Rowel

“ The sheet of water falls in a mass of foam some forty feet, the spray rising in volumes, and producing in the summer’s sun a beautiful mist rainbow. The granite rocks have been worn in deep holes by revolving bowlders, and in winter the whole chasm, filled with ice and water, must be grand and impressive in extreme. ”

“ Where a rain-drop first secures a resting-place, its successors deepen the little hollow. Water lies in this after every shower, working its way gently downwards. In time the rock may seem bored into as if prepared for blasting; the holes unite to form vertical grooves, and the surface is cut deeply into fantastic forms. ”

“ In some places the mud is swept nearly clean away, and then you go splashing along, while always in a curious, echoing, musical way, comes the sound of running water, dripping water, plashing water, seeming always to be playing one melancholy strange tune, sad and sweet, and peculiar. ”

“ Every object that the eye could rest upon was turned to glass; stalactites were hanging from the upper boughs in every conceivable form; the laurels and other shrubs were not to be recognised, but on examining the leaves, I found that the icy mould in which they were encased retained the most delicate impressions of every fibre. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Each basin is a single, huge block of stone, hollowed out and cut with such exactness that the water, welling up from the bottom, pours over the smooth edges so evenly as to give it the look of a cube of polished glass. ”

“ Out of the hollows of the rock, their roots fast grasping the sharp-edged projections and tooth-like points of stone, and twining through the tortuous cavities, and insinuating their fibrils into every minute hollow where water may lodge, grow many tall trees of various kinds, interlaced with climbers, and hung with festoons of lianes, that resemble long and twisted cords, thrown from one to another, or depending from the branches towards the ground. ”

“ Ice upon rock is apparent, either as a grey-blue, bottle-glass bordering to the stippling and nestling of old snow, or in the refrozen festoons of new ice, exquisite and evil, that complete the Gothic character of granite pinnacles. ”

“ The smooth and fantastically worn rocks, and the perfectly clean and tress-like rock-weeds falling over you, and attached so firmly to the rocks that you could pull yourself up by them, greatly enhanced the luxury of the bath. ”

“ The rolling rock leaves its scratches on the mountains, the river its channel in the soil, the animal its bones in the stratum, the fern and leaf their modest epitaph in the coal. The falling drop marks its sculpture in the sand or the stone. ”

“ One of the most interesting and instructive phenomena in the lessons of nature is the falling of the dew—a seeming miracle which begins with the setting of the sun, and goes on mysteriously, collecting and distributing its countless exquisite water jewels, all through the long stillness of the night, only to be dispelled again by the heat of the rising sun. ”

“ The colors of the rock are those produced by fire: its texture is that of slag from a furnace. One sees how the lava hardened into a crust, which cracked and sank in places, mingling its tumbled edges with the creeping flood not cooled beneath. ”

“ When beds of sand, clay, and marl, containing shells and vegetable matter, are found arranged in a similar manner in the interior of the earth, we ascribe to them a similar origin; and the more we examine their characters in minute detail, the more exact do we find the resemblance. Thus, for example, at various heights and depths in the earth, and often far from seas, lakes, and rivers, we meet with layers of rounded pebbles composed of flint, limestone, granite, or other rocks, resembling the shingles of a sea-beach or the gravel in a torrent’s bed. ”

“ All the face of the rock between the streams of falling water is covered with clinging plants and flowering shrubs, and one rock, shaped like a cross, which projected from the center out into the falling spray, was enwreathed with flowers like an artificial garland, as if they had been hung there by some dear woman's hand, to mark the last resting place of the loved and lost. ”

“ Everywhere fountains of glistening, silvery water played; everywhere groves and arbours of feathery-leaved sea-plants appeared, whilst rocks of pure crystal glistened with all the varied colours of the rainbow. ”

“ Only when the outlaw fell had he thrown forward his right leg and hooked the sharp rowels into the strong fiber of the forward cinch. With the left hand he loosely held the reins, giving the maverick her head—the other hand he brushed with a caressing upward movement along her glossy neck. ”

“ In parts where the ashes lay dry and unmixed with the boiling torrents, cast upward from the mountain at capricious intervals, the surface of the earth presented a leprous and ghastly white. In other places, cinder and rock lay matted in heaps. ”

“ The very stones might burst into bloom, the pavements might ripple and surge and become as soft under foot as turf, the fogs and vapors of its chimney pots might become clouds of fragrance as in an orchard, or of incense as in a great cathedral. ”

“ About every fragment of rock is a wealth of leaves, flowers and berries, the dogwood and bilberry with their crimson and purple clusters and tufts, wild lavender and thrift, whilst the ground is carpeted with the leaf of the hepatica. ”

“ In this fashion I presently came out upon a larger and higher plateau, carpeted with a uniform, stunted undergrowth, and extending, as flat as a table, to the very edge of a sheer precipice, which rose from it to a height of three or four hundred feet—gnarled, naked rock, showing no vestige of vegetation. ”

“ The whole surface of the earth,--I speak broadly, and leave out minor qualifications,--is made up of such layers of mud, so hard, the majority of them, that we call them rock whether limestone or sandstone, or other varieties of rock. ”

“ Alas! in these days it is of a sickly blue tint, smelling evilly; and the stones in its bed, that once were a clear, warm grey, with yellow boulders interspersed that flashed in the stream of a sunny day like burnished copper,—they are slime-covered and loathsome, things to be shunned. ”

“ Try yourself, dear reader, and make experiments, with running water, pebbles, and mud. If you try for seven years, I believe, you will never contrive to make your pebbles lie about in your mud, as they lie about in every pit in the boulder clay. ”

“ So does an ancient building come back into sympathy with earth and cloud. Its stones are carved and fretted by the wind and rain of centuries; tiny mosses have grown in their cavities; the decay of these has formed mould which has spread into every joint and fissure. ”

“ Ruskin reminds us that the filthy mud from the street of a manufacturing town is composed of clay, sand, soot and water; that the clay may be purified into the radiance of the sapphire; that the sand may be developed into the beauty of the opal ”

“ Men at work making bricks of Nile mud, stiffened with bits of grass and straw, drying them in the sun in moulds, just as they are pictured in hieroglyphics on the Temple walls; women morning and evening by the water side filling their water jars, their graceful garments, bracelets, anklets, of the same type which has survived from time immemorial. ”

“ When she comes home, with the rain-drops glistening on her red cheeks and her dark lashes, her cloak bespattered with mud, and her hands red with the cool damp, she is a profoundly wholesome spectacle. ”

“ Lime, mortar, and microscopical organisms are producing undesigned chromatic effects in the paper and plaster; the plaster, having methods of expansion and contraction of its own, crinkles and cracks; the skirting, having absorbed moisture and now drying again, opens its joints; the rough-cast coquettes with the frost and opens chinks and crannies for the humbler creation. ”

“ We have but to pause over those words—one thousand feet thick;—once mud, or rather fluviatile deposits of mud and sand, a thousand feet thick in order to receive fresh evidence of the high antiquity of the globe, and of the recent creation of man. ”

“ They may have seen a print of their own feet immortalized in the sun-baked mud, and caught at the idea of taking the clay for more useful purposes. Nobody knows where they got their first inspiration. But every race that has existed has had its crude receptacles for food and water. ”

“ In this lonely glen, with its brook draining the slopes, its creased ice and crystals of all hues, where the spruces and hemlocks stand up on either side, and the rush and sere wild oats in the rivulet itself, our lives are more serene and worthy to contemplate. ”

“ Let the clay begin. Ridding itself of all foreign substance, it gradually becomes a white earth, already very beautiful, and fit, with help of congealing fire, to be made into finest porcelain, and painted on, and be kept in kings' palaces. ”

“ It is, indeed, very beautiful to see, during a swell, the water lashing the rocks and dashing over in clouds of white spray, or sometimes through the perforations or over and down the rocks in streams of white foam. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If hung for a few days in the warm sun, and occasionally dipped in water, they change into feathery, green objects that grow more and more beautiful, and are far more artistic than our one conventional hanging-basket. ”

“ For you will find that even from river water which looks quite clear, a thin layer of mud will fall to the bottom of the glass, and if you take the water when the river is swollen and muddy you will get quite a thick deposit. ”

“ As the suspended moisture comes into contact with the upper walls and roofs of the lofty chambers, it is being constantly condensed, and the fresh water thus formed trickles down the walls and slopes in drops, rills and brooks, and finds its way through the ground and porous rocks. ”

“ And accordingly, in the place where those drops of water fall, it swells to a lump of considerable bigness, and there petrifies to the hardness of ice, glass, or freestone, of the several colours aforesaid, according to the nature of those veins in the rock from whence it proceeds, and is of a hard brittle nature, apt to break like glass. ”

“ Common springs are insensibly changed into mineral or medicinal springs, as their foreign contents become larger or more unusual; or, in some instances, they derive medicinal celebrity from the absence of those ingredients usually occurring in spring-water ”

“ They dug these wells in the living rock until they met with water, and then they lined them with masonry from top to bottom in such sort that they will endure for many ages. The water in these wells is very good and wholesome, and always so cold that it is very pleasant to drink it. ”

“ Sand is the crystallization of turbid rain-water; and is transparent, juiceless, giving sparks, durable, and capable of being vitrified.
Mould is the decomposition of fermenting vegetables; and is black, bibulous, powdery, and combustible.
Lime is the decomposition of putrescent animal substances; and is whitish, absorbent, mealy, penetrable, and effervescent. ”

“ On sloping surfaces it is found that the cellular cavities, common to lava which is cooled in the air, are elongated in a direction parallel to the slopes,—an effect clearly intelligible by considering the viscidity of the moving mass, and easily imitable by art. ”

“ The ice crystal-clear beneath our polished steel, as we glided bird-like, swiftly over the polished, mirror-like pond beneath us. What exhilaration and glow we found in the fascinating sport. But how seldom, if ever, did we give a thought to the wonderful formation, and the beauties of that crystal surface beneath our flying feet, or did we dream that every bit of that ice was cemented and joined together in exquisite mosaic-like patterns, formed by countless millions of tiny ice flowers, far too delicate and small to be seen by the naked eye. ”

“ Every river produces at the present day beds of fine mud and loam, and accumulations of gravel, which it deposits at various parts of its course—the gravel generally occupying the lowest position, and the finer sands and mud coming above. ”

“ They are simply little stools of wood, one flat piece being supported by two smaller ones at the toe and heel, and they are held on by straps across the foot. Men, women, and children are thus raised inches out of the mud, and patter about, ting-tang, ting-tang, all day long. ”

“ This rock is soft and friable, and, under the influence of the heavy winter rains, it has been, without doubt, from a period long before human history, as it is now, cut ever into new shapes, and especially into pillars or columns, which sometimes bear a resemblance to the human form. ”

“ Sometimes an earthen pot is filled with earth, and green bushes set around the edge of it, and a candle in the centre; and sometimes a stool is provided with holes about the edge, in which bushes are placed, and a bundle of rags or tow, saturated with oil of turpentine, placed in the centre, to which fire is communicated. ”