United States or Solomon Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The bare limestone rocks on each side of the valley and the sandy soil between, shone with a vivid whiteness that hurt the eyes; not a hand's breadth of shade was anywhere to be seen, and the fan-beaters of the two, who were waiting there, had, by command of the princess, staid behind with the chariot and litters.
The cave was a big room with a high roof. The floor was of dirt and very hard. The walls were limestone rock in beautiful rough layers, one upon another. From the roof the limestone hung in long pointed shapes, like icicles. A fire burned brightly on the floor, while the smoke rose slowly and went out at a hole in the roof. The walls and the roof were blackened by smoke.
We came at last to a very abrupt ascent of some hundred feet high, and mounted an elevated plateau. Once on the plateau, all was plain as far as the eye could see. The defile was tertiary formation, mere dull crumbling limestone; nothing in the shape and consistence of granite. We are now on the highway for Ghat, and it is said we shall arrive in fifteen days from the plateau.
When the pebbles are rounded the conglomerate is a pudding-stone. Marble breccias are formed of angular pieces of highly crystalline limestone, united together by a siliceo-calcareous cement, containing usually an admixture of a hornblendic substance, and which is due to a particular action of adjacent masses or veins of iron ore.
These falls cut somewhat diagonally across the river, the vortex being at the right bank, and close in-shore, concentred by a limestone shelf extending to the bank, flanked on the left, and at an acute angle, by a deeply-indented reef of rock. Looking up the river, the view to the west seems inclosed by a long line of trees, which, in the distance, appear to stand in the water.
Then look at the sketch of the rocks between this and home. It is only a rough sketch, of course: but it will make you understand something more about the matter. Now. You see, the lump marked A. With twisted lines in it. And why are the lines in it twisted? To show that the strata, the layers in it, are twisted, and set up at quite different angles from the limestone. But how was that done?
Confining my attention to a part of the moraine where pieces of limestone and serpentine were very numerous, I found that no less than one-third of the whole number bore unequivocal signs of glacial action; a state of things which seems to bear some relation to the vast volume and pressure of the ice which once constituted the extinct glacier and to the distance which the stones had travelled.
But where the united river leaves Utah and passes into Arizona, it traverses a dry plateau country with little rain, where its waters have cut their way down through mountain limestone to a depth of 6000 feet. The strata are horizontal, and the whole series has been cleared away by the continued erosive power of water, aided by gravel and boulders.
He was circling the place again like a wolf for the scent, flashing his search light over the carved walls, the dancing gleam picking out now a relief of Osiris, now a fishing boat upon the Nile, now the judgment hall of Maat. Suddenly he stopped and began examining a limestone slab. "These stones these have been merely piled here," he cried excitedly. "This is a hole an entrance.
Farther down, they ran in between rough limestone walls with gleaming spar in them, smothered here and there in trailing brambles and clumps of fern, while the streams that poured out from black gaps in the peat and flowed beside the road flashed with coppery gold in the evening light. It was growing brighter ahead of them, though inky clouds still clung to the moors behind.
Word Of The Day