Quick sand

“ Here the travellers were obliged to pass one day, and all through that day and all through the night the wind blew with steady, persistent force, carrying with it the sands of the plain, which it piled up here and there in great dunes and then lifted again and carried on to some other point. The sandhills were constantly shifting and being tossed backward and forward, as restless and inconstant as the waves of the ocean. Often the sand is piled high upon the sparse vegetation, and again it is carried away so that the roots of that vegetation are uncovered. ”

“ Now to return to our sand; we have explained briefly that sand is really the remains of broken up rocks. First we have the solid rock, boulders are broken from it as the boulders are acted upon by rain, frost and wind: they become more and more broken up and at the same time they are carried towards the sea where they take the form of shingle. The shingle, in the course of time, becomes broken up into sand, and the sand again becomes so finely divided that it forms mud. From this it is clear that the composition of the sand depends largely on the nature of the rocks in the neighbourhood. ”

“ With the aid of his toy shovel, his little red pail, and several assorted shells, he had constructed out of sand a walled city. Houses, streets, squares, market place, covered ways, curtain, keep, tower, turret, crenelated battlement, all were there. A driftwood drawbridge bridged the moat, guarded by lead soldiers in Boznovian uniform.
And lead soldiers were everywhere in the miniature city; the keep bristled with their bayonets; squads of them marched through street and square; they sat at dinner in the market place; their cannon winked and blinked in the westering sun on every battlement. ”

“ Pouring sand between her fingers, she said:
"I remember very well how he mentioned us. He said that he had never seen either one of us, and was glad of it. He said that as I was an orphan with no money, and that as you were similarly situated, and that as neither you nor I had brains enough to ever make any, he would leave his coquina quarry to that one of us who had brains enough to get here first and stake the claim. Do you call that an agreeable manner of making a bequest?"
Gray laughed easily: "I don't care what he thought about my intellectual capacity." ”

“ It is true that the unyielding stone is not particularly good going, but one is fully recompensed by the intimate proximity of the water. Then one is also able now and then to walk in the sand beside the quay. Yes, there is real sand there between the gravel and the beach-grass, sand that is a trifle mixed with clay and not so sacredly pure as that of the sea, but nevertheless real sand that has been washed up. ”

“ All day we followed the same two tracks, from rock-hole to rock-hole — all were dry as the sandstone in which Nature had placed them. We could see where the blacks had scraped out the sand at the bottom — if they could not find water, what chance had we? But every step took us closer — that is the great consolation in such cases. First, have perfect faith that water will eventually be found, then each forward move becomes easy, for you know that you are so much nearer relief. Every dry hole gives a greater chance that the next will be full. ”

“ As it gradually approaches the sea, and the current loses its force, the sand is the more sluggishly carried along, until finally it falls to the bottom, and forms a layer of sand there. This layer increases in thickness until it causes the depth of water above it to become comparatively shallow. ”

“ As the tide falls, the sand laid bare is rapidly dried by the wind and carried above high-water mark. Then, safe beyond the reach of the waves, the minute particles are borne still farther from the water, and striking against some piece of drift-wood, bush, or tuft of grass, quickly build a hillock, which grows larger and larger as more sand falls upon it, and a dune is formed many feet in height. ”

“ I think I'll put it here on this pretty stretch of white sand by the water's edge."
"I'm afraid that wouldn't do," he said, gravely.
"Why?"
"Because the lagoon is tidal. You'd be awash sooner or later."
"I see. Well, then, anywhere in the woods will do——"
"Not anywhere," he said, smiling. "High water leaves few dry places in this forest; in fact—I'm afraid that my shack is perched on the only spot which is absolutely dry at all times. It is a shell mound—the only one in the Dead Lake region."
"Isn't there room for my tent beside yours?" she asked, a trifle anxiously. ”

“ Sand Plains—Mississippi Hawk—Small-leaved Elm—Wild Horses—Hail-storm—Climate—Bisons—Grapes—Red Sand Formation—Gypsum.
August 15th. Extensive tracts of loose sand, so destitute of plants, and so fine as to be driven with the wind, occur in every part of the saline sandstone formation we had as yet seen. They are perhaps invariably the detritus of the sand-rock, deposited in valleys and depressions, where the rapidity of the abrading currents has been checked by permanent obstacles. This loose sand differs in colour from the sandstone, which is almost invariably red ”

“ Even here in America—here in Florida—here on this tiny point of sand jutting into the Atlantic, life is more beautiful, more miraculous than any fiction ever written."
"Why do you say that?" she asked. ”

“ The character of the motion of sand drifts is well illustrated by an interesting fact not much noticed hitherto by travellers in the East. In situations where the sand is driven through depressions in rock-beds, or over deposits of silicious pebbles, the surface of the stone is worn and smoothed much more effectually than it could be by running water, and I have picked up, in such localities, rounded, irregularly broken fragments of agate, which had received from the attrition of the sand as fine a polish as could be given them by the wheel of the lapidary. ”

“ As sands of three different colours are to be used in the trick it follows that the prepared sands must be put in moulds of three different shapes, because the conjurer merely has to feel in the water for the particular blocks of sand that he requires at each dip. The white sand can be put into little round, flat moulds, about as large as four halfpennies stuck together. When these little round blocks of prepared sand are cool they will be perfectly hard and waterproof. ”

“ I have said that the flat promontory occupied by the ruin is edged by hills of indurated sand. Existing in some places as a continuous bed of a soft gritty sandstone, scooped wave-like a-top, and varying from five to eight feet in thickness, they form a curious example of a sub-aërial formation,—the sand of which they are composed having been all blown from the sea-beach, and consolidated by the action of moisture on a calcareous mixture of comminuted shells, which forms from twenty to twenty-five per cent. ”

