"Excavate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... man from the village told me that hardly an hour's walk from there was a place in the woods among the mountains where an enormous quantity of bones were piled up in the sand and gravel. Ha! I exclaimed, the day is beginning to break. I went out there with a few peasants, had them excavate a little, and, behold! we came across bones to my heart's content. So that is the place where Germanicus had the remnants of the Roman legions buried six years after the battle of Teutoburg Wood, when he directed his last expeditions ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... the departed pirate Tom Veal, Mr. Marble commenced to excavate from this very hard porphyry rock in search of a subterranean vault, into which had been poured, as was supposed, the ill-gotten gain of all the pirates, from Captain Kidd down to the last outlaw of the ocean. Twenty-seven years the ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... Syracuse, of which the ruins carry us back to a remote era in human history. If we are lost in conjectures when speculating on the ages required to lift up these formations to the height of several thousand feet above the sea, and to excavate the valleys, how much more remote must be the era when the same rocks were ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... the rest and groaned again at the hopeless task ahead. Very well, he decided, reaching for the telephone, if he must invade the O'Neill studio, excavate and pack, Sid could help and Mac and Jan. Waiting, he read the telegram again. With Kenny's usual sense of values there was one brief sentence relative to some materials for work. He left the responsibility ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... years later it fell to my lot to excavate for the Government the funeral temple of Thutmosis III. at Thebes, and a fairly large sum was spent upon the undertaking. Although the site was most promising in appearances, a couple of months' work brought to light hardly a single object of importance, whereas exactly ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... that Bagley was out of work, and employed him to excavate the bank for these new buildings. We saved the surface earth carefully for compost purposes, and then struck some clean, nice gravel, which was carted away to a convenient place for our roads and walks. On a hillside near the creek were large stones and rocks ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... circular galleries of seats hewn out of the hillside, where rows of spectators might sit one above the other, all looking down on a broad, flat space in the centre, under their feet, where the representations took place. Sometimes, when the country was flat, or it was easier to build than to excavate, the amphitheatre was raised above ground, rising up ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... summit, where perhaps an entrance might be found. The party returned to Penzance, and their report at once engaged the attention of the local Antiquarian Society; a small subscription list was opened, permission obtained from the owner of the property, and within a week a gang of labourers began to excavate on the cliff-top directly above the jutting cornice. The ground here showed a slight depression, and the soil proved unexpectedly deep and easy to work. On the second day, at a depth of seven feet, one of the men announced that he had come upon rock. But having spaded away the ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... which had partially buried itself in sawdust, and which was lifted up a quarter of an inch above the surface; it described three very small circles in 24 h. Considering the great length and thinness of the peduncles and the lightness of the pods, we may conclude that they would not be able to excavate saucer-like depressions in sand or sawdust, or bury themselves in moss, etc., unless they were aided by their continued ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... the earth to rise within it. But it is more usual to employ what is called the plenum process, in which air under high pressure is pumped into the caisson and expels the water, as in a diving bell. Workmen then descend, entering through an air lock, and excavate the ground at the bottom of the caisson, which sinks gradually as the excavation continues. Under this system a length of some two miles of quay wall is being constructed at Antwerp, far out in the channel of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... in delicate metal, stone, marble, and precious gems (there is no wood to speak of); great sculptors and decorators of the beautiful caves, so fancifully and so intricately connected, in which they live, and which have taken thousands of years to design and excavate and ventilate and adorn, and which they warm and light up at will in a beautiful manner by means of the ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... in squares during hot summer weather. This he conjectured to be caused by the shallowness of the soil over some ancient foundations; and some