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The lime-like coating which covered the huge animal all over was now apparent; and as they passed their hands through the long hair, a white substance resembling pulverised chalk came off upon their fingers! What could have caused the strange phenomenon, they asked one another. But the explanation was soon found. They remembered the gypsum hills over which they had ridden on the preceding day.
Neither plant, nor tree, nor any sign of vegetable life relieved the monotonous uniformity of the landscape. Turn to what side they might, their eyes were met by the lime-like surface of hill and dale, dazzling the sight with its milky whiteness. The sun, reflected upward, pierced their bodies, and parched them with thirst.
Let us examine this process of island-making which is carried on very extensively by the artisans of the great South-Sea Factory! The coral insect is a small creature of the sea which has been gifted with the power of "secreting" or depositing a lime-like substance, with which it builds to itself a little cell or habitation. It fastens this house to a rock at the bottom of the sea.
The entire "khiva," so far as the boys subsequently uncovered its floor, was a crude mosaic of the most perfect turquoise, the pieces, varying in size, being laid in a lime-like cement. A general survey of the room and its connecting tunnels showed that each radiating arm led, with about twenty feet of passageway, into a smaller room. In each of these rooms were nine column placed in a rectangle.
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