United States or Paraguay ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Towards evening we sighted Mount Bulusan, in the south-eastern extremity of Luzon; and presently we turned northwards, and sailed up the Straits of San Bernardino, which separate Luzon from Samar. It has, like its prototype, a couple of peaks. The western one, a bell-shaped summit, is the eruption cone. The eastern apex is a tall, rugged mound, probably the remains of a huge circular crater.
The façade of the present grand cathedral, at each side of which rises a massive tower crowned by a bell-shaped dome, is divided by buttresses into three parts, and though there is some confusion of orders, Doric and Ionic prevailing, still as a whole the front is majestic and imposing. The towers are each over two hundred feet in height, and are also of mingled orders.
He sees a people strange and unfamiliar in costume and expression; fierce, stern-looking officers, rigid in features, closely shaved, and dressed in glittering uniforms; grave, long-bearded priests, with square-topped black turbans, their flowing black drapery trailing in the dust; pale women richly and elegantly dressed, gliding unattended through mazes of the crowd; rough, half-savage serfs, in dirty pink shirts, loose trowsers, and big boots, bowing down before the shrines on the bridges and public places; the drosky drivers, with their long beards, small bell-shaped hats, long blue coats and fire-bucket boots, lying half asleep upon their rusty little vehicles awaiting a customer, or dashing away at a headlong pace over the rough cobble-paved streets, and so on of every class and kind.
The pillars of the groat central cluster had capitals exactly like those of the northern colonnade. The bases of the colonnade pillars are of singular beauty. Bell-shaped, and ornamented with a double or triple row of pendent lotus-leaves, some rounded, some narrowed to a point; they are as graceful as they are rare in their forms, and attract the admiration of all beholders.
Perhaps the most splendid of these rhododendrons is Rhododendron grande or argenteum, which grows to a height of from 30 to 40 feet, and has waxy bell-shaped flowers of a yellowish-white suffused with pink, 2 to 3 inches long and about the same across. The scarlet R. arboreum, so general in the Himalaya, is common in Sikkim and furnishes brilliant patches of colour in the forest.
And yet the great conical or bell-shaped dome of the pagoda is its chief attraction, for this is covered with gold-leaf from its base to its summit, and its shining splendor salutes the traveler from miles and miles away. The religion of Burma is Buddhism. Buddhism is a religion of "merit," so called, and the surest way to acquire "merit" is by building a pagoda.
As we took our seats I looked again at my companion; this time more closely. Father Knickerbocker he certainly was, yet somehow strangely transformed from my pictured fancy of the Sleepy Hollow days. His antique coat with its wide skirt had, it seemed, assumed a modish cut as if in imitation of the bell-shaped spring overcoat of the young man about town.
They went off, and came back from the deep shadows of the trees with glittering swords and more strident music, and louder beating on gongs, and harsher notes on chanters, and a loud booming sound on a narrow, six-foot-six drum with bell-shaped mouth; and the figures danced quickly, going backwards, in circles, and breaking into groups, the swords whirling and flickering beautifully in the moonlight, and the audience clapped hands gently in time, and there was an occasional heugh! as used to be the way in our Highland Reel, before the invention of the lowlander, the screaming "eightsome."
Thus do I fill my vivarium, which consists of a large, bell-shaped cage of wire gauze, standing in an earthenware pan full of sand. A mug containing honey is the dining room of the establishment. Here the captives come to recruit themselves in their hours of leisure. To occupy their maternal cares, I employ small birds chaffinches, linnets, sparrows brought down, in the enclosure, by my son's gun.
Then we find the rectangular cut blocks of stone in parallel courses, and the heavy piers, and the cylindrical column, with its bell-shaped capital, and the bold and massive rectangular architraves extending from pier to pier and column to column, surmounted by a deep covered coping or cornice.
Word Of The Day