United States or Madagascar ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


The furnaces were few, but around each one lay heaps of Negro and copper-green quartz, freshly fractured; while broken handmills of basalt and lava, differing from the rubstones and mortars of a softer substance, told their own tale.

I could observe nothing in these chambers except the bottom part of the small handmills used by the Orientals to grind meal, which could not be hastily removed as they were fixed in the ground; every thing else the inhabitants had carried off on the approach of the army.

Alban's was kept in a state of siege for more than ten days by the townsmen, who were driven to frenzy by not being allowed to grind their own corn in their own handmills, but compelled to get it ground by the abbey millers, and, of course, pay the fee. Thirty years later, again, that man of sin, Sir Philip de Lymbury, lifted up his heel against the Abbey of St.

No one asked him any questions, except Sebastian, who heard again and again the tale of Moscow how the army which had crossed into Russia four hundred thousand strong was reduced to a hundred thousand when the retreat began; how handmills were issued to the troops to grind corn which did not exist; how the horses died in thousands and the men in hundreds from starvation; how God at last had turned his face from Napoleon.

"The small village was alive with no inviting sounds; hoarse, guttural voices, contending at the handmills, where their morsel of hard corn was yet to be ground into meal to fit it for the cake that was to constitute their only supper." But such statements need no denial; the very appearance of the slaves themselves show their want of truth.

From Egypt to the Cape, Livingstone assures us that the mortar and pestle, the long-handled axe, the goatskin bellows, etc., have the same form, size, etc., pointing to a migration southwestward. Holub , on the Zambesi, found fine workers in iron and bronze. The Bantu huts contain spoons, wooden dishes, milk pails, calabashes, handmills, and axes.

Some are of the normal basalt, which may also have served for crushing grain; others are cut out of grey and ruddy granites: a few are the common Mahrakah or "rub-stones," and the many are handmills, of which we shall see admirable specimens further on. One was an upper stone, with holes for the handle and for feeding the mill: these articles are rare.

Accordingly, from the beginning he invented the smith's art, and husbandry to manure the ground, that it might yield him corn; he invented arms and the art of war to defend corn; physic and astronomy, with other parts of mathematics which might be useful to keep corn a great number of years in safety from the injuries of the air, beasts, robbers, and purloiners; he invented water, wind, and handmills, and a thousand other engines to grind corn and to turn it into meal; leaven to make the dough ferment, and the use of salt to give it a savour; for he knew that nothing bred more diseases than heavy, unleavened, unsavoury bread.

The whole south-east angle of the Isle of Sicily is full of underground cities, of which that of the Val d'Ispica is the most famous. These excavations are vulgarly called Ddieri, but they are not in most cases tombs, but dwelling-places for the living, as is shown by the handmills for oil and corn that are found in them.

I received orders, therefore, to clear land, sow and plant, forthwith. These orders were in part carried into effect in the autumn. Four acres of land were put in a condition to receive seed, and about the same quantity at Fort Alexandria. Seed was ordered from the Columbia, and handmills to grind our grain.