"Caisson" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... finale to our excellent programme, the most amusing and entertaining thing of all was yet to be carried out. A stunsail boom had been rigged out over the caisson, and rendered extremely fit for pedestrianism by plentiful libations of slush and soft soap. At the extreme end a basket containing, in the words of the programme, "a little pig" was slung. About thirty men stood to the front, as would-be possessors ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... putty. The teams, half starved, were very weak, and it seemed as if they would never mount the hills before them, which were the southern end of the ridge of Bay's Mountain, separating the Holston valley from the Nolachucky. Three or four teams had to be united to drag up a single cannon or caisson, and the time as well as the distance was thus trebled or quadrupled. In some instances more than twenty horses were thus hitched to a single piece, besides having infantrymen at the wheels as thick ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... demoiselle of the last century, who came to the ball not to causer but to danser. At times, when King Fitevanga condescended to show his agility, the uproar of applause became deafening. The orchestra consisted of two men sitting opposite each other,—one performed on a caisson, a log of hollowed wood, four feet high, skin-covered, and fancifully carved; the other on the national Anjya, a rude "Marimba," the prototype of the pianoforte. It is made of seven or eight hard- wood slats, pinned with bamboo tacks to transverse banana trunks lying on the ground: like the grande ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... had not gone far before the Rebel gunners in the main works around the City discovered us; and the way they did tear loose at us was a caution. Their aim was rather bad, however, and most of their shots went over us. We saw one of them—I think it was a shell—strike an artillery caisson belonging to one of our-batteries. It exploded as it struck, and then the caisson, which was full of ammunition, exploded with an awful noise, throwing pieces of wood and iron and its own load of shot and shell high into the air, scattering death and destruction ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... radius of 4 ft. Each working chamber had two shafts, 3 ft. by 5 ft. in cross-section, with a diaphragm dividing it into two passages, the smaller for men and the larger for muck buckets. On top of these shafts were Moran locks. Mounted on top of the caisson was a 5-ton Wilson crane, which would reach each shaft and also the muck cars standing on tracks on the ground level beside the caissons. Circular steel buckets, 2 ft. 6 in. in diameter and 3 ft. high, were used for handling all muck. These were taken ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace, Francis Mason and S. H. Woodard
... and equipment to be used in construction—derricks, barges, concrete-mixers, air compressors for the caissons, small engines, dump-cars and all manner of like things. This preparatory work consumes some months. Caissons are then sunk far down beneath the river bed. Caisson work is dangerous, and the insurance rate on "sand hogs"—the men who work in the caissons—is very high. The scale of wages, and of time, varies in proportion to the risk, which is according to the depth at which work ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... of his mind. He had spent the previous three weeks in elaborating the plans and specifications for a caisson to be used under a bridge pier—our client assuring him that he had, to use his own words, "a dead sure thing on the award." When the bids were opened, Mawkum congratulated him on his foresight and offered to attend the funeral in a ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... hand, a general forward movement was made. But the enemy met it with a determined front. The shrieking and bursting of shells shook the very earth, while the constant roll of the infantry sounded like continual peals of heavy thunder. Here and there an explosion, like a volcanic eruption, told of a caisson being blown up by the bursting of a shell. The enemy graped the field right and left, and had a decided advantage in the forenoon when their long range twenty-pounders played havoc with our advancing ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert |
