"Nitre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... harp, and a miser's chest, A hermit's cowl, and a baron's crest, Jewels of lustre, robes of price, Tomes of heresy, loaded dice, And golden cups of the brightest wine That ever was pressed from the Burgundy vine. There was a perfume of sulphur and nitre As he came at ...
— English Satires • Various
... become asphyxiated by torsion of their cervical vertebrae, in anticipation of Michaelmas-day; no sooner do the pheasants feel premonitory warnings, that some chemical combinations between charcoal, nitre, and sulphur, are about to take place, ending in a precipitation of lead; no sooner do the columns of the newspapers teem with advertisements of the ensuing courses at the various schools, each one cheaper, and offering more advantages ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... established himself. "Or has not the chief got a wishing carpet? Or can't you ride to Gallipoli? Here are some excellent white-tailed mules, good enough for Pindar, whom Colvocoressis has just brought in from the monastery. 'Transportation for one!' Is there anything to be brought back? Nitre, powder, lead, junk, hard-tack, mules, horses, pigs, polenta, or olla podrida, or other of the stores ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... mallows, linseed, juniper-berries, cumminseed, aniseed, melilot, and add to it half an ounce of diacatholicon; two drachms of hiera piera, an ounce each of honey and oil and a drachm and a half of sol. nitre. The patient must abstain from ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... 1043. NITRE—Saltpetre.—This, in over-doses, produces violent poisonous symptoms. Vomiting should be immediately induced by large doses of mucilaginous, diluent drinks; but emetics which irritate the stomach should ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... was, on the 18th of January 1763, attacked with a Fever. I saw her for the first time on the 20th, and found her Pulse quick, full, and strong. She complained of a violent Head-ach; for which she was blooded, and took the saline Mixture, with Nitre and Contrayerva. Next Day, the 21st, her Blood appeared very sizy, and she complained of having been costive for some Days. We gave her immediately an Ounce of the sal catharticum amarum, which operated ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... they had set up armories, and were making guns as fast as they could. Their greatest trouble was about powder. They had chemists who knew how to make it, but they had no nitre to make it of, and did not know at first how to get any. At last one of their chemists said that there was some nitre—from a few ounces to a pound or two—in the earth of every cellar floor; and that if all the nitre in all the cellar floors of France could be collected, it would ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... distinguished by the weakness of its affinities for other elements, and its consequent great inertness as a chemical agent, are often astonished to find that its compounds—such as nitric acid, nitre, which gives its explosive character to gunpowder, nitro-glycerine, gun-cotton, and various other explosive substances which it helps to form—are among the most remarkable in nature for the violence and ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... his pennons vain, plumb down he drops Ten thousand fathom deep, and to this hour Down had been falling, had not by ill chance This strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud Instinct with fire and nitre hurried ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... the lakes of the Great Basin is the presence of large quantities of such substances as common salt, soda, borax, and nitre. The ocean is salt because it has no outlet, while the rivers of the globe are continually bringing into it various minerals, dissolved from the rocks over which they flow. Lakes with outlets are not salty, because with a continuous change of the water there ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... not more than one season in twelve can you get a good crop of barley from late sowing in all the middle and western states. Barley is more favorably affected than any other grain, by soaking twenty-four hours before sowing, and mixing with dry ashes. A weak solution of nitre is best for ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... because he says the terrible effects of this destructive material, which inspired the native Americans with such awe, which raised in their winds such wonder, are to be ascribed to the junction of the apparently harmless substances of nitre, charcoal and sulpher, set in activity by the accession of trivial scintillations, produced from the collision of steel with flint, merely because some bigoted Priest of the Sun, who is ignorant of the composition, chooses ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... if you deal by Wholesale, they will be return'd upon your hands, or be a trouble to the Family where they are made. Wash these well, after trimming, in Salt and Water, and then salt them with common Salt, well dry'd, in an Iron Kettle; one pound to half an Ounce of Salt-Petre, or Nitre, powder'd and well mix'd. Rub them well with the Mixture, and lay them close together in a Tub, or glaz'd earthen Vessel; and, after a few Days, when they are salt enough, take them from the Pickle, and when they are a little dry, tie them by ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... is a large European element in all the coast towns. Mining and agriculture are the chief industries; manufactures of various kinds are fostered with foreign capital. The chief trade is with Britain: exports nitre, wheat, copper, and iodine; imports, textiles, machinery, sugar, and cattle. Santiago (250) is the capital; Valparaiso (150) and Iquique the principal ports. The government is republican; Roman Catholicism the State religion; education is fairly well fostered; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... powerful freezing mixture may be made by pulverizing Glauber's salts finely, and placing it level at the bottom of a glass vessel. Equal parts of sal ammoniac and nitre are then to be finely powdered, and mixed together, and subsequently added to the Glauber's salts, stirring the powders well together; after which adding water sufficient to dissolve the salts, a degree of cold will be produced, frequently below Zero of Fahrenheit. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various
