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I even thought, with many other geologists, that obsidian, so far from being vitrified lava, belonged to rocks that were not volcanic; and that the fire, forcing its way through the basalts, the green-stone rocks, the phonolites, and the porphyries with bases of pitchstone and obsidian, the lavas and pumice-stone were no other than these same rocks altered by the action of the volcanoes.
This was a remarkable bed of whinstone or green-stone, which had originally been poured out as a sheet of burning lava over the denuded surface of the coal measures; indeed it was afterwards found that it had turned to cinders one part of the seam of coal with which it had come in contact.
quetzal, for quetzalli, a long, handsome blue feather from the quetzal bird, often used figuratively for anything beautiful or precious. chalchiuh for chalchiuitl, the famous green-stone, jade or emerald, so highly prized by the Mexicans; often used figuratively for anything noble, beautiful and esteemed.
This, Sloggett explained, was the characteristic flame of both cyanogen and hydrocyanic acid vapour, which, being inflammable, may have become locally ignited in the passage over cities, and only burned in that limited and languid way on account of the ponderous volumes of carbonic anhydride with which they must, of course, be mixed: the dark empurpled colour was due to the presence of large quantities of the scoriae of the trappean rocks: basalts, green-stone, trachytes, and the various porphyries.
Pottery figures and heads are quite common and frequently painted brilliantly; small heads and ornaments of green-stone are not uncommon; curious clubs of stone for beating bark-paper are also found; objects of gold and silver have been found in ancient graves, near the foot of the mountains, on the outskirts of the village.
It is important to geology not to confound the modern currents of lava, the heaps of basalt, green-stone, and phonolite, dispersed over the primitive and secondary formations, with those porphyroid masses having bases of compact feldspar,* which perhaps have never been perfectly liquified, but which do not less belong to the domain of volcanoes.
There was also a good deal of green-stone and gneiss, and some of the spires of these that shot up to a considerable height were particularly striking and picturesque objects. But the great sight of the day's excursion was that which unexpectedly greeted their eyes on rounding a cape towards which they had been walking for several hours.
"The pah, the beggars about me call it," said the beach-comber; "perhaps some niggers you've been reading about call it the Mark. I don't know. But to be done with this pig. The fire was ready, and they were just going to cut the poor beast's throat with a green-stone knife, when the interpreter up and told them 'hands off. 'That's a taboo pig, says he.
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