Black earth

“ It is dyed with color. All life has gone from it, and with the departure of life has come an intensification, an originality, an efflorescence of mineral being. The earlier stages of the ride—the red mountains striped beneath with black, beyond the middle ground of a prevailing reddish tint sparsely scattered with a vegetation of obscure greens and dull grays amid strong earth colors, once with the bluish-black of palm-trees blotting the distance—I remember now almost as fertility. Here there is not a leaf—nor even earth nor sand. It seems rock devastated by fire, like volcanic summits. ”

“ The arced formation itself was a veritable jungle of rocks of every type—gnarled, twisted rock that hugged the ground, jutting black pinnacles piercing the sky, bizarre bubble formations which appeared like weird ebony eskimo cities, and great fantastic ledges which extruded from the earth at varying angles, forming black caves against their bases. ”

“ Black masses of cloud, rolling impetuously along the steep acclivities, settled at length over the face of the waste, for a time shrouding the very earth in its dark dank embrace, only to render more striking the contrast to the dazzling light which in another moment had succeeded. ”

“ One black night in Arcadia: yes, the pines,
Mountains and valleys mingling made one mass
Of black with void black heaven: the earth's confines,
The sky's embrace, — below, above, around,
All hardened into black without a bound. ”

“ The Formation of the Black Hills
One of the most rewarding features of a visit to the Black Hills is the opportunity for the average individual, who has no technical training, to see with his own eyes a museum of the earth’s ages and a living sample of practically every one of the many aeons of the planet’s history.
The Hills, which is to say the rock substances of the region, are older by hundreds of millions of years than the stone out-juttings of the Rocky Mountains. ”

“ The black earth appeared to me horrible rather than anything else; it was only associated in my mind with the churchyard. That shows how far I was from nature. The country was something that farmers moved about in—those big, voracious creatures, who almost seemed like a kind of animal trying to imitate man. Rational beings could not possibly live out there. ”

“ It had been in old times the camping-place of the blacks, and upon the largest of the three gigantic stones, which disposed in the form of triangle, seemed to point to the triple peaks of the triform mountain, human sacrifices had been held, and horrible banquets celebrated. The earth, pawed by my impatient horse, was black and rich--strangely black and rich when compared with the surrounding soil, and the three enormous trees that overshadowed the three alter-stones seemed to own roots fed with fat food, so vigorously had they upsprung from out the rock. ”

“ Even the most prominent of these, the Black Hill, which jutted out on the Flat like a gigantic tumulus, had been stripped of its dense timber, feverishly disembowelled, and was now become a bald protuberance strewn with gravel and clay. The whole scene had that strange, repellent ugliness that goes with breaking up and throwing into disorder what has been sanctified as final, and belongs, in particular, to the wanton disturbing of earth's gracious, green-spread crust. ”

“ On the earth, even at night time, some light is diffused by our atmosphere, and shadows are never dense black even when thrown by a bright sun. On the moon it is black darkness everywhere outside the direct rays of the sun, and there is no gradual diminution of the darkness about the edges of shadows such as we see on the earth. The only mitigation of the blackness is seen where some light is reflected across from the rocky walls on which the sun is shining. ”

“ The black earth or mould which covers the surface wherever plants grow, consists mostly of parts of rotted vegetables, such as stalks, leaves, and roots, mixed with sand or loose clay; but this only reaches a little way; and beneath it you always come to a bed of gravel, or clay, or stone of some kind. Now these earths and stones are distinguished into several species, but principally into three, the properties of which make them useful to man for very different purposes, and are, therefore, very 264well worth knowing. ”

“ At midnight, when myriads of stars sparkle in the black sky, and the pure blue of the mountains looks deeper still below the pale white gleam of the earth and snow-light, the effect is of unparalleled sublimity ”