... gas, consists of about twenty-five parts of oxygen, and nine of carbon, devested of the mucilage and yest that rises with it. It should be recollected, that the decomposition of pyrites, the formation of nitre, respiration, fermentation, &c. are low degrees of combustion, and though it is the property of combustion to form fixed and phlogisticated airs, both the modes of doing it, and the quantity of the products, ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... but, that seat soon failing, meets A vast vacuity. All unawares, Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb-down he drops Ten thousand fathom deep, and to this hour Down had been falling, had not, by ill chance, The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud, Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him As many miles aloft. That fury stayed— Quenched in a boggy Syrtis, neither sea, Nor good dry land—nigh foundered, on he fares, Treading the crude consistence, half on foot, Half flying; behoves him now both oar and sail. As when a gryphon through the ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... specular nickel, etc.; native iron near the Bay of Samana, in the Mornes-du-Cap, and at Haut-and Bas-Moustique; other forms of that metal abound in numerous places, crystallized, spathic, micaceous, etc. Nitre can be procured in the Cibao, that great storehouse which has specimens of almost every metal, salt, and mineral; borax at Jacmel and Dondon, native alum at Dondon, and aluminous earth near Port-au-Prince; vitriol, of various forms, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... hand the perfumes give forth," said the doctor. "Now the fever is past there must be a fumigatory. Make a good brew, Goody, make a good brew—amber and nitre and wormwood—vinegar and quinces and myrrh—with wormwood, camphor, and the fresh flowers of the camomile. And musk—forget not musk—a strong thing against contagion. Let the vapor of it pass to and fro through the chamber, burn the ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... cried Tom, "it couldn't be. I know what gunpowder's made of—nitre, brimstone, and charcoal; and besides, ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... with pen-and-ink drawings. And yet all this was done merely for mechanical amusement, and not for any personal pecuniary advantage. While Watt was making experiments as to the proper substances to be carved and drilled, he also desired Murdock to make similar experiments. "The nitre," he said in one note, "seems to do harm; the fluor composition seems the best and hardest. Query, what would some calcined pipe-clay do? If you will calcine some fire-clay by a red heat and pound it,—about a ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... artist." He told us "he had been thirty years employing his thoughts for the improvement of human life." He had two large rooms full of wonderful curiosities, and fifty men at work. Some were condensing air into a dry tangible substance, by extracting the nitre, and letting the aqueous or fluid particles percolate; others softening marble, for pillows and pin-cushions; others petrifying the hoofs of a living horse, to preserve them from foundering. The artist himself was at that time busy upon two ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... burned with carbonaceous matter, the product is carbonate of potash. The ashes left by burning wood contain the same salt. The ashes left by burning sea-weed produce carbonate of soda. When nitre is burned with sulphur, the product is sulphate of potash, etc. These have all been called generically, even in modern times, nitre, having each a certain prefix well understood by the adept, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Mrs. Bateson, her voice softening with pity; "that comes from eating French kickshaws, and having no mother to see that he takes a dose of soda and nitre now and then to keep his system ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... asks for information to No. 4. of his notes respecting the "salt-peter-man," so quaintly described by Lord Coke as a troublesome person. Before the discovery and importation of rough nitre from the East Indies, the supply of that very important ingredient in the manufactory of gunpowder was very inadequate to the quantity required; and this country having in the early part of the seventeenth ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... gentle aperient. He should endeavour to rouse and support the system by tonic medicines, as gentian and colomba with ginger, adding to two drachms of the first two, and one drachm of the last, half an ounce of nitre; but he should place most dependence on nourishing food. Until the mouth is tolerably sound, it is probable that the animal will not be induced to eat; but it will occasionally sip a little fluid, and, therefore, gruel should be always within its reach. More should occasionally be given, ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... charcoal, distilled sulphur, and the purest nitre are powdered and mixed in a revolving drum,made into a paste with water, put under great pressure between sheets of gun metal, granulated, sifted, to separate the coarse and fine grains, and glazed by revolving in a barrel which sometimes contains ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... recommended simply macerating three or four drachms of the lichen in cool spring water, assisting, perhaps, the solvent action of the water by minute quantities of common salt, nitre, quicklime, sulphate of copper or iron, or similar re-agents. If these means failed, after a sufficient length of time had been allowed for the development of color, he digested a fresh portion of the pulverised lichen ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... paper or vellum, so that the characters shall become visible only when subjected to the action of fire. Zaffre digested in aqua regia, and diluted with four times its weight of water, is sometimes employed; a green tint results. The regulus of cobalt, dissolved in spirit of nitre, gives a red. These colors disappear at longer or shorter intervals after the material written upon cools, but again become apparent upon ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... remedy, which he gave oftener than any other, was nitre; which he ordered in doses of twenty or thirty grains to adults, and of three grains to infants. Measles, colics, sciatica, headache, giddiness, and many other ailments, all found themselves treated, and I trust bettered, by nitre; a pretty ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the size of hens eggs, and thoroughly dried, might be used with great advantage instead of wood for kindling fires. These kindling