United States or Western Sahara ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The bitumens are represented in the island by asphalt, a low-grade coal, and seepages of petroleum. At least, several writers tell of coal in the vicinity of Havana, but the substance is probably only a particularly hard asphaltum. The only real coal property of which I have any knowledge is a quite recent discovery. The story was told me by the man whose money was sought to develop it.
This geological connection between the muriate of soda and the bitumens is evident wherever there are mines of sal-gem or salt springs: but a very remarkable fact is the existence of a fountain of naphtha in a primitive formation.
The museum comprehended an infinite number of medals, coins, urns, utensils, seals, cameos, intaglios, precious stones, vessels of agate and jasper, crystals, spars, fossils, metals, minerals, ore, earths, sands, salts, bitumens, sulphurs, ambergrise, talcs, mirre, testacea, corals, sponges, echini, echenites, asteri, trochi, crustatia, stellae marine, fishes, birds, eggs and nests, vipers, serpents, quadrupeds, insects, human calculi, anatomical preparations, seeds, gums, roots, dried plants, pictures, drawings, and mathematical instruments.
Perhaps he had recalled the rites of ancient Egypt, the sepulchral ceremonies of the embalming when, after stretching the corpse on a bench of jasper, extracting the brain with curved needles through the chambers of the nose, the chemists and the priests, before gilding the nails and teeth and coating the body with bitumens and essences, inserted the chaste petals of the divine flower in the sexual parts, to purify them.
And there were bitumens, resins, organic salts, to be protected from the least grain of dust; and metals, from iron to gold, metals whose current value altogether disappeared in the presence of the republican equality of scientific specimens; and stones too, enough to rebuild entirely the house in Königstrasse, even with a handsome additional room, which would have suited me admirably.
Word Of The Day