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Its surface was broken into a thousand unaccountable figures; conical and pyramidical crystallizations, more than fifty feet in height, rise from its surface, and precipices of ice, of dazzling splendor, overhang the woods and meadows of the vale.
In their primitive state, they are perfectly white; they have six little feet, three on each side, and a small head, in which I could perceive no eyes, after a minute investigation with a microscope. In this state they supply the community with provisions from subterraneous cavities, fabricate their pyramidical buildings, and may with great propriety be called labourers.
The walls, composed of square blocks, are perpendicular only on the inside, and beveled externally, so that the thickness at the bottom sometimes amounts to twenty-four feet, and thus the whole building assumes a pyramidical form, the fundamental principle of Egyptian architecture.
The agility with which they climbed up their pyramidical nest was perfectly astonishing; and when the nimblest of them arrived at the top, the perfect state of confusion which seemed to pervade the whole community, and the continuance and fervour with which they were stopped and addressed by those who had escaped the mishap, were the monkeyism and perplexity of man truthful to a degree.
But even stripped of these supernatural surmisings, there was enough in the earthly make and incontestable character of the monster to strike the imagination with unwonted power. For, it was not so much his uncommon bulk that so much distinguished him from other sperm whales, but, as was elsewhere thrown out a peculiar snow-white wrinkled forehead, and a high, pyramidical white hump.
On advancing into the forest in the morning, three or four may be seen seated on the upper branches of a tree shaggy-haired animals, with long prehensile tails like those of the spider-monkeys hideous-looking creatures, with pyramidical heads, the upper jaw descending much below the cranium, while the branches of the lower one ascend very high, for the purpose of containing a bony, drum-shaped expansion of the larynx, which gives to its voice that prodigious volume of sound which makes night hideous.
In particular, he led me to a remarkable pyramidical structure some three yards square at the base, and perhaps ten feet in height, which had lately been thrown up, and occupied a very conspicuous position. It was composed principally of large empty calabashes, with a few polished cocoa-nut shells, and looked not unlike a cenotaph of skulls.
I waited for a good opportunity, when he boldly raised his head from water about three yards from the rifle, and a bullet from the little Fletcher between the eyes closed the last act. This spot was not far from the pyramidical hill beneath which I had fixed our camp, to which I returned after an amusing day's sport.
In the middle of the intermediate space, three rocks which might truly be called "forked promontories" from their sharp pyramidical shape, jutted abruptly out of the beach, and were connected by a sort of natural causeway to the main land. Beyond, a wild and rocky valley ran inland, and the time-worn ruins of Castle, beetling over the heights, terminated the view in this direction.
Nothing could be more picturesque than a teamster conducting one of his great pyramidical loads over the little inequalities of the road, in the ticklish places standing atop with the bent knee of the Roman charioteer, spying and forestalling the chances of the way with a fixed eye and an intense concentration that relaxed not one inch in the miles of the haul.
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