Sound (geography)

“ It is a well-known fact in Physical Science, as well as in Occultism, that the aggregate sound of Nature — such as heard in the roar of great rivers, the noise produced by the waving tops of trees in large forests, or that of a city heard at a distance — is a definite single tone of quite an appreciable pitch. ”

“ It is a sound that suits the place, and when the wind blows hard, bringing the noise of the waves to your ears, and the salt spray; when all the sky is one grey cloud, and sea mists sweep over the earth at intervals blurring the outline of the hills, that thin but penetrative little sad call seems more appropriate than ever and in tune with Nature and the mind. ”

“ The most charming days here are days of perfect calm, when all the winds are holding their breath and not a leaf stirs. The surface of the Sound shines like a silver mirror over all its vast extent, reflecting its lovely islands and shores ”

“ We might fill up far more than an hour in speaking of those voices which come to us as nature is at work. Think of the patter of the rain, how each drop as it hits the pavement sends circles of sound-waves out on all sides; or the loud report which falls on the ear of the Alpine traveller as the glacier cracks on its way down the valley; or the mighty boom of the avalanche as the snow slides in huge masses off the side of the lofty mountain. Each and all of these create their sound-waves, large or small, loud or feeble, which make their way to your ear, and become converted into sound. ”

“ The sound is described exactly in the book: "a grewsome sound, between a moan and a roar, spreads itself away over the valley, and up the hillside, and into the woods at the back of the house, a ghost-like, awful voice." ”

“ For few springs can be expected in so rocky a country, and the fresh water found farther up the Sound, most probably arose from the melting of the snow; there being no room to suspect, that any large river falls into the Sound, either from strangers coming down it, or from any other circumstance. ”

“ The most ingenious and beautiful contrivances for deep-sea sounding were resorted to. By exploding heavy charges of powder in the deep sea, when the winds were hushed and all was still, the echo or reverberation from the bottom might, it was held, be heard and the depth determined from the rate at which sound travels through water. ”

“ It is a lonely place here, but the water is constant company. As I write, the only sound I can hear is the gentle roll of waves, and now and then an under sound that seems to come from far-off caverns,—so soft and so deep. ”

“ The land which they inhabit is very rocky: from the curved ridges of the rocks and the connecting tops of the mountains, which cut the air in multiplied sinuosities, every sound reverberates in echo upon echo from the dales below. ”

“ It is, in fact, the only sound we hear, for there is so little wind in this climate that not a leaf is seen to move, and we therefore distinguish at a greater distance the toll of the matin and vesper bell in the neighbouring villages, and the tinkling sounds which tell when the flocks are led to and from the fields. ”

“ Or again, they are geographical senses,—eyes, ears, and speech; for of these supreme mediators in the body, voice, vision, and hearing, it is the office, as of rivers, to open communication between the interior and exterior world; they are rivers of access to the outlying universe of men and things, which enters them, and approaches the soul through the freighted suggestions of sight and sound. Rivers, lastly, are the geographical symbol of public spirit, the flowing and connecting element, suggesting common interests and large systems of action. ”

“ The eye never tires in looking at the lively scene, and the ear drinks in the murmuring and thundering sound, which has the usual faculty of swelling and falling, till the mind gets imbued with the idea that the waters are endowed with the faculty of speech, so that we involuntarily ask 'what are the wild waves saying?' and linger long at the spot in the vain hope that the varying syllables of the living water will yet form themselves into intelligible words. ”

“ The absence of every human sound, and the deep silence which sleeps upon the valley, gives an imposing sense of awful repose, the mysterious influence of which is heightened by the magical effect of a wonderful echo, which, as it spreads round the Lake, rises by degrees until it dies away in a prolonged cadence, almost an octave higher than its original tone. ”

“ There is withal a sound of a different kind, when water from the mountain-steep, borne by its own force through ravines gently plashes over its pebbly bed with lulling noise, and so relaxes our frame with the pleasurable sensations, as quickly to draw over our eyes the soft languor of slumber. ”

“ SOUNDING SAND.
Mr. Hugh Miller, the geologist, when in the island of Eigg, in the Hebrides, observed that a musical sound was produced when he walked over the white dry sand of the beach. At each step the sand was driven from his footprint, and the noise was simultaneous with the scattering of the sand; the cause being either the accumulated vibrations of the air when struck by the driven sand, or the accumulated sounds occasioned by the mutual impact of the particles of sand against each other. ”

“ In these sombre chambers of the hills, walled in upon every side, the stillness seems literally to grasp at every slight sound and cling to it with strange vibrations and lingering echoes, which remind one how utterly alien to these places are the common sounds of the everyday world that pass unnoticed—a world so ridiculously near and yet so infinitely remote. ”

“ Though the thin and frosty air conveys only the finer particles of sound to our ears, with short and sweet vibrations, as the waves subside soonest on the purest and lightest liquids, in which gross substances sink to the bottom. They come clear and bell-like, and from a greater distance in the horizon, as if there were fewer impediments than in summer to make them faint and ragged. The ground is sonorous, like seasoned wood, and even the ordinary rural sounds are melodious, and the jingling of the ice on the trees is sweet and liquid. ”

“ Doubtless because we are ourselves terrestrial and woodland in our origin; also because the sound is infinitely more varied as well as more human in character. There are sighings and moanings, and wails and shrieks, and wind-blown murmurings, like the distant confused talking of a vast multitude. A high wind in an extensive wood always produces this effect of numbers. ”

“ At the extreme south end, and for half a mile north, if you slap two handfuls of the sand together, a sound is produced like the hooting of an owl. If a person kneels on the steep incline, and then, with the two hands extended and grasping as much sand as possible, slides rapidly down, carrying all the sand he can, the sound accumulates till it is like distant thunder. ”

