Mud

“ Particularly the people: they were as ugly as the areas of roof and stone, off which the soft white coating had slid; their contours were as painful to see. And the mud—oh, God, the mud! It spread itself over every inch of the way; the roads were rivers of filth, which spattered and splashed; at the sides of the streets, the slush was being swept into beds. ”

“ Built of sun-dried mud blocks, it gives off an atmosphere of dust with every whiff of wind. It comes to our mind always with the thought of dry barrenness, heat, sun, dust, shadeless fields of maguey, prickly nopals, broad sombreros, and leather-clothed rancheros. ”

“ Even living birds were coated with mud, while for some days after the eruption the poor bewildered cattle roamed about this dreary wilderness mad with hunger and thirst, gnawing boughs of trees or decayed wood, bellowing pitifully, and with eyes bloodshot and nostrils choked with greasy slate-coloured mud, which lay an inch thick all over their coats. ”

“ Easing her round sharp reefs, pushing through swift little passages where the current spurts deeply between larger stones, she may be pushed up to a huge tree trunk lying along the shore, surrounded by the deliciously soft and fluid mud loved by country urchins, the mud that schloops when one withdraws the sunken foot. ”

“ Men sitting by the roadside in the mud, gnawing at unsavoury food; men squatting by the ditches, examining their sores, washing their bleeding feet in the muddy water, replacing the muddy rags about their wounds.
A world without colour. No other colour to be seen beneath the sky but mud. The very buttons on the men’s coats painted to make them look like mud. ”

“ It is by no steady and rapid movement that waste is swept from the shore to its final resting place. Day after day and century after century the grains of sand and particles of mud are shifted to and fro, winnowed and spread in layers, which are destroyed and rebuilt again and again before they are buried safe from further disturbance. ”

“ Silence reigned again—only the splash of the oars was heard and the beating of the water against the skins. Nothing broke the monotony; the river wound its way slowly in and out round mud banks; the country as far as one could see was unbroken, endless mud; the water one drank and washed in and floated on was diluted mud; the occasional village on the banks was built of mud, the inhabitants were mud colour; the very sky gave one a feeling of mud. ”

“ The Psammead reached out a hairy arm from its basket and pointed to a heap of mud at the edge of the water.
'What do you call that?' it said; and as it spoke the heap of mud slid into the river just as a slab of damp mixed mortar will slip from a bricklayer's trowel. ”

“ And with time, the beds of the rivers having fallen, these animals having the impression of the mud which has inclosed them and consumed their flesh and organs, the bones alone remaining—their organization being consumed—they have fallen to the bottom of the concavity of their impression; and in that concavity the mud, when it has been dried by its elevation above the course of the river from its aqueous moisture and then from its viscous moisture, becomes stone, inclosing within itself whatever it finds there and filling everything hollow with itself. ”

“ Wherever the mud had lain thick on broad leaf or grass, it had, as I have said, cracked and fallen off, or been washed away by the heavy rains and dews, and our grounds and the country round were as beautiful as ever—more beautiful, I ought to say, for everything was fresher and greener, and where the swamps had been muddy and parched, and overhung with dry growth, all was bright and glorious, with the pools full up, and the water-ways overhung with mossy drapery, glittering and flashing back the sun’s rays wherever the sun pierced the trees. ”

“ Know, then, innocent eastern friend, that in benighted regions of the west, where the mud is of unfathomable and sublime depth, roads are made of round rough logs, arranged transversely side by side, and coated over in their pristine freshness with earth, turf, and whatsoever may come to hand, and then the rejoicing native calleth it a road, and straightway essayeth to ride thereupon. In process of time, the rains wash off all the turf and grass aforesaid, move the logs hither and thither, in picturesque positions, up, down and crosswise, with divers chasms and ruts of black mud intervening. ”

“ They have a saying out here that soil is as rich as it is sticky. If this is true Dinky-Dunk has a second Garden of Eden. This mud sticks to everything, to feet, to clothes, to wagon-wheels. But there's getting to be real warmth in the sun that shines through my window. ”

“ It is so very important, for those who wish to see things "as clear as mud," to understand this prime principle of the formation of mud-lands, that I shall make no apology for insisting on it further in some little detail; for when one comes to look the matter plainly in the face, one can see in a minute that almost all the big things in human history have been entirely dependent upon the mud of the great rivers. ”

“ Our road after this, till six o'clock in the evening, lay through the most exquisite forests, but with terrible footing for the mules—thick, pudding-like, wet mud, and loose, slippery stones, corduroys of hard mud striping some of the most difficult places, where only a surefooted mule can tread. ”

“ Mud, mud everywhere—a whitish-clay silt, through which, at low tide, it is almost a physical impossibility to walk from a stranded bidarka up to the villages. Indeed, if you are unfortunate enough to reach a settlement here when coming down or going up the river as the tide is out, you are a wise man if you simply fold your arms, sit quietly in your cramped position until the rising, roaring flood returns and carries you forward and over to your destination. ”

“ The glaciers grind down the mountains, the rains and frosts wear the land into mud, and rivers carry that mud into the sea. In the calm depths of ocean this mud subsides to the bottom; it becomes consolidated into rocks; in the course of time these rocks again become raised, to form the dry land with which we are acquainted. ”

“ Hence every considerable shower lays bare its roods of rock, and the torrents sent down by the thaws of spring, and by occasional heavy discharges of the summer and autumnal rains, are seas of mud and rolling stones that sometimes lay waste and bury beneath them acres, and even miles, of pasture and field and vineyard. ”

“ A mud-house is being built near by, and between the cooking and attending to passing travelers, two women are digging the earth and filling up the baskets, while the men are mixing the mud, filling in the oblong wooden trough, and thus building the wall. At my elbow a man—old and grizzled and dirty—is turning back roll upon roll of his wadded garments, and ridding it of as many as he can find of the insects with which it is infested. ”

“ If we transport ourselves in imagination to these ancient shores, we shall see that the animals left their hiding-places and were traversing the soft mud laid bare by the ebbing tide, in search of food. The heat of a tropical sun quickly hardens the mud, so that the returning tide, in bringing a fresh deposit of mud, does not wash away the impressions already made on the lower layer, but carefully covers them over. The imprints have, therefore, become a species of mould into which another muddy fluid is poured, and by hardening is made to copy the foot-mark like a plaster cast. ”

“ Black mud, as everlasting as the perennial snows which rest on the summits of inaccessible mountains, decayed vegetables of every season of the year, refuse fish, unpicked bones of every conceivable variety of animals, deceased cats and dogs and rats in every possible degree of decomposition, broken bricks and tiles, and shreds of earthen vessels of all variety of domestic application, sticks, stones, old shoes, tin kettles and superannuated old saucepans, formed the dead stock of the street. ”

“ Now the path merges in the bed of some winter torrent, rugged and boulder-strewn, but shaded with bay and laurestinus, and a fringe of magnificent oleanders; anon we flounder through deep deposits of alluvial mud bordered by waving brakes of giant canes and briar, presently to strike again the upward track through evergreen forests of chestnut and cork-oak. ”

“ At Whaka you unexpectedly come upon deep holes where dark grey mud is always boiling. In one corner is a large pool of oily mud boiling perpetually in circles, and as it boils, the mud goes leaping up into the air like a company of frogs. ”

“ And through it all, mud which bogs the runner to his knees; at every twenty steps a pool of water and mire, which may be shallow enough for a sparrow to wade without wetting his feathers, or as deep as a well ”

“ In the forenoon of a warm summer day one may watch them grow hourly in volume and in violence, until toward the middle of the day they become raging torrents of liquid mud in which heavy cobbles and even bowlders may be heard booming as they roll before the current. ”

“ From fertile hillsides and deep-loamed prairies its tributaries carried fine particles of earth in their water and dropped it as they went along the channel until there was a deposit of mud in the center of the valley much higher than the surrounding country. The old river has made itself a bed where it can overlook the valley. There it still turns and twists, with never-ending restlessness. All the banks of mud are soft. ”

“ The hideous lanes, bordered by these dirty huts, are not paved; the least shower hollows out the ground and forms stinking puddles, which resemble reservoirs, destined to collect the liquid mud which the rain drives before it. ”

“ Houses in twos and threes pass by us, solitary farms, ruinous buildings, dye-works, tanneries, and the like, open country, avenues of leafless trees. The hard uneven pavement is under us, the soft deep mud is on either side. Sometimes, we strike into the skirting mud, to avoid the stones that clatter us and shake us ”

“ Those who do not like the name of mud should see how these lights are answered by the floor of mud in simple silver and steel. Twice a day the motion of the wave is there, twice a day the still shore. ”

“ For years and years, for centuries and centuries, mud had been deposited on top of him, thousands and tens of thousands of years had put other rock strata above the mud and then, in a later age, there had been a rising of the earth and it was all dry land once more. ”

“ We wait flat in the grass and the mud until the star shells fall, and as soon as one has, and before the following one has scaled through space and lighted it with its dim light, we jump into the hole which the fatigue party of yesterday dug. ”

“ Those which fall in the mud find at once a suitable place for germination, and those whose fortune it is to drop in the water float away with the current or they are driven by the wind until they lodge along the shores, and the receding water leaves them in a few days, and they spring up quickly. Before the autumn or early winter high water comes, they are well rooted in the mud and sand, ready to put up a fight for their lives. ”

“ At first the mud comes out all over thumb-marks, and dries so, but in a day or two buckets of water are dashed over it, so as to remoisten it, and then it is once more patiently smoothed all over with the palm of the hand until an absolutely smooth surface is obtained, as flat and flawless as though the best of trowels had been used. ”

“ The very mud off the roads in rainy weather is not dirt at all, sticky though it undoubtedly is. It consists almost entirely of lime, which, though it burns all the varnish off your carriage if allowed to remain on it for a few days, has nothing repulsive about its nature, like ordinary mud. ”

“ You all know from whence the soil comes which has filled up, in the course of ages, the great æstuaries below London, Stirling, Chester, or Cambridge.
It is river mud and sand. The river, helped by tributary brooks right and left, has brought down from the inland that enormous mass. You know that. You know that every flood and freshet brings a fresh load, either of fine mud or of fine sand, or possibly some of it peaty matter out of distant hills. Here is one indisputable fact from which to start. Let us look for another. ”

“ This delightful watering-place is filled with beauty and fashion, there being lots of large curls and small bonnets in every portion of the town and neighbourhood.
We understand it is in contemplation to convert the mud on the banks of the river into sand, in order that the idea of the sea-side may be realised as far as possible. Two donkey cart-loads have already been laid down by way of experiment, and the spot on which they were thrown was literally thronged with pedestrians. The only difficulty likely to arise is, that the tide washes the sand away, and leaves the mud just as usual. ”

“ It clearly follows from this that mud gives us a chronology; for it is evident that supposing this, which I now sketch, to be the sea bottom, and supposing this to be a coast-line; from the washing action of the sea upon the rock, wearing and grinding it down into a sediment of mud, the mud will be carried down, and, at length, deposited in the deeper parts of this sea bottom, where it will form a layer; and then, while that first layer is hardening, other mud which is coming from the same source will, of course, be carried to the same place ”

“ Given some mud off a city crossing, some ochre out of a gravel pit, a little whitening, and some coal-dust, and a luminous picture might be painted, if time were allowed to gradate the mud, and subdue the dust. ”