“ I saw a black speck on a boulder jutting
Over a hundred forests that dropped and dropped
Down to a tangle of red precipitous gorges
That dropped again and dropped, endlessly down.
A mile away, or ten, on its jutting rock,
The black speck moved. In that dry diamond light
It seemed so near me that my hand could touch it.
It stirred like a midge, cleaning its wings in the sun.
All measure was lost. It broke—into five black dots.
I looked, through the glass, and saw that these were men. [3]
Beyond them, round them, under them, swam the abyss
Endlessly on. ”

“ The earth is of a light, dry black nature, consisting of fibrous vegetable matter, and possesses the well-known preservative properties of bog soil. Thus the trees of the primeval forest that formerly existed here, and were drowned in an early stage of the world's history, are often dug up whole. Their timber is black too, as black as coal, as may be seen by the wooden bridges that cross the drains and cuts, often made from these prehistoric trees. ”

“ She lost sight of the chapel in the whirling snow; the heavens rattled overhead; and the wind swept down so that the whole earth trembled. A horror of wrath and darkness has overwhelmed the world; and what of the patient choristers now? No longer are their voices heard amid the appalling fury of the hurricane; the sudden lightning-flash reveals nothing in the blackness; the powers of evil have overcome; and the universe has lost its hope. ”

“ The earth was parched, the trees were sear'd,
And blasted every branch appear'd;
At one end yawned a gloomy cave,
Black, as its mouth were that of the grave;
And dark, as if the waters of death
Were in its depths, rose a well beneath. ”

“ So, death to the spiritual mind is only eclipse. When there is an eclipse of the sun it does not mean that the sun is blotted out of the heavens: it only means that there is a temporary obstruction between it and us. If we wait a little, it passes. Love cannot die. Its forms may change, even its objects, but its life is the life of the universe. It is not death, but sleep: not loss, but eclipse. The love is only transfigured into something more ethereal and heavenly than ever before. Happy to have friends on earth, but happier to have friends in heaven. ”

“ The spiritual world is not outside this earth of ours. It includes it and pervades it, finding a new centre for a new circumference in every loving soul that has eyes to see the Kingdom. So, to hold commerce with the dead is not a mere figure of speech. Heaven lies about us not only in our infancy, but all our lives. We blind ourselves with dust, and in our blindness lay hold feverishly of the outside of life, mistaking the fugitive and evanescent for the truly permanent. If we only used our capacities we would take a more enlightened view of death. ”

“ "And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove. ”

“ The earth is the cistern, and one principal fountain of another still grosser element. From the Sun’s heat, and from the successive streams of air and winds, a prodigious evaporation is carried on from the surface of the ocean, from the land, and from vegetables. ”

“ Between the earth and celestial vacuum is interposed an element, called the Atmosphere, or Air. This invisible elastic fluid is floating equally round our planet, to the distance of at least forty-five miles perpendicular elevation. It has been compared by some philosophers, to packs of wool heaped on each other: that nearest the ground is most dense, compact, and ponderous; and as we ascend, it becomes gradually more rare, light, and cold. ”

“ The earth’s rotation every twenty-four hours upon its axis, is the cause of day and night, or of light and darkness. In this successive rotation, one half of its globular surface is always enlightened ”

“ The Creator has bountifully stored the earth and the ocean with animals and vegetables. Our attention is here circumscribed to the most exalted class, the Human Species; leaving to the naturalist a description of quadrupeds, birds, fishes, insects, and vegetables. By far the largest proportion of the human species are stationed to the north side of the equator, and even to the north of the tropick of cancer. ”

“ The earth’s diurnal revolution upon its axis, is at the rate of fifteen degrees, or 1,035 miles hourly. But the rapidity with which it is whirled in its annual orbit, is, hourly, 68,243 miles: whereas the swiftness of a ball discharged from a cannon is, in the same time, only 480 miles. ”

“ The mountains, with their shining heads piercing through light clouds into that wonderful blue of the western sky, and their feet pushed into the pine masses, gazed down upon Black Rock with calm, kindly looks on their old grey faces. ”