“ The Sound is astir with the white wings of sailing vessels, and streaked with the black trails of ocean-going steamers, while the blue waters are begirt with the dark green of heavy forests, making a picture of almost incomparable beauty. ”

“ LEAVING the consideration of waves and ripples on a water-surface, we pass on to discuss the subject of waves and ripples in the air. Nearly every one is aware, in a general way, that sound is due to a disturbance created in the atmosphere. Few, however, are fully acquainted with the nature of the movements in the air which excite our sense of hearing, and to which we owe, not only the pleasures of conversation and the enjoyment of all the sounds in nature, but those delights of music which are amongst the purest forms of pleasure we possess. ”

“ At a sufficient distance over the woods this sound acquires a certain vibratory hum, as if the pine needles in the horizon were the strings of a harp which it swept. All sound heard at the greatest possible distance produces one and the same effect, a vibration of the universal lyre, just as the intervening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting to our eyes by the azure tint it imparts to it. ”

“ Soon the people heard a low murmuring sound, deep and tender, fine and soft and smooth, moving round the house outside. Then people thought there was something like a rush of wind accompanying the movement of sound, and that it was the wind that was producing the sound, and not the pipes. Then a beautiful melody broke through the sound, and both the melody and the low murmuring came into the house. ”

“ The dull rumbling noise thus produced is one of the most singular phenomena in these mountains, and cannot fail to strike the observer. At night, especially, the sound seems increased, the reason of which is not apparent, for in these regions, so wanting in animal life, the night is no stiller than the day, and the melting of snow being less, the volume of waters must be somewhat, though not conspicuously, diminished. ”

“ Now my eye roved over the piny hills and dales as over fields of waving grain, and felt the light running in ripples and broad swelling undulations across the valleys from ridge to ridge, as the shining foliage was stirred by corresponding waves of air. Oftentimes these waves of reflected light would break one another in regular order, they would seem to bend forward in concentric curves, and disappear on some hillside, like sea waves on a shelving shore. ”

“ None but the simplest of sounds, therefore, are borne on the keen winds that come from the moorland heights, and the purity of the air whispers in the ear the pleasing message of a land where chimneys have never been. ”

“ Color and form are but half the landscape; it is sound that gives it life, and renders it companionable. What is winter, in one sense, but absence of sound, not merely the absence of bird and insect voices, but the rustling of leaves and grasses, the murmur of waters, the life and movement of growing vegetation!
Are not the first signs of spring conveyed through sound? Ere yet a song-bird can find an utterance, or grass-blade impart a sense of resurrected life I hear the 137cracking of the ice and the gurgling of the frost-freed rills. ”

“ The Sound is not merely a submerged continuation of the Pleistocene valleys, and between this wide gulf and the narrow valleys there is a curious want of continuity. We do not know the true depth to the rocky floor ”

“ All here ... is sound and motion.... When a breeze happens to animate these solitudes, to swing these floating bodies, to confound these masses of white, blue, green, and pink, to mix all the colors and to combine all the murmurs, there issue such sounds from the depths of the forests, and such things pass before the eyes, that I should in vain endeavor to describe them to those who have never visited these primitive fields of nature. ”

“ You notice at once that waves differ in height. So the waves both of light and sound may differ in height, and to a difference in height corresponds a difference in the intensity of the sound you hear or of the light you see. The higher the wave the greater its energy, the louder is the sound or the brighter is the light. But, in addition to a difference in height, you have noticed that in different waves the distance from crest to crest may vary. The distance from crest to crest is the length of the wave, and waves not only differ in height but also in length. ”

“ The waves of the Sound have eroded the shores into steep and often precipitous bluffs of gravel, sometimes rising a hundred feet above the water, where narrow beaches, strewn with boulders, border them. ”

“ I have said nothing about the mode in which conversation is carried on below the water. Sound, as is well known, is transmitted more readily and with greater velocity through water than through air, but talking in the ordinary way is not practicable in water; for, with every word uttered, there comes out of the mouth a great bubble of air that very much interferes with the distinctness of the sound emitted, and has a most unbecoming and ridiculous appearance. ”

“ Sound, like light, may be reflected several times in succession, and, as the reflected light under these circumstances becomes gradually feebler to the eye, so the successive echoes become gradually feebler to the ear. In mountain regions this repetition and decay of sound produce wonderful and pleasing effects. ”

“ A delicate machine records the echoes made when the sound waves bounce back from the deep valleys and the high mountain tops that lie beneath the surface. Scientists know how fast sound travels in water, so they can tell exactly how deep it is. ”

“ To them the water is the medium of sound, and granting that their auditory nerves have the same sensibility as those of man, they will hear sounds not only more quickly, more distinctly, but at greater distances. This is accounted for by "the greater elasticity of the constituent particles of water, within the minute distance required for their action in propagating sound. Stones struck together under water are heard at great distances by a person under water. ”

“ At this southern extremity of the Sound without the accumulation of water to struggle for passage, as through the channel to the north, the movement is neither swift, nor disturbed with cross currents to agitate the surface—more like the steady flow of a great river. ”

“ The water of the earth's surface, viewed from the standpoint of anthropo-geography, is one, whether it appears as atmospheric moisture, spring, river, lake, brackish lagoon, enclosed sea-basin or open ocean. Its universal circulation, from the falling of the dews to the vast sweep of ocean current, causes this inviolable unity. Variations in the geographical forms of water are superficial and constantly changing; they pass into one another by almost imperceptible gradations, shift their unstable outlines at the bidding of the mobile, restless element. ”