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Updated: May 3, 2025
In that case, appearances might be found to induce natural philosophers to conclude that there were in our land primary parts, which had not the marine origin which is generally to be acknowledged in the structure of this earth; and, by finding other masses, of marine origin, superincumbent upon those primary mountains, they might make strange suppositions in order to explain those natural appearances.
What we know of dikes inclines us to the opinion that as a whole they represent movements of softened rock where the motion-compelling agent is not mainly the expansion of the contained water which gives rise to volcanic ejection, but rather in large part due to the weight of superincumbent strata setting in motion materials which were somewhat softened, and which tended to creep, as do the clays in deep coal mines.
In this country, our democratic institutions have removed the superincumbent pressure which in the Old World confines the servants to a regular orbit. They come here feeling that this is somehow a land of liberty, and with very dim and confused notions of what liberty is.
Layers of sandstone or of shale containing this decayed vegetable alternate with layers which contain none; and if, as seems probable, the coaly matter is continually changing into asphalt and oil, and then working its way upward through every crack and pore, to escape from the enormous pressure of the superincumbent soil, it must needs carry up with it innumerable particles of the soils through which it passes.
The surface rock is a coarse sandstone superincumbent upon a lighter-colored conglomerate that looks like Shawangunk grits, and when this latter is reached by the water it seems to be rapidly disintegrated by it, thus forming the deep excavations alluded to. My eyes had never before beheld such beauty in a mountain stream.
When the pipe and the camp-fire had burnt low, Tony observed, with much interest, that the Indian's eyes became suddenly fixed, that his nostrils dilated, his lips ceased to move, the cloud that had just escaped from them curled round the superincumbent nose and disappeared without being followed by another cloud, and the entire man became rigid like a brown statue.
Some fifty or sixty years ago La Roche Corbon was "a village sculptured up the broken face of the rocks, with considerable skill, and what with creeping vines, snatches of hanging gardens, an attempt here and there at a division of tenements, by way of slight partitions cut from the surface, wreaths of blue smoke issuing out of apertures and curling up the front, and the old feudal tower, called Lanterne de la Roche Corbon, crowning the summit, the superincumbent pinnacle of excavated rock on which it stands looking as if it were ready to fall and crush the whole population beneath, this lithographed village has altogether a curiously picturesque look."
There is also an admirable statue of Silenus, with the infant Bacchus in his arms; a most beautiful gladiator; a curious Moor of black marble, with a shirt of white alabaster; a finely proportioned bull of black marble also, standing upon a table of alabaster; a black gipsey with a head, hands, and feet of brass; and the famous hermaphrodite, which vies with that of Florence: though the most curious circumstance of this article, is the mattrass executed and placed by Bernini, with such art and dexterity, that to the view, it rivals the softness of wool, and seems to retain the marks of pressure, according to the figure of the superincumbent statue.
"As this is the first specimen of Australian taste in the fine arts that we have detected in these voyages, it became me to make a particular observation thereon. Immediately above this schistose stratum is a superincumbent mass of sandstone, which appeared to form the upper stratum of the island."
Can you imagine Jove, limitless in power and wrath, hurling from his vast grasp mountain after mountain upon the struggling Enceladus, and picture the Titan sinking, sinking, deeper and deeper into the earth, crushed and dying, with nothing visible through the superincumbent masses of Pelion and Ossa, but a gigantic head and two flaming eyes, that, despite the death which is creeping through each vein, still flash back defiance to the divine enemy?
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