“ Almost as soon as this era of upheaval first started, as soon as the first land of the Black Hills was elevated above the great sea, the forces of erosion set to work. Wind and rain worked their terrifying magic on the slowly rising terrain, carving away the softer rocks and the loose dirt and leaving only the granite outcroppings. Down from the sides of the great dome poured the waters of melting snows, gushing springs, and torrential rainfalls, digging out rivers, canyons, and the deep and narrow cuts which characterize this beautiful region. ”

“ From these sea-scented scenes, my memory travels to a weary land where dead ashes lie, and there is blackness—blackness everywhere. Black rivers flow between black banks; black, stunted trees grow in black fields ”

“ From this point the world below unrolls before the gaze like an azure scroll, while above, awful in its nearness and immensity, towers the dark mass of Black Mountain, clothed with a somber forest, into the depths of which the path now plunges, and which it does not leave again until the final summit is reached. ”

“ It is commonly presum'd that the Heat of the Climate wherein they live, is the reason, why so many Inhabitants of the Scorching Regions of Africa are Black; and there is this familiar Observation to Countenance this Conjecture, That we plainly see that Mowers, Reapers, and other Countrey-people, [pg 153] who spend the most part of the Hot Summer dayes expos'd to the Sun, have the skin of their Hands and Faces, which are the parts immediately Expos'd to the Sun and Air, made of a Darker Colour than before, and consequently tending to Blackness ”

“ And so deeply had he descended now, that the sunshine, silver rather than golden, already streamed past far over his head along the ridges, and no gleam found its way to where he was. The shadows, too, no longer blue and purple, had changed to black, as though woven of some delicate substance that had definite thickness, like a veil. Across the opposite slope, one of the mountain summits in the western sky already dropped its monstrous shadow fringed with pines. ”

“ Although the sky is slightly dashed with smoke in the best days. The Black Country reveals itself only at night, and then in its own aurora borealis. As the sun descends in the west it hangs the horizon with curtains of its own crimsoning. ”

“ The sky is black and the ground is black, and on either side there is a continuous border of black stumps and logs and blasted trees appealing to heaven for help as if still half alive, and their mute eloquence is most interestingly touching. The blackness is perfect. ”

“ Great black masses stand out from the gloom, in deeper shadows and broader touches, soon to resolve themselves, as the eye masters their shapes, into rock and coombe, hill, valley, and hanging wood. But now the pale streak has changed to crimson, underlined with a yellow seam, the mountain puts on his crown of fire, and the highest tree-tops, in glade and valley, are tinged with flame, while, far and near, pointed peaks, rugged tors, purple heather, dusky moorland, all are tipped with gold. ”

“ For nearly an hour the advance continues, the black mass pouring, like ants, over every obstacle—over stones, rocks, uprooted tree-trunks—winding through a tortuous valley bottom, the granite crags, towering aloft in their immensity, looking down as though in cold scornful indifference upon this pigmy outburst of mere human excitement, and then the way opens, becoming comparatively clear. ”

“ In winter, each Stube with its Bruder, we wandered through the lovely forest paths, skated, tobogganed, or plunged in high snow-boots through the great drifts in the woods. It was the real Black Forest then. No tourist was ever seen. No carriages, bicycles, or “visitors for health” ever crossed our path. Unmolested, we explored new glades, and found in every direction unknown little valleys hidden away among the dense trees and Strafe (punishment) , when to the pain of carpeted with moss a foot thick. ”

“ The land is oxidized—blackened; its shivered floor is strewn with black stones; black stripes streak its sides far and near; amid all that mineral bloom it is to black that the eye returns, fascinated, enthralled. ”

“ Then there was only blackness in the hole that went up to the surface. Blackness in the hole, calm night on the desert above—and silence, as if the cavern were brooding on the puny figures and strange machines that had for the first time dared invade its solitude, in the realms four miles within the earth.... ”

“ The sliding snows had left the coarse tufts stroked all one way, white and ugly, thickly streaked with mud, no single blade with any sign of life or greenness yet, when we came upon that star of concentrated beauty, more blue than the blue sky overhead, the whole passion of the earth in each pointed petal. ”