balls may be made so inflammable as to take fire in an instant and with the smallest spark, by dipping them in a strong solution of nitre and then drying them again, and they would neither be expensive nor liable to be spoiled by long keeping. Perhaps a quantity of pure charcoal reduced to a very fine powder and mixed with the solution of nitre in which they are dipped ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... much and her fever again returned. I rebuked Sharbono severely for suffering her to indulge herself with such food he being privy to it and having been previously told what she must only eat. I now gave her broken dozes of diluted nitre untill it produced perspiration and at 10 P.M. 30 drops of laudnum which gave her a tolerable nights rest. I amused myself in fishing several hours today and caught a number of both species of the white fish, but no trout nor Cat. I employed the men in making up our baggage in proper packages ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... there hain't nothin' done her no good. She told me to-day she couldn't keep up no longer, and I've been a-tellin' Mis' Pennel and her grand'ther. I tell you it has been a solemn time; and if you're goin' in, don't go in with none o' your light triflin' ways, 'cause 'as vinegar upon nitre is he that singeth songs on a ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... evolve gas, and after awhile, no longer yields a dark blue precipitate with ferrous salts, but a dark green or slate-colored precipitate. It is then removed from the fire, and left to crystallize, whereupon it yields a large quantity of crystals of nitre, and more or less oxamide. The strongly-colored mother liquid is then neutralized with carbonate of potash or soda, according to the salt to be prepared, and the solution is boiled, whereupon it generally deposits a green or brown precipitate, which ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... number of artificial wells and fountains, made in imitation of the natural sources and baths, as tincted upon vitriol, sulphur, steel, brass, lead, nitre, and other minerals; and again, we have little wells for infusions of many things, where the waters take the virtue quicker and better than in vessels or basins. And amongst them we have a water, which we call water of Paradise, being by that we do it made very sovereign ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... hidden things of darknesse, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts. In these also leaving all men to a judging and searching of themselves, there are many other provocations which are apparent in all or many of this Nation, from which, though they wash with nitre, and take much sope, yet they cannot make themselves clean: Because of these the Land mourneth, and ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... the valley we came upon a small mound of earth, all white and glistening, covered with nitre in an efflorescent form, which shone so conspicuously in the sun, it could be seen at many miles' distance; from the base of it a clear spring of water trickled, so disagreeable in taste that no one, save Somali, could possibly drink it. Now, emerging from the low land, we again ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... must get it myself, as I want some drugs as well." I bought some nitre, mercury, flower of sulphur, and a small brush, and on my return said, "I must have a little of your——, this liquid is indispensable, and it ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... always some fresh patching and whitening; a dull smell of mortar, mixed with that of stale foulness of every kind, rises with the dust, and defiles every current of air; the corners are filled with accumulations of stones, partly broken, with crusts of cement sticking to them, and blotches of nitre oozing out of their pores. The lichenous rocks and sunburnt slopes of grass stretch themselves hither and thither among the wreck, curiously traversed by stairs and walls and half-cut paths, that disappear ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... Gasconade and Black rivers the hills are frequently abrupt and rocky, with strips of rich alluvion along the water courses. Much of this region abounds with minerals of various descriptions. Lead, iron, coal, gypsum, manganese, zinc, antimony, cobalt, ochre of various kinds, common salt, nitre, plumbago, porphyry, jasper, chalcedony, buhrstone, marble, and freestone, of various qualities. The lead and iron ore are literally exhaustless, and of the richest quality. To say there is probably iron ore enough in this region to supply the United ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... the moral world, to the destruction of the apparently active properties of bodies in the material. It would be like the attempt to destroy (if it were in our competence to destroy) the expansive force of fixed air in nitre, or the power of steam, or of electricity, or of magnetism. These energies always existed in nature, and they were always discernible. They seemed, some of them unserviceable, some noxious, some no better than a sport to children; until contemplative ability, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... the miners more than thirty years ago, the print of wagon wheels and the tracks of oxen, as distinctly defined as though they were made but yesterday; and continuing on for a short distance, you arrive at the Second Hoppers. Here are seen the ruins of the old nitre works, leaching vats, pump frames and two lines of wooden pipes; one to lead fresh water from the dripping spring to the vats filled with the nitrous earth, and the other to convey the lye drawn from the large reservoir, back to the furnace at ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... of spirits of nitre, one teaspoonful paregoric, one wineglassful of camphor water. Mix thoroughly, and give a teaspoonful in half a tea-cupful of water every two hours. To relieve the cough, if troublesome, flax seed tea, or infusion of slippery-elm ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... that Haj Beshir and the Sheikh get English or American powder from Niffee. Leaden bullets are scarce; they use zinc bullets: but these will not go far, resisting the force of the powder; nor will they penetrate deep when they hit a person. Nitre is found at a place one hour from ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... often resorted to with success; the submission of Egypt; another winter spent in the political organization of that venerable country; the convergence of the whole army from the Black and Red Seas toward the nitre-covered plains of Mesopotamia in the ensuing spring; the passage of the Euphrates fringed with its weeping-willows at the broken bridge of Thapsacus; the crossing of the Tigris; the nocturnal reconnaissance before the great and memorable battle of Arbela; the oblique movement on the ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... the hunters saw in a pond to the north which we passed yesterday a number of young swans. We saw a large rat, and killed a wolf. Another of our men had a stroke of the sun; he was bled, and took a preparation of nitre which ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... hair tonics, dead catsups, syrups of undesirable preserves, condemned extracts of vanilla and lemon, decayed chocolate, ex-essence of beef, mixed dental preparations, aromatic spirits of ammonia, spirits of nitre, alcohol, arnica, quinine, ipecac, sal volatile, nux vomica and licorice water— with traces of arsenic, belladonna ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... to dip your clothes in a weak solution of nitre before they are worn; for that prevents their blazing, even if they should catch fire," said mamma. "But you must not let that keep you from ...
— The Nursery, November 1877, Vol. XXII. No. 5 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... bats had harbored and died here from time immemorial, that more than a hundred acres of the earthy floor of the cave had, from their decomposing remains, become impregnated with nitre; and during the years 1812 to 1814, a party of saltpetre-makers took up their residence here. They made great vats in the cave, in which they lixiviated the impregnated earth, and by wooden pipes conveyed it to a place where ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... bark, eight drachms; gum benzoin, four drachms; yellow sanders, two drachms; styrax, two drachms; olibanum, two drachms; charcoal, six ounces; nitre, one drachm and a half; mucilage of tragacanth, sufficient quantity. Reduce the substances to a powder, and form into a paste with the mucilage, and divide into small cones; then put them into an oven, used ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... phenomenon, but to fit something else for producing it. In other words, there is a case of causation in which the effect is to invest an object with a certain property. When sulphur, charcoal, and nitre are put together in certain proportions and in a certain manner, the effect is, not an explosion, but that the mixture acquires a property by which, in given circumstances, it will explode. The various causes, natural and artificial, which educate the human body or the ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... the clock shelf in the sitting-room there is a bottle of sweet spirits of nitre; it's the only bottle there, so you can't make any mistake. It will help until the doctor comes. I wonder you didn't ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... sweet spirits of nitre!" And away he ran through the woods to hold his nose in a soft bank of mud, for he thought a bee had stung him. And so he didn't ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis
... lower abdomen, will afford much relief. A hot brick or bottle of hot water wrapped in flannel, and applied to the small of the back, is often of great service. Rest in bed is always to be recommended. A tea-spoonful of sweet spirits of nitre will sometimes ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... Powdered nitre moistened with water and applied to the face night and morning, is said to remove freckles ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... or Rios and in Guadalupe. In these mineral districts we also encounter lead. Amianto (incombustible crystal) also abounds in Niezca and in the vicinity of Monclova, as also nitre in San Blas, jurisdiction of San Buonaventura. In the hills of Gizedo, correspondent to the district of Santa Rosa, ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... Passages in this Description which carry in them a greater Measure of Probability, and are such as might possibly have happened. Of this kind is his first mounting in the Smoke that rises from the Infernal Pit, his falling into a Cloud of Nitre, and the like combustible Materials, that by their Explosion still hurried him forward in his Voyage; his springing upward like a Pyramid of Fire, with his laborious Passage through that Confusion of Elements ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... and officers in command of departments, districts, and separate posts will make a detail of men from their commands to work the nitre caves which may be situated within the ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... inflammable substance, supposed to have been a compound of naphtha, sulphur, and nitre, which was hurled against the enemy in battle. As it was first used in 673, in the siege of Constantinople, Browning is guilty of an ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... clouds now and again cast their deep shadows. Altogether this side of the picture was not inviting; it exhibited too plainly the true wilderness in its sternest aspect; but perhaps the knowledge that in the bosom of the vast plain before me there was not one drop of water but was bitter as nitre, and undrinkable as urine, prejudiced me against it, The hunter might consider it a paradise, for in its depths were all kinds of game to attract his keenest instincts; but to the mere traveller it had a stern outlook. Nearer, however, to the base of the Mpwapwa the aspect of the ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... Distill'd Liquor will be so: and this Liquor if it be well Drawn, will upon a little Agitation of the Vial first unstop'd (especially if it be held in a Warmer hand) lend forth a copious Fume, not Red, like that of Nitre, but White; And sometimes this Liquor may be so Drawn, that I remember, not long since, I took pleasure to observe in a parcel of it, that Ingredients not Red, did not only yield by Distillation a Volatile Spirit that was Red, but though ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... her some sweet spirits of nitre," said I, taking out a little vial. "Will you ask the servant for a glass of water ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... Nitre, vitriol, cinnabar, alum, salt ammoniac, sublimated mercury, rock salt, alcali salt, common salt, rock alum, alum schist (?), arsenic, sublimate, realgar, tartar, ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... wash thee with nitre, and take thee much sope, yet thine iniquity is marked before me, ...