years before he had had the curiosity to open a hole, and soon came upon a hidden wall. He did not excavate farther, but the old folk, when they heard of it, remembered a tradition of a village having once existed there. At present there were no houses near; the place, whatever it was, had disappeared. The mention of this meadow led to some conversation ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... a Mormon in the neighbourhood, who invited me to excavate a large mound close to his house. He would even help to dig, he said, and I was free to take whatever I might find inside of it. He was sure that there would be no difficulty about the mummies I might want to remove from ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... disclosures at Troy encouraged Schliemann to excavate other Homeric sites. At Mycenae, a prehistoric city of Argolis in Greece, he laid bare six rock-hewn graves, containing the skeletons of nineteen persons, men, women, and children. The faces of the dead had been covered with thin masks of gold, and their bodies had been decked with gold diadems, ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... to suspect the truth as to the use of the vault in Mesopotamia, were Eugene Flandin, who helped Botta to excavate the palace of Sargon,[197] and Felix Thomas,[198] the colleague of M. Place. The reasons by which M. Thomas was led to the conclusion that the rooms in the Ninevite palaces were vaulted, are thus given by M. Place, who may be considered ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... it take to form those rocks (many of them are stratified, water-laid deposits) in the depths of the ocean? How many more to twist and bend them and raise them to their present height? And what inconceivably long persistence of the wear and tear of frost and snow and torrent has it required to excavate in their hard bosoms these deep, broad valleys thousands of feet below us, and to leave these strangely moulded mountain peaks still high above us? And that beauty of the sun-lit sky and of the billowy ice-field and of the colours of the lake below and of the luminous haze and ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... at all familiar with the subject, would reply, "The birds are all right, but where are the nests?" Hens very sensibly decide that it is easier to build a new house than to keep the old one in order; and having laid one round of eggs, off they go to erect, or rather to excavate, another dwelling. You have scarcely learned the way to their nook above the great beam when it is abandoned, and they betake themselves to a hole at the very bottom of the haystack. I wish I could tell you a story about a Hebrew prophet crawling under a barn after hen's eggs, and crawling out again ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... associated with paleolithic tools. In the chalk of Champagne, where there are no cliffs, whole villages of underground habitations have been discovered, but none of these go back to the earliest age of all; they belong to various epochs; but the first to excavate them was the Neolithic man, he who raised the rude stone monuments elsewhere. He had learned to domesticate the ox and the sheep, had made of the dog the friend of man. His wife span and he delved; he dug the clay, and she formed it with her fingers ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... find life in the whale unendurable; I was tired to death of it, and concentrated my thoughts on plans of escape. Our first idea was to excavate a passage through the beast's right side, and go out through it. We actually began boring, but gave it up when we had penetrated half a mile without getting through. We then determined to set fire ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... sufficient wood, although we drove the Syrians out of camp to gather more; so we buried them in a trench, and covered them, and laid little fires at intervals along the new-stamped earth and set light to those. We did not bury them very deep, because a bayonet is a fool of a weapon with which to excavate a grave and a Syrian no expert digger in any case; so when the fires were burned out we piled rocks on ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... July 12th, 1904, for the crossing under Ninth Avenue, and in the pit east of Ninth Avenue along 32d Street. The line chosen for the opening cut was down the center of the pit, as it was not safe to excavate near the bounding streets until after the completion of the enclosing retaining wall. The excavation was started by hand, but three 70-ton Bucyrus steam shovels were put to work as soon as they could be delivered, the first on July 25th and the ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 - The Site of the Terminal Station. Paper No. 1157 • George C. Clarke
... Relativity and Bolshevism, but they are bound together in the same emotion. In a superstitious mind, like that of the Professor of Celestial Mechanics, emotion is a stream of molten lava which catches and imbeds whatever it touches. When you excavate in it you find, as in a buried city, all sorts of objects ludicrously entangled in each other. Anything can be related to anything else, provided it feels like it. Nor has a mind in such a state any way of knowing ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... her was a pink pig she had been commissioned to escort down to the farm of Sant' Elia. This beast was suffering hellish torments from the heat and vainly endeavouring, with frenzied grunts of despair, to excavate for itself a hollow in the earth under a thinly clothed myrtle bush. I told the woman of shade lower down. She said she knew about it, but the pig—the pig refused to move! It had been engaged upon this hopeless ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... the eye will strike; Highways all Russia will unite And form a network left and right; On iron bridges we shall gaze Which o'er the waters boldly leap, Mountains we'll level and through deep Streams excavate subaqueous ways, And Christian folk will, I expect, An inn ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... considerable, but the form also is such as to get the maximum of grandeur out of the height. We weighed anchor at eight A.M., passing for a time through shoal water, the bottom having been evidently stirred up. The adjacent land seemed eroded in a remarkable manner. It has its floods, which excavate these valleys and ravines, and leave those singular ridges behind. Towards evening I climbed the mainmast, and, standing on the cross-trees, saw the sun set amid a blaze of fiery clouds. The wind was strong and bitterly ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... countrymen, and their skill in naval architecture has been put in requisition by the Emperor of Russia and the Sultan of Turkey. The steam machines invented by our countrymen to drive piles, load vessels, and excavate roads, are most ingenious and useful. The use of steam, as a locomotive power, upon the water and the land, is admirably adapted to our mighty rivers and extended territory. From Washington to the mouth of the Oregon is but one half,[3] and to the mouth ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... acre has been enriched and plowed twice deeply, as I have already suggested, little more is necessary in planting than to excavate a hole large enough to receive the roots spread out in their natural positions. Should no such thorough and general preparation have been made, or if the ground is hard, poor, and stony, the owner will find ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... prescribed," But he was unable to effect very much. He could not even discharge properly the main duty of a king towards himself, which was to prepare a fitting receptacle for his remains when he should quit the earth. To excavate a rock-tomb in the style fashionable at the day was a task requiring several years for its due accomplishment; Set-nekht felt that he could not look forward to many years—perhaps not even to many months—of life. In this difficulty, he felt no shame in appropriating to himself a royal tomb ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... turtle congregate in untold numbers, a remarkable deviation from the general habit has been observed. Several of the islands are composed of a kind of conglomerate of coral debris, shells and sand. With strange perversity some turtle excavate in the rock cylindrical shafts about 18 inches deep by 6 inches diameter with smooth perpendicular sides. There is no adjunct to the flippers which appears to be of service in the digging, yet the holes ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... to some faculty or means by which they make their hexagonal cells, without indeed we view these instincts as mere machines. At present such a faculty is quite unknown: Mr Waterhouse supposes that several bees are led by their instinct to excavate a mass of wax to a certain thinness, and that the result of this is that hexagons necessarily remain. Whether this or some other theory be true, some such means they must possess. They abound, however, with true instincts, which ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... Under the Turks it was difficult. The Turks were beautifully corrupt. By paying for it I could get permission to excavate on any property owned by Christians. But the minute I touched Moslem places the Turks became fanatical. The Arabs, now, are different—fanatics, too, but with a new sort of fanaticism—new to them, I mean—the kind that made the French revolutionists destroy everything their ancestors had set value ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... good soil or other root food, then dynamite 4 or 5 feet of the upper section of the hole. Nothing will produce a vigorous and thrifty tree like a deep and vigorous root system, and no tree responds to cultivation and care as does the walnut, white or black. After bursting up the soil, excavate and put in a half bushel of barn or other mould, well rotted. This will force the tree in the earlier years of its life and can be no hindrance to it later. Cover the manure with a foot or two of soil and plant. Both before and after planting the ground should ...
— Walnut Growing in Oregon • Various
... gold; that is to say, it would have been payable had there been water in the neighborhood. The prospect I had taken was an extremely rich one. What was to be done? After long consideration I decided to excavate a reservoir on the hillside in the vicinity of the deposit, and trust to its being filled with rain. The month was October; thunderstorms were due. So far, however, the season ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... as the village provided. He also took care to keep his gaoler well supplied with cigarillos, which proved the best prescription for keeping him in a good temper. So that by the time that three months had slipped by, the man had ceased to keep guard over his prisoner at all, and left him to excavate the tunnel unwatched, while he himself sat down on the shady side of a rock to enjoy his tobacco. Things were now indeed shaping very well for Jim, and having lulled his gaoler's suspicions, the young man next set about getting together a small store of provisions, which he secreted little by little ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... which they do after the first season, their cousins, the nuthatches, chickadees, and brown creepers, fall heir to them. These birds, especially the creepers and nuthatches, have many of the habits of the Picidae, but lack their powers of bill, and so are unable to excavate a nest for themselves. Their habitation, therefore, is always second-hand. But each species carries in some soft material of various kinds, or in other words, furnishes the tenement to its liking. The chickadee arranges in the bottom of the cavity a little mat of a light felt-like substance, which ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... discovered a series of these workings. They consist of shafts connected together by galleries. These pits vary in size from twenty to sixty feet in diameter, and in some cases were as much as thirty feet deep. From the bottom of these shafts they would excavate as far as they dared to the sides. They made no use of timbers to support the roof, and so these side excavations were not of great extent. In these old workings the miners sometimes left behind them their tools. The principal one was a pick made of deer's horn, as is here ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... perfect mountain of a strawberry. Its cool and shining sides seemed very attractive to a thirsty Soul. A red man, dressed strangely in the feathers of a raven, stood hard by, and loudly invited all passers-by to partake of this refreshment. I was about to excavate a portion of the monstrous strawberry (being partial to that fruit), when my guide held my hand and whispered in a low voice that they who accepted the invitation of the man that guarded the strawberry were ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... and also watched on those that were shut. They made a waved work on them, not by applying wax cordons, but by removing wax from the surface. Towards the top this waved work is almost imperceptible; it becomes deeper above, and the workers excavate it still more from thence to the base of the pyramid. The cell, when once shut, also becomes thinner; and is so much so, immediately preceding the queen's metamorphosis from a nymph, that all its motions are perceptible through ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... lifting peat, require tools of particular construction.... In Germany it is common to excavate by vertical thrusts of the tool, the cutting part of which is represented above, fig. 2. This tool is pressed down into the peat to a depth corresponding to the thickness of the required block: its three edges cut as many sides of the block, and the bottom is then broken or torn out ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... "The fossors, who still excavate sand for the builders. They are nearly all Christians, and are always at work cutting out graves for the dead of the Christians. These men have lived there all their lives, and are not only familiar with the passages, but they have ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... of making one which would save the body from the flood, and would serve at least till the day (if that day ever came) when it might be removed to some churchyard. They had no tools to dig a deep hole with; and if there was a hole, it must be deep: but they found they could excavate a space in the bank, under the trunk of one of the large buried forest-trees. They could line this hole with hewn stones brought from the shattered wall of the house, and could close it in also with a stone,—thus making the space at once a coffin and a grave, ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... chance for invention. I went down cellar to reflect and investigate. I decided that a stove-pipe could be carried from a small cellar window to the old chimney base, and by prying up the thick stone hearth we could excavate beneath it a passage which would admit the pipe to one end of the fireplace, where it could be covered and made sightly by a register. Old Pop came with his crowbar and pick, and Westbury brought the galvanized pipe and the grating. ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... sling shots, build fires before huts in the woods, cook their squirrels and other game, play Indian, build tree-platforms, where they smoke or troop about some leader, who may have an old revolver. They find or excavate caves, or perhaps roof them over; the barn is a blockhouse or a battleship. In the early teens boys begin to use frozen snowballs or put pebbles in them, or perhaps have stone-fights between gangs than which no contiguous African tribes could be more hostile. They become ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... gigantic tree in various directions. The great hole represented the trunk of the tree, and this had once been solid lead ore, but all had been laboriously cut away, as well as many of the branches, which represented the roots, though plenty were left to excavate, and fresh ones and new cavities were constantly being formed, so that the Eden mine at Black Tor was looked upon as the richest in ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... deserts. Be strong to fulfil his words and the decrees that are uttered among you. Follow (?) his utterances, and ye shall be safe under his Souls. Work all together for him in every work. Haul monuments for him, excavate canals for him, work for him in the work of your hands, and there will accrue unto you his favour as well as his food daily. Amen hath decreed for him his sovereignty upon earth, he hath made this period of his life ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... Archy Gordon and Desmond were stationed at the window to give notice should any one attempt to look in, while the rest carefully examined the ground round the walls. A soft spot was found, and they agreed that it would be easy to excavate it with their knives and pieces of the bench which had been easily wrenched off. Believing nobody would come in for the remainder of the day, they at once set to work, and before long had dug a tunnel through which Snatchblock could creep, ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... the ant-lion, whose larvae have earned a bad renown from their predaceous ingenuity, Ceylon has, at least, four species, which seem peculiar to the island.[1] This singular creature, preparatory to its pupal transformation, contrives to excavate a conical pitfall in the dust to the depth of about an inch, in the bottom of which it conceals itself, exposing only its open mandibles above the surface; and here every ant and soft-bodied insect which curiosity tempts ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... alteration has been made in the Magnetic Observatory. For several years past, various plans have been under consideration for preventing large changes of temperature in the room which contains the magnetic instruments. At length I determined to excavate a subterraneous room or cellar under the original room. The work was begun in the last week in January, and in all important points it is now finished."—"In the late spring, some alarm was occasioned by the discovery that the Parliamentary Standard ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... this buried city, as is Professor Spinazzola of the San Martino museum, who believes that Italy may well become one vast museum of antiquities. "As the theatre of Herculaneum is actually at present a subterranean excavation," he observed, "why not excavate in a similar way the entire city underneath modern Resina? In this way a perfectly unique underground museum would be formed, which would have the merit of leaving magnificent Roman art treasures exactly in their proper places in the villas. Such a work ought to be perfectly practicable, with ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... person who spent a fortune in mining for coal, when a work on geology, which would have cost but a dollar, and might have been read in a week, would have informed him that the stratum where he began to excavate belonged to a formation lower down in the natural series than coal ever is, or, according to the constitution of things, ever can be found. He therefore worked into a stratum which must have been formed before a particle of coal, or even a tree, or a vegetable existed on the planet. ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... or ulcers on any part of the body, the doctors treated them by applying dirt or earth, and in warm weather would excavate a place in the ground and put the patient in it, either in a sitting or recumbent position, as the nature of the case required, and cover the affected part with earth for several hours, daily. Sometimes, by this mode of treatment, wonderful ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... announced, on the last occasion of a concert before the war, the curtain rose upon an empty stage. The Carpenter's party happened upon him, as archaeologists might excavate a Sleeping Bacchus or a recumbent Budda, in the process of dismantling the stage. Private Mason was underneath it, breathing stertorously, a smile of beatific contentment on his worn features, his head pillowed ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... is worn out,' said Sidonia. 'Why do not the Ethiopians build another Thebes, or excavate the colossal temples of the cataracts? The decay of a race is an inevitable necessity, unless it lives in deserts and ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... the site has been filled up to a probable depth of several feet, and a number of Navaho burials have been made on it. These are shown on the plan by shaded spots. Owing to the soft ground underneath, it was easier to excavate a hole and wall it up than to construct the regular surface cist, and the ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... shadow of a human dwelling? I hope not. I have known the turtle dove to make a similar move, occupying an old robin's nest near my neighbor's cottage. The timid rabbit will sometimes come up from the bushy fields and excavate a place for her nest in the lawn a few feet from the house. All such things look like acts of judgment, though they may be only the result of a greater fear ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... that was once yours. I have two rooms, each fifteen by fifteen, but this one on the south is my "really" room and in it are my treasures. My house faces east and is built up against a side-hill, or should I say hillside? Anyway, they had to excavate quite a lot. I had them dump the dirt right before the house and terrace it smoothly. I have sown my terrace to California poppies, and around my porch, which is six feet wide and thirty long, I have ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... understand this poet? He is such an erudite archaeologist that, in the seventh century, he knows and carefully describes a helmet of the Mycenaean prime. Did he excavate it? and had the leather interior lasted with the felt cap through seven centuries? Or did he see a sample in an old temple of the Mycenaean prime, or in a museum of his own period? Or had he heard of it in a lost Mycenaean poem? Yet, careful ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... there is certainly no trace, for Signor Fiorelli's labourers were not the first to break the deep silence of this buried mansion. For it was the survivors of the stricken town, the citizens of Pompeii themselves, who were the foremost pioneers to excavate, and they carried off every work of art they could conveniently remove. Cutting from above into the deposit of ashes that filled the streets, they managed to reach in course of time the level of the ground, after which they tunnelled from room to room, from house to house, ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... Quentin. From Selency Chateau, whose thickets fringed the sky-line, on the right, to the high-perched windmill above Maissemy on the left, work to consolidate this system had commenced. It remained for us to excavate the chalk trenches deeper and erect wire. The demand for that material exceeded the supply, and it was necessary to salve old German stores. Some excellent coils I found—of American manufacture. Pickets were improvised. ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... villa that we called 'Ragnall' after this house, are the remains of a temple which were almost buried in the sand. This temple George obtained permission to excavate. It proved to be a long and costly business, but as he did not mind spending the money, that was no obstacle. For four winters we worked at it, employing several hundred men. As we went on we discovered that although not one of the largest, ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... liberation he had worked his lump into a close approximation to globular form, and had started on his voyage; but after a few turns he stopped, seemed to try the weight of his load, deliberately rolled it back into its original bed, and then began to excavate another portion, which he set himself to work into the original ball, which when weighed had been found wanting. The surface of the latter was thoroughly sanded by its revolutions, and adhesion was impossible; so he began working the new material ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... on a stone foundation, so as to support the rooms above, and we'll have to dig out three or four of the large stones and then dig a sort of trench to wherever the puppies are," and Rudolph was able of course to indicate the exact spot to which the trench must lead. It was the work of an hour to excavate the foundation-stones, and an additional half-hour to dig the trench. Meantime Betsy appeared upon the scene, and, evidently appreciating what was going on, stood about and superintended matters ...
— Tattine • Ruth Ogden
... obtain a foothold on the almost perpendicular surface of the bank, the birds literally charge this in turn with fixed beak. By a succession of such attacks at one spot a hole of an appreciable size is soon formed in the soft sand. Then the birds are able to obtain a foothold and to excavate with the bill, while clinging to the edge of the hole. Every now and then they indulge in a short respite from their labours. While thus resting one of the pair will sometimes spread its wings for an instant and display the white patch; ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... "Have you never had an idea of visiting the foundations?" he inquired of Pierre. "There's quite a city down there on which millions of money have been spent. They could only find firm soil at the very base of the height, and they had to excavate more than eighty shafts, fill them with concrete, and then rear their church on all those subterranean columns.... Yes, that is so. Of course the columns cannot be seen, but it is they who hold that insulting edifice aloft, right ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... arousing a small amount of sentimentality it affected her now very little. It came as a shock to her to realize that fact—she was becoming as wild as this "cowpuncher" husband of hers, who even now was sallying forth with spade and ax to excavate a shallow grave in the frozen earth, to save a man's body from prowling wolves. And all without ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... plains and prairies. They are much smaller than the Grey Wolf, and not so dangerous. They travel in bands and unitedly attack whatever animal they desire to kill. Their homes are made in burrows which they excavate in the ground. The Texan Wolf inhabits the latitude of Texas and southward. It is of a tawny red color and nearly as large as the grey species, possessing the ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... Diodorus Siculus represents very inadequately the antiquity of the existing coast-line. Some of its caves, hollowed in hard rock in the line of faults and shifts by the attrition of the surf, are more than a hundred feet in depth; and it must have required many centuries to excavate tough trap or rigid gneiss to a depth so considerable, by a process so slow. And yet, however long the sea may have stood against the present coast-line, it must have stood for a considerably longer period against the ancient one. The latter ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... revetment of nineteen and a half feet in thickness. We have, therefore, a well of sixty feet in diameter to dig down to a depth of nine hundred feet. This great work must be completed within eight months, so that you have 2,543,400 cubic feet of earth to excavate in 255 days; that is to say, in round numbers, 2,000 cubic feet per day. That which would present no difficulty to a thousand navvies working in open country will be of course more troublesome in a comparatively confined space. However, the thing must be done, and I reckon for its accomplishment ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... could in order to make much as possible—a system which suited both masters and men. Of course there are some sorts of employment where it would be unjust to pay men by the amount of work done—as, for instance, in some parts of tin-mines, where a fathom of rock rich in tin is as difficult to excavate as a fathom of rock which is poor in tin—but in work such as we are describing the ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... greater part of the kindred of the bees either construct the nests for their young in the manner of our wasps or hornets, building them entirely in the open air, or excavate underground chambers in the fashion of our bumble-bees, our domesticated form at some time in the remote past adopted the plan of choosing for its dwelling-place some chamber in the rocks, or cavity in a hollow tree which could be shaped ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... to run. When Rassam arrived at Msul in 1853, and was collecting his men for work, he discovered that Rawlinson, who knew nothing about the lease of the mound which Rassam held, had given the French Consul, M. Place, permission to excavate the northern half of the mound, i.e., that part of it which he was most anxious to excavate for the British Museum. He protested, but in vain, and, finding that M. Place intended to hold Rawlinson to ...
— The Babylonian Story of the Deluge - as Told by Assyrian Tablets from Nineveh • E. A. Wallis Budge
... over. In all this De Soto Sippens proved a trump. With Van Sickle, McKibben, and Stimson as his advisers in different sections of the city he would present tabloid propositions to Cowperwood, to which the latter had merely to bow his head in assent or say no. Then De Soto would buy, build, and excavate. Cowperwood was so pleased that he was determined to keep De Soto with him permanently. De Soto was pleased to think that he was being given a chance to pay up old scores and to do large ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... many-coloured clay and stone. Palestine is in every sense a stratified country. It is not only true in the natural sense, as here where the clay has fallen away and left visible the very ribs of the hills. It is true in the quarries where men dig, in the dead cities where they excavate, and even in the living cities where they still fight and pray. The sorrow of all Palestine is that its divisions in culture, politics and theology are like its divisions in geology. The dividing line is horizontal instead of vertical. The frontier does not run between states but between stratified ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... however, after one marriage flight, they throw off, as they never leave the nest again, and in it wings would of course be useless. The workers do not, except occasionally, lay eggs, but carry on all the affairs of the community. Some of them, and especially the younger ones, remain in the nest, excavate chambers and tunnels, and tend the young, which are sorted up according to age, so that my nests often had the appearance of a school, with the children arranged in classes. In our English ants the workers in each species are all similar except in size, but among ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... sons of Sagara, accepted this command of their father, and once more began to search through the entire world. Now these heroes saw a rift on the surface of the earth. And having reached this pit, the sons of Sagara began to excavate it. And with spades and pickaxes they went on digging the sea, making the utmost efforts. And that same abode of Varuna (namely the ocean), being thus, excavated by the united sons of Sagara and rent and cut on all sides round, was ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... as you may, Bring crowds on crowds to labor here; Them by reward and rigor cheer; Persuade, entice, give ample pay! Each day be tidings brought me at what rate The moat extends which here we excavate. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... in Maj. Nik. xxi. a man who proposes to excavate comes Kuddalapitakam adaya, "With spade ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... rights of the New Panama Canal Company on the Isthmus of Panama, and also to secure from the Republic of Colombia perpetual control of a strip of land not less than 6 miles wide, extending from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean, and "the right ... to excavate, construct, and to perpetually maintain, operate, and protect thereon a canal of such depth and capacity as will afford convenient passage of ships of the greatest tonnage ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... Excavate all the decayed wood with a chisel or gouge or whatever cutting tool may work well and fill the cavity with Portland cement in such a way as to exclude moisture. This will prolong the life and productiveness of the trees for many years ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... to Camp One for the bearskins, put the rest to digging a trench around the sleeping tents in order that a rain storm might not cause a flood, and ordered Ginger to excavate a square hole some feet deep which he intended to utilize as ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... ago. I say "he" because the red plume on the top of his head proclaims the sex. It seems not to be generally known to our writers upon ornithology that certain of our woodpeckers—probably all the winter residents—each fall excavate a limb or the trunk of a tree in which to pass the winter, and that the cavity is abandoned in the spring, probably for a new one in which nidification takes place. So far as I have observed, these cavities are drilled out only by the males. Where the females take up their quarters ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... slowly, each accent of her dulcet voice chiming on the ear like the stroke of a small silver bell. "None of the modern discoverers know anything about him yet. They have not even found his tomb; but he was buried in the Pyramids with all the honors of a king. No doubt your clever men will excavate ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... then came to the ranch where he lodged and boarded an expedition from an eastern museum. It was an expedition sent to explore the near-by canyon for trace of the ancient "cliff dwellers," to find and, if need be, excavate the villages of this strange people and to do research work among them. The expedition was in charge of an eminent scientist. Galusha met and talked with the scientist and liked him at once, a liking ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... forty-five degrees, and the lower edges secured to the earth with wooden pins. This makes some defense against the weather, and was the only shelter enjoyed by the mass of the French army in the Crimea up to October, 1855. For a permanent camp it is usual to excavate a shallow basement under the tent, and to bank up the earth on the outside in cold weather. It is designed that upon marches the tente d'abri shall be taken to pieces and carried by ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... of beavers there are frequently some who appear to do no work, and are called by the Canadian trappers Les paresseux, or Idlers. They live apart from the rest, taking up their abodes in long tunnels, which they excavate. Several inhabit the same burrow; and being males, the idea is that they have been conquered in the combats which take place among the males when seeking their mates, and thus, like monks of old, have retired from the world,—or perhaps it may be ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... and sometimes for days so far below the general level of the country that he can see nothing but the sides of the cut and in turn cannot be seen by others. The character of the soil and the power of the wind and rain have combined not only to excavate these long passages, but to cast up innumerable mounds and hills, often of such fantastic shapes that one is reminded of the quaint and curious formations in the Bad Lands of the Missouri, though the loess hillocks lack the brilliant colouring ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... the chalk digger, whose business it was to excavate for chalk, and told him the situation. The man listened, but said nothing. When she had finished ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Canaan presented to us by the Tel el-Amarna correspondence has been supplemented by the discovery of Lachish. Five years ago Prof. Flinders Petrie undertook to excavate for the Palestine Exploration Fund in the lofty mound of Tel el-Hesi in Southern Palestine. Tel el-Hesi stands midway between Gaza and Hebron on the edge of the Judaean mountains, and overlooking a torrent stream. His excavations resulted ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... stands just outside the Coliseum. It is of immense size and extremely well preserved. The ground on which it stands being much filled up and only half of the Arch appearing, the rest remaining buried in the earth, it was judged adviseable to excavate all around it in order to come to the pedestal; so that now there is a walled enclosure all around it and into this enclosure it is a descent of at least eighteen feet from the ground outside. Several statues of captive Kings and bas-reliefs representing the victories of Constantine adorn ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... lot, with an old shanty on it, he does not fix up the old shanty, but he gets a second-hand man, if he will have it, to tear it down, and he puts a mansion in its place. It is not fixing up the house that you need, but to give Christ the vacant lot, and He will excavate below our old life and build a house where He will ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... know," says I. "And the nearest I ever got to seein' a mine was watchin' 'em excavate for the subway. I'm admittin' ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford |
