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Alluvium   Listen
noun
Alluvium  n.  (pl. E. alluviums, L. alluvia)  (Geol.) Deposits of earth, sand, gravel, and other transported matter, made by rivers, floods, or other causes, upon land not permanently submerged beneath the waters of lakes or seas.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Alluvium" Quotes from Famous Books



... bearing unmistakable evidence of their descent from the Mosaic, have had successive deposits, in successive series, of mythological strata. This stands towering out in lonely sublimity, like the everlasting granite of the Alps or the Himalaya, as compared with the changing alluvium of the Nile or the Ganges. As the serene air that ever surrounds the head of Mont Blanc excels in purity the mists of the fen, so does the lofty theism of the Mosaic account rise high above the nature-worship of the Egyptian and Hesiodean theogonies. ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... not what is known as "a poor man's diggings." Here and there, especially on the terraces or beds of wash lying above the water flow, lay a few claims which were comparatively easy to work. But most of the alluvium in and about the bed of the creek ran deep, often from ten to twenty feet. The most serious difficulties were presented by the boulders, which were thickly distributed through the wash. It would, indeed, be more correct to say that the wash was ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully

... hills covered with chestnut woods, and at a short distance from the Dordogne. Its name, however, was probably given to it on account of the fertility of the soil in this bit of valley, where the cliffs that enclose the Dordogne on each side fall back, and, by allowing a rich alluvium to settle in the plain, give the husbandmen a chance of growing ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... the Amazon valley are those with clear transparent waters, and the courses of these lie through rocky countries where there is little or no alluvium ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... subsequent evidence, especially in view of the fact that he has had convincing proofs in later years that the remains of the mammoth and many other extinct species, very common in caves, occur also in undisturbed alluvium, imbedded in such a manner with works of art as to leave no room for doubt that man and the extinct animals coexisted, to reconsider his former opinion, and to assign to the proofs derived from caves of the high antiquity of man a much more positive ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... weight, usually in the form of bulls or oxen. In the centre of the continent, upon which so much light has been recently thrown by Livingston, Stanley, and others, rocks are to be met with quartz veins containing gold, and thus auriferous alluvium has been formed. Western Africa was the first field which supplied gold to mediaeval Europe. Its whole seaboard from Morocco to the equator produces more or less gold. This small section of the continent poured a flood ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... attracts the traveler's eye. Sancerre crowns the topmost height of a chain of hills, the last of the range that gives variety to the Nivernais. The Loire floods the flats at the foot of these slopes, leaving a yellow alluvium that is extremely fertile, excepting in those places where it has deluged them with sand and destroyed them forever, by one of those terrible risings which are also incidental to the Vistula—the Loire of the ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... Aryan household have a common origin with the classic legends of gods and heroes, which formerly were alone thought worthy of the student's serious attention. These stories—some of them familiar to us in infancy, others the delight of our maturer years—constitute the debris, or alluvium, brought down by the stream of tradition from the distant ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... be picked up later and carried some distance farther on its way. One of the most striking features of the river therefore is the waste accumulated along its course, in bars and islands in the channel, beneath its bed, and in flood plains along its banks. All this alluvium, to use a general term for river deposits, with which the valley is cumbered is really en route to the sea; it is only temporarily laid aside to resume its journey later on. Constantly the river is destroying and rebuilding its alluvial deposits, here cutting and there depositing along its banks, ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... deep valleys, opening out as they reach the sea, and the rivers—the Caicus, the Hermos, the Cayster, and Meander—which flow through them are effective makers of soil, bringing down with them, as they do, a continual supply of alluvium, which, deposited at their mouths, causes the land to encroach there upon the sea. The littoral is penetrated here and there by deep creeks, and is fringed with beautiful islands—Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Cos, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... charming lazy days on the water, nothing to think about, but the time for meals, nothing to do, but to eat them when prepared. The eastern part of Kashmir is covered with high isolated mounds called Kuraywahs, composed of Alluvium, presenting perfectly flat summits and precipitous sides. The top of these was doubtless the original bed of the lake at the time when the whole valley was submerged, and the present channels between them (though now dry land) were cut by the rush of the water, when the Jhelum burst ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster



Words linked to "Alluvium" :   sediment, alluvion, placer, alluvial sediment, alluvial, alluvial soil, alluvial deposit, delta, deposit



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