— The Children's Six Minutes • Bruce S. Wright
... on their way from Wareville, their home, with horses hearing powder for Marlowe, the nearest settlement, nearly a hundred miles away. The secret of making powder from the nitre dust on the floors of the great caves of Kentucky had been discovered by the people of Wareville, and now they wished to share their unfailing supply with others, in order that the infant colony might be able ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... at Timbuctoo; the muskets, which are matchlocks, are made in the country. They are very dexterous in throwing the lance. Gunpowder is also manufactured there; the brimstone is brought from Fas; the charcoal they make; and he believes they prepare the nitre.[83] Their arrows are feathered and barbed; the bows are all cross-bows, with triggers; the arrows, 20 to 40 in a quiver, are made of hides, and hang on the left side. The king never goes to war ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... quicksilver. Where possible, the fireplace of a spare boiler can be utilised, using a thin red fire. After the entire evaporation of the quicksilver the plates should be slowly cooled, rubbed with hydrochloric acid, and put in a damp place overnight, then rubbed with a solution of sal ammoniac and nitre in equal parts, and again heated slowly over a red fire. They must not be allowed to get red hot; the proper degree of heat is indicated by the gold scale rising in blisters, when the plates should be taken from the fire and the gold scraped ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... labour of Copyists by device of Movable Types was disbanding hired Armies, and cashiering most Kings and Senates, and creating a whole new Democratic world: he had invented the Art of Printing. The first ground handful of Nitre, Sulphur, and Charcoal drove Monk Schwartz's pestle through the ceiling: what will the last do? Achieve the final undisputed prostration of Force under Thought, of Animal courage under Spiritual. A simple invention it was in the old-world Grazier,—sick ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... but that flute of yours wants nitre, or a dose of physic, or something most dreadful!' at length exclaimed he, squeezing up his face as if in the greatest ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... four daily newspapers, only one continued to be published. Some people constantly smoked tobacco,—even women and children, did so; others chewed garlic; others exploded gunpowder; others burned nitre or sprinkled vinegar; many assiduously whitewashed every surface within their reach; some carried tarred rope in their hands, or bags of camphor round their necks; others never ventured abroad without a handkerchief or a sponge wet with vinegar at their noses. No one ventured to shake hands. ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... convinced by their silence that they were all in a deep slumber. Then he had run to the train, impetuous as a man who is excited by revenge, and full of confidence, as are those whom God blinds, he had set fire to the wick of nitre. ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... has felt indisposed, but is better, thanks to a draught "composed of laudanum, nitre and other savoury drugs." When their letters do not arrive promptly they are in despair. "Stage after stage without a line!" complains Theodosia the mother, in one feverishly incoherent note. And ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... find the way I know full well!— Yet can I not enough declare, What wealth unown'd lies waiting everywhere: The countryman, who ploughs the land, Gold-crocks upturneth with the mould; Nitre he seeks in lime-walls old, And findeth, in his meagre hand, Scared, yet rejoiced, rouleaus of gold. How many a vault upblown must be, Into what clefts, what shafts, must he Who doth of hidden treasure know, Descend, to reach ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... with about forty smaller bombards (bombardelles) placed three, four, or even six on each waggon; twelve with ordinary pieces of artillery; as many more for the service of twelve big guns; thirty-seven carts of iron balls; three with gunpowder; and finally five laden with nitre, darts, and bullets. Splendid artillery of most excellent workmanship and great power escorted by two thousand men under arms, without mentioning the companies who marched before and ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... it; another group is seated at a long table eating; some feed the immense boiler with new supplies from a heap of dirty-looking earth-stained salt. Others test the quality from time to time of that which has been purged and crystallized. It was the native nitre of the country on which they were occupied, and the test was its deflagration. In passing out of the first of the line of quarried caverns to go to the Ear, which is the last, we are struck with the beauty of the garden into which it opens, which is found in possession ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... the rest, Mrs. Stiles described the manner in which the doctors had vainly endeavored to cure her injured ankle, told how she had passed sleepless night after night in spite of the morphia and sweet spirits of nitre, how she had been confined to her bed for three weeks and had only got up to be moved to a chair, how she suffered tortures and lost her appetite, how it was months before she could walk without crutches, and how every ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... analysis the charcoal of the powder is often called "oxid of carbon." In referring to the separation of potassium and sodium it is recommended to precipitate out the first in the form of tartrate. Naturally, nitre itself comes in for serious thought and the explosibility of the mixture of charcoal, nitre and sulphur arrests the author's attention, for ...
— James Cutbush - An American Chemist, 1788-1823 • Edgar F. Smith
... this heat being expelled, it would return to its natural consistence. This being the case, nothing else is required for the freezing of water, than a certain degree of cold, which may be generated by the help of salt, or spirit of nitre, even under the line. I would propose, therefore, that an apparatus of this sort should be provided in every ship that goes to sea; and in case there should be a deficiency of fresh water on board, the seawater ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... weather, this salutary operation could not take place, the ship was fumigated with gun-powder, as described in the Paper; though that smoke could have no effect in drying, but only in remedying the corruption of the air, by means of the acid spirits from the sulphur and nitre, aided perhaps by some species of an aerial fluid, then disengaged from the fuel, to counteract putrefaction. But as these purifications by gun-powder, as well as by burning tar and other resinous substances, are sufficiently known, I shall not ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... gallon, best French brandy, or any kind you wish to imitate, even Otard, 1 quart; loaf sugar 2 oz., sweet spirits of nitre 1/2 oz., a few drops of tincture of catechu, or oak bark, to roughen the taste if desired; colour to suit your ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... Missouri, which we are now to cross. This river takes its rise at eight hundred leagues distance, as is alledged, from the place where it discharges itself into the Missisippi. Its waters are muddy, thick, and charged with nitre; and these are the waters that make the Missisippi muddy down to the sea, its waters being extremely clear above the confluence of the Missouri: the reason is, that the former rolls its waters over a sand and pretty firm soil; the latter, on the contrary, flows across rich and clayey lands, ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... Useless! The air had made the flame attached to the conductor more active; the match, which at rest might have burnt five minutes, was consumed in thirty seconds, and the infernal work exploded. Furious vortices of sulphur and nitre, devouring shoals of fire which caught every object, the terrible thunder of the explosion, this is what the second which followed disclosed in that cavern of horrors. The rocks split like planks of deal beneath the axe. A jet of fire, smoke, and debris sprang from the middle of the grotto, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Master Cheese recommenced his studies. Solacing himself first of all with a few mouthfuls of tamarinds, as he intended to do at intervals throughout his labours, he plunged his hands into a mass of incongruous substances—nitre, chlorate of potass, and ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... requires to be watered with great labour, by means of wells of extraordinary depth. It is inhabited by the Orfella tribe, subsisting chiefly by agriculture, and the rearing of cattle, aided only in a trifling degree by a manufacture of nitre; they are accounted hardy and industrious, but at the same time dishonest and cruel. Benioleed castle stands in latitude 31B0 45' 38" N., ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... though very sweet when new, develops, if kept for three or four years, a dry nutty flavour like sherry. This, however, does not last long, but gives place in a few months to a taste unpleasantly like sweet spirits of nitre, which renders the wine undrinkable. With proper appliances the country would no doubt produce excellent vintages, but at present the production of wine in Persia ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... the couch. He struck flintsparks upon a rag steeped in nitre, and waved it to a flame, and kindled a lanthorn. He flung his own mantle upon the bed and went forth in his shirt. The storm raged terribly; the stars were dancing in high heaven. He came to the house of the Chief Leech and beat at the door. The Leech was not in bed. All the wise men ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... haemorrhages, oppression of the chest caused by staying such long stretches of time without breathing; and from dysentery caused by the frigidity. 40. Their hair, which is by nature black, changes to an ashen colour like the skin of seals, and nitre comes out from their shoulders so that they resemble human monsters of some species. 