiery volcanic field with fresh earth carted from a fertile valley. All goes well for a year or two. The garden prospers, the vegetables are most encouraging, and the produce is abundant. But one morning the farmer notices that smoke is ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... to correct the general atmosphere of violence. Neither the beauty of Piers Evesham (his naked shoulders looked "like a piece of faultless statuary, god-like, superbly strong"), nor his sympathy with children, offers adequate compensation for his volcanic temperament. If Miss DELL, who seems to have a penchant for tempestuous heroes, would devote some of her superfluous energy to a study of men, so as to get to understand them as well as she understands her own sex, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... emerged two volcanic islands of unequal size, surrounded by a coral reef whose circuit measured forty miles. We were facing the island of Vanikoro proper, to which Captain Dumont d'Urville had given the name "Island of the Search"; we lay right in front of the little harbor of Vana, located in latitude 16 ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... races, their arts and their religions, have come to light; but whence they came, and how they perished, is an unsolved mystery. From the processes of disintegration—earthquakes, and widespread volcanic action—now going on, we can readily conceive of the manner in which vast multitudes of humanity have been removed from this planet to make room for still other races and peoples. The great pilgrimage still goes on. Unnumbered hordes following the secret instinct of evolution, unceasingly ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... there must still exist acres upon acres of undisturbed buildings, public and private, many of them perhaps filled with priceless works of Greek and Roman art, for Herculaneum, unlike Pompeii, was never tampered with by the ancients themselves, for the coating of volcanic mud, which filled the whole area of the city, made impracticable a systematic searching of its ruins by the despoiled citizens. Then, as if nature had not already buried the city sufficiently deep, subsequent ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... overdrawn, distorted, and especially the pains of this age are represented as too keen. Of George Eliot's types of adolescent character, this may best be seen in Maggie Tulliver, with her enthusiastic self-renunciation, with "her volcanic upheavings of imprisoned passions," with her "wide, hopeless yearning for that something, whatever it was, that was greatest and best on this earth," and in Gwendolen, who, from the moment she caught Deronda's eye, was ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... the Accrington Town Council will read, mark, learn this epistle and lay these precepts to their hearts, which in Latin I will quote: 'Quod Hoc Sibi Vult.' It means that the exposed food stuffs will not only be impregnated with the volcanic like dust representing the cremated remnant of the town's horrible organic refuse, but will also be tainted with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... view of so large a tract of country is the more interesting, in that there has not occurred the least appearance of volcanic matter, nor basaltic rock, in all that space, where so great manifestation is made of those internal operations of the globe by which strata had been consolidated in their substance, and erected ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... "triple-crested eminence" near Melrose, 1385 ft., and overlooking Teviotdale to the S., associated with Sir Walter Scott and Thomas the Rhymer; they are of volcanic origin, and are said to have been cleft in three by the wizard Michael Scott, when ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... in this insurrection has taken place on the island of Luzon. This island has been visited by a terrible disaster. One of its volcanic mountains has suddenly burst into activity, and thrown out streams of lava in such volume that they have travelled over twenty miles of country until they reached ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 46, September 23, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... origin. It is said to have been brought from heaven by the angel Gabriel. Some astronomers imagine that these stones have been thrown from a lunar volcano. There is nothing, perhaps, philosophically inconsistent in this theory, for volcanic appearances have been seen in the moon; and a force such as our volcanoes exert would be sufficient to project fragments that might possibly arrive at the surface of the earth. But probability is certainly against it, and it seems more likely that they are fragments of comets. For those bodies, from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... of fresh water, fed by more than three hundred rivers, is surrounded by magnificent volcanic mountains. It has no other outlet than the Angara, which after passing Irkutsk throws itself into the Yenisei, a little above the town of Yeniseisk. As to the mountains which encase it, they form a branch of the Toungouzes, ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... tried to make beloved by others. The light which once flushed those pale summits with its rose at dawn and purple at sunset, is now umbered and faint; the air which once inlaid the clefts of all their golden crags with azure, is now defiled with languid coils of smoke, belched from worse than volcanic fires; their very glacier waves are ebbing, and their snows fading, as if hell had breathed on them; the waters that once sunk at their feet into crystalline rest, are now dimmed and foul, from deep to deep, ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... before him. That he might devise new and better methods of pouring never entered his square-shaped head. It was left for a fifteen-year-old girl, and an old darky, whom in his secret heart he regarded as no better than the dirt beneath his feet, to start volcanic eruptions destined to shake the very foundations of his self-complacence. Hitherto he had simply been lord of his realm. He had come to Columbia Heights highly recommended by the father of one of its pupils and had assumed undisputed control. ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... by Harney's cavalry, moved from San Augustin on the main road toward the City of Mexico. These were followed by the other divisions of the army. On this route was situated the pedregal, which is a field of volcanic rock of very uneven surface. It is between the roads leading to the capital from San Augustin and Padierna. A reconnoissance of the pedregal was made by Lieutenants Robert E. Lee and Pierre G.T. ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... streaming down from it to the water, when we turned inland; and after several small minor stops, while the automobile caught its breath and had the heaves and the asthma, we came to Pompeii over a road built of volcanic rock. I have always been glad that we went there on a day when visitors were few. The very solitude of the place aided the mind in the task of repeopling the empty streets of that dead city by the sea with the life that was hers nearly two thousand years ago. Herculaneum ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... friend lest the shock should destroy her suddenly. A year or two later, in Italy, as Mrs. Browning, she was being dragged up hill in a wine hamper, toiling up to the crests of mountains at four o'clock in the morning, riding for five miles on a donkey to what she calls "an inaccessible volcanic ground not far from the stars." It is perfectly incredible that any one so ill as her family believed her to be should have lived this life for twenty-four hours. Something must be allowed for the intoxication of a new tie and a new interest ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... circumstanced form merely small but well-defined sub-divisions of the larger geographical divisions. But the fact is in such cases far more striking: for taking the Galapagos Archipelago as an instance; in the first place we must feel convinced, seeing that every island is wholly volcanic and bristles with craters, that in a geological sense the whole is of recent origin comparatively with a continent; and as the species are nearly all peculiar, we must conclude that they have in the same sense recently been produced on this very spot; and although in the nature of the ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... must be long affected and entire selection working same way. But here isolation absent, without barrier, cut off such . We can see advantage of isolation. But let us take case of island thrown up by volcanic agency at some distances, here we should have occasional visitants, only in few numbers and exposed to new conditions and more important,—a quite new grouping of organic beings, which would open out new sources ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin |
