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At that moment the whole sky in that direction was as black as ink, obscured by an enormous cloud, a threatening wall cutting the blue as with a knife, rearing palisades, lofty cliffs of basalt on which the light broke like white foam with the pallid gleam of moonlight.
As soon as the rustling noise occasioned by so many people taking their seats in a small room had subsided, the Hishtanyi Chayan again seized the two basalt plates and caused them to ring. When the metallic sound was heard, everybody became very quiet; and not one of the twenty-three men that composed the meeting moved. All maintained the deepest silence, fastening their eyes on the ground.
Thus, for example, we feel assured that the rock of Staffa, and that of the Giant's Causeway, called basalt, is volcanic, because it agrees in its columnar structure and mineral composition with streams of lava which we know to have flowed from the craters of volcanoes.
W. B. Clarke, of Paramatta, kindly undertook to examine the fossils brought from this locality. The right bank of the river rose into steep cliffs of basalt, under which the clustered fig tree, with its dense foliage, formed a fine shady bower. The basaltic dyke was about a mile and a half broad, and I followed it about five miles up the river.
The streets were mere lines of scattered houses, and the prominent buildings were the white dome of San Pedro and San Juan with its two steeples of the normal grey basalt. Near the latter lay the little Alameda, beggar-haunted as usual. On the north side of the Barranco rose a caverned rock inhabited by the poor. We shall see this troglodytic feature better developed elsewhere.
In the night the boa changed his tactics, got his body round some huge blocks of basalt, and finally succeeded in breaking his bonds and getting clear off. When I had assured myself that our prey had escaped us, and that all search for the reptile in the neighbourhood would be futile, my disappointment was very great, for I much doubted if a like opportunity would ever present itself.
Travellers tell us that the constant friction of the sand on Egyptian hieroglyphs removes every trace of colour, and even effaces the deep-cut characters from basalt rocks. So the unceasing attrition of multitudinous trifles will take all the bloom off your religion, and efface the name of the King cut on the tables of your hearts, if you do not counteract them by constant earnest effort.
Down to the river-bed sloped the Mpwapwa, roughened in some places by great boulders of basalt, or by rock masses, which had parted from a precipitous scarp, where clung the kolquall with a sure hold, drawing nourishment where every other green thing failed; clad in others by the hardy mimosa, which rose like a sloping bank of green verdure almost to the summit.
It was placed upon the pedestal of the Lion of Basalt, covering the very place that had been occupied by the bull of excommunication. The words were few, and ran thus: "TREMBLE! RIENZI SHALL RETURN!" "How! what means this mummery!" cried the Legate, trembling already, and looking round to the nobles.
In the dining room, hung in black and opening on the transformed garden with its ash-powdered walks, its little pool now bordered with basalt and filled with ink, its clumps of cypresses and pines, the dinner had been served on a table draped in black, adorned with baskets of violets and scabiouses, lit by candelabra from which green flames blazed, and by chandeliers from which wax tapers flared.
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