41. With this insupportable toil, or rather, infernal trade, the Spaniards completed the destruction of all the Indians of the Lucayan Islands who were there when they set themselves to making these gains; each ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... driven off with great loss, though the King of Bambarra was afterwards obliged to give up this, and all the other towns as far as Goomba, in order to obtain a peace. Here I lodged at the house of a Negro who practised the art of making gunpowder. He showed me a bag of nitre, very white, but the crystals were much smaller than common. They procure it in considerable quantities from the ponds which are filled in the rainy season, and to which the cattle resort for coolness during the heat of the day. When the water is evaporated, ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... his own spermaceti) listened attentively to Barton's description of Davenport's illness; concluded it was typhus fever, very prevalent in that neighbourhood; and proceeded to make up a bottle of medicine, sweet spirits of nitre, or some such innocent potion, very good for slight colds, but utterly powerless to stop, for an instant, the raging fever of the poor man it was intended to relieve. He recommended the same course they had previously ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... deep, fewer or none in churches though in fresh-decayed bodies. Teeth, bones, and hair, give the most lasting defiance to corruption. In an hydropical body, ten years buried in the churchyard, we met with a fat con- cretion, where the nitre of the earth, and the salt and lixivious liquor of the body, had coagulated large lumps of fat into the consistence of the hardest Castile soap, whereof part remaineth with us. After a battle with the Persians, ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... lines with fine plates of a different metal; the two were then united with the assistance of heat, and the whole burnished. Pliny has preserved a receipt for solder, which probably was used in these works. It is called santerna; and the principal ingredients are borax, nitre, and copperas, pounded, with a small quantity of gold and silver, in a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... the Nomenclature of Acids in general, and particularly of those drawn from Nitre and ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... fire [Footnote: Greek Fire was the name given to a composition which was largely used by the Greeks of the Byzantine Empire in their wars with the Mohammedans. Its nature was kept a profound secret for centuries, but the material is now believed to have been a mixture of nitre, sulphur, and naphtha. It burned with terrible fury wherever it fell, and it possessed the property of being inextinguishable by water. Even when poured upon the sea it would float upon the surface ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... is elevated so high in the air, the soile doth consist of chalke and mawme, which abounds with nitre, which craddles the air, and turns it into mists and ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... may appear the excellency of steeping Seed-barley in a liquor lately invented, that impregnates and loads it with Nitre and other Salts that are the nearest of all others to the true and original Spirit or Salt of the Earth, and therefore in a great measure supplies the want thereof both in inclosure and open Field; for even in this last it is sometimes very ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... ye ever was persistent in, Lord knows!" muttered Aunt Chloe, who was getting rather restive; the merriment of the evening being to her somewhat after the Scripture comparison,—like "vinegar upon nitre." ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... elliptical form of the future, as some affirm it to be; nor equivalent to the indicative present, as others will have it; but a true subjunctive, though its distinctive parts are chiefly confined to the second and third persons singular of the simple verb: as, "Though thou wash thee with nitre."—Jer., ii, 22. "It is just, O great king! that a murderer perish."—Corneille. "This single crime, in my judgment, were sufficient to condemn him."—Duncan's Cicero, p. 82. "Beware that thou bring not my son thither."—BIBLE: Ward's Gram., p. 128. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... considerable extent, if not wholly—by the use of salt, or salt hay, and by feeding at the time of milking, or immediately after, or by steaming before feeding, or putting a small quantity of the solution of nitre into the ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... saltpetre, in 200 lb. gunny-bags: and was now mashing it to music, bags and all. His gang of fifteen, naked to the waist, stood in line, with huge wooden beetles called commanders, and lifted them high and brought them down on the nitre in cadence with true nautical power and unison, singing as follows, with a ponderous bump on the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... ounce of salt of tartar, and two ounces of half sweet spirit of nitre, mix them in a gallon of lac, and whisk them well together; apply it to the hogshead, bung it up, and let it stand ten or fifteen days; then put a cock within two inches of the bottom of the ...