“ Sandstone of a greenish hue is generally hard, much fissured and full of water. When firm, greensand may stand at a steep slope, the surface being protected; but it varies considerably, and may at one place be close and yet be gradually deteriorated until it is of the character of fine loose sand. ”

“ If the obstacle which occasions the lodgment of sand presents a surface which the wind cannot penetrate, such as a wall, sand is dropped abundantly on its windward side as well as on the leeward; but if it be penetrable, like an open fence, the lodgment takes place chiefly on its leeward side. In cultivated regions cases are known where, in a few weeks of dry weather, sand has been drifted into lanes in the lee of hedges to the depth of two or three feet, making them nearly impassable to vehicles. ”

“ A single drop of water, constantly falling, will hollow out a stone. In these millions of years the water has swept away rocks here, and formed new land by the accumulation of sand there. In these millions of years the sand has been compressed into the gigantic masses that tower above us to-day as sandstone mountains; they are formed of sand that was originally laid like mud, layer by layer, on the floor of the ocean. ”

“ The process, however, is a slow one, and if we study these sand grains under a lens we may be surprised to see that, though their corners and edges have been blunted, they are yet far from the spherical form of the pebbles from which they were derived. The grains are small, and in water they have lost about half their weiglit in air; the blows which they strike one another are therefore weak. Besides, each grain of sand of the wet beach is protected by a cushion of water from the blows of its neighbors. ”

“ Spiders will begin to move across the walls. Perhaps a snake or two will then develop from some shadowy corner." [165]
He waved his arm impressively and pointed at the sleeping puppy.
"Under such circumstances," he said pathetically, "would you care to deprive me of this little companion sent by Providence for me to rescue out of the sea?"
She, too, had been steadily pouring sand between her white fingers during the moving recital of his woes. Now she looked up, controlling a shudder.
"Your circumstances, with all their attendant horrors, are my own," she began. ”

“ Such ripple-marked sandstone is far from uncommon. It gives a perfect reproduction of the little sand-ripples or rounded ridges and hollows, often to be found on a sandy shore, either visible through a thin layer of water or left bare after the tide goes down. And it shows us how the sandstone rock must originally have [p. 126] been put together, under water. Soft undulations were made in the wet sand by one high tide, becoming in a measure hardened before the next high tide, and so keeping their shapes, while a fresh supply of sand was dropped upon them, partaking of the same outlines. ”

“ One of the peculiarities of those terrible and fatal sands is, that the first approach of those entering tides, which come on, not with the ordinary roll and thunder of billows and flash of snowy surf, but swift and silent as the pestilence that flies by night, is harbingered by no outward and visible sight or sound, but by the gradual and at first imperceptible conversion of the solid sands into miry and ponderous sludge, into moving quicksand, into actual water.
When the sounds and sights are heard and seen, it is too late to make an effort. Death is at hand, inevitable. ”

“ The great expanse of irregular surface soil, with its innumerable obstacles and undulations, was, of course, bound to give curious results in the sand accumulations south of it, where the sand could deposit itself in a more undisturbed fashion and was affected by purely natural causes. Of course, sand hills do not accumulate in the flat desert unless some obstacle—a mere pebble, a tamarisk shrub, a ridge, or a stone, is the primary cause of the accumulation. ”

“ Slabs of sandstone and shale often retain what is called the ripple-mark—that is, the corrugation of surface produced by the gentle agitation of shallow water over sand or mud. We can see these appearances beneath our feet, as we walk over the pavement of almost any of our cities. ”

“ The formation of a sand-dune seems a simple process, and it is surprising how small an object may be the nucleus of one, and indirectly of a series of them. A bush, or tuft of grass, or only a twig, as we have seen, raised above a level surface, breaks the force of the wind, and immediately the sand-grains, which are rolling along the surface, are arrested, and form a minute hillock on the windward side of the obstacle. This increases in size—the sand-grains, as before observed, are driven up its slope, and fall on the sheltered side. ”

“ Abrasion by the wind.—While the effect of the wind on sandy and dusty surfaces may be considerable, its effect on solid rock is relatively slight and accomplished, not by its own impact, but by that of the material it carries. The effect of blown sand on rock surfaces over and against which it is driven is perhaps best understood by recalling the effects of artificial sand-blasts, by means of which glass is etched. ”

“ The sand mixed with salt had, on getting wet, become solid mud, baked hard by the sun.
Anybody interested in sand and its movements, its ways and process of accumulation, could not do better than take a trip to this part of Sistan. Little as one may care about sand, one is bound to get interested in its ways, and one point in its favour is that with a certain amount of logic and observation one can always understand why it has assumed a certain formation rather than another—a pleasing feature not always existing in all geological formations of the scenery one goes through. ”

“ As to the time occupied, it has been established that the upward movement in gravel and coarse sand is much quicker than in fine and loamy sand, but the heights attained are reversed. For whereas the height in a material consisting of coarse or large pores amounts to from 2 inches to 4 inches; a height of about 4 feet after thirty to thirty-five days has been recorded in fine or loamy sand; in peaty soil one observer states that the upward movement of the water may reach a height of 20 feet. ”

“ Porter, “Stop and think about it a moment. Which is heavier, sand or water? Why should this boat sink if we swap a load of sand for a load of water? As the water comes in, the sand falls out, and the boat, relieved of the weight of the sand, actually rises ten feet higher out of the water,”
When they were “cracking” the bins, the sand sank a trifle, but presently the worm-shafts began to turn again, and, out of troughs at each side, there was a rush of water. The sand sank rapidly, and melted away under the stream. ”