— The Cyder-Maker's Instructor, Sweet-Maker's Assistant, and Victualler's and Housekeeper's Director - In Three Parts • Thomas Chapman
... offered it. How few of you would give so much for your souls! And yet though ye give it, it will not do it,—ye must pay the uttermost farthing, or nothing. Your sorrow and reformations will not complete the sum, no, nor begin it. "Though thou wash thee with nitre, and take much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before me,"—yet there is still condemnation for thee. Though all the world should convene about this matter, to find a ransom for man; suppose all ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... the words employed in their expression. Having been in the habit of using words with either no meaning or a wrong one, it may be difficult to comprehend the subject of which they treat. A man may have a quantity of sulphur, charcoal, and nitre, but it is not until he learns their properties and combinations that he can make gunpowder. Let us then adopt a careful and independent course of reasoning, resolved to meddle with nothing we do not understand, and to use no words until we ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... found in these desert wastes, but borax, nitre, sulphur, silver, salt, soda, opals, garnets, turquoises, onyx, and marble form a part of its resources. Rich gold mines have built the towns of Randsburg and Johannesburg in the midst of the Mohave desert, while finds of rich ore made elsewhere are of frequent occurrence. It is thought that ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... worn out with it before it is begun, or too far gone in the common duration of life and even in that case, it will lessen the pain, lengthen life, and make death easier, especially if joined with small interspersed bleedings, millepedes, crabs' eyes prepared, nitre and rhubarb, properly managed. But the diet, even after the cure, must be continued, and never after greatly altered, unless it be into ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... this condensed matter was "acid to the taste and contained two grains of nitre," but Cavendish, suspecting that this was due to impurities, tried another experiment that proved conclusively that his opinions were correct. "I therefore made another experiment," he says, "with some more of the same air from plants in which ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... and Cursed be ye. So soon as History can philosophically delineate the conflagration of a kindled Fireship, she may try this other task. Here lay the bitumen-stratum, there the brimstone one; so ran the vein of gunpowder, of nitre, terebinth and foul grease: this, were she inquisitive enough, History might partly know. But how they acted and reacted below decks, one fire-stratum playing into the other, by its nature and the art of man, now when all hands ran raging, and the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... religious submission in his passionate sorrow. How unlike the quiet resignation which should have marked the recognition that the God who had been his guide was working here too! No doubt the hypocritical condolences of his children were as vinegar upon nitre. No doubt the loss of Joseph had taken away the one gentle and true son on whom his loneliness rested since his Rachel's death, while he found no solace in the wild, passionate men who called him 'father' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... the superior qualities of the marciti of Italy and the meadows of Switzerland. The system of irrigation, modelled on that of the farms in Lombardy, watered the earth evenly, and kept the surface as smooth as a carpet. The nitre of the snow dissolving in these channels no doubt added much to the quality of the herbage. The engineer hoped to find in the products of succeeding years some analogy with those of Switzerland, to which this nitrous substance is, as we know, ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... difficult thing to get clear of a cold if taken in time. Confinement to the house for a day, or even two, a lowered diet, a mixture of the solution of acetate of ammonia and spirits of sweet nitre the first day, some aperient medicine and an ordinary cough mixture the second or third day, warmer clothing and avoidance of exposure to high winds; this treatment will be found successful in nine cases out ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... waters had not much diminished: however, we knew every hour must lessen them, and I only waited for F——'s paroxysm of fever to subside about mid-day to send him off to Christchurch. I had exhausted my simple remedies, consisting of a spoonful of sweet spirits of nitre and a little weak brandy and water and did not think it right to let things go on in this way without advice: he was so weak he could hardly mount his horse; indeed he had to be fairly lifted on the old quiet station hack I have before mentioned with such deep affection, dear old Jack. ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... day, you bathe your face in distilled water, to which has been added three drops of the juice of the whortleberry, one drop of the juice of the mountain ash berry, 1 oz. of lavender water, 1 oz. of nitre, and 1/2 oz. of tincture of arnica; and that, just before going to sleep, you look for three minutes, without blinking, at an equilateral triangle, transcribed in blood, on white paper, and composed of these letters and figures." And he handed Hamar a piece of paper, on which ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... officers of a great army, and we personally went back to the battery, where we passed the night on the ground. During the night I had reports from McPherson, Hooker, and Schofield. The former was about five miles to my right rear, near the "nitre-caves;" Schofield was about six miles north, and Hooker between us, within two miles. All were ordered to close down on Cassville at daylight, and to attack the enemy wherever found. Skirmishing was kept up all night, but when day broke the next morning, May 20th, the enemy was gone, and our ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... to such an extent, at least some, if not indeed most of those, that are used at the present time, that it seems worth while giving his directions for it. He took equal parts of cuttle bone, small white sea-shells, pumice stone, burnt stag's horn, nitre, alum, rock salt, burnt roots of iris, aristolochia, and reeds. All of these substances should be carefully reduced to powder and then mixed. His favorite liquid dentifrice contained the following ingredients,—half a pound each of sal ammoniac and ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... the heroic Muse was ungrateful in Milton, who had devoted the whole of his Sixth Book to a description of the "wild work in Heaven" caused by the great rebellion, and had indulged his imagination with some most extravagant fantasies; such as the digging in the soil of Heaven for sulphur and nitre (where the soil of Hell, it may be remarked, yielded gold to the miner), the invention of artillery, and the use ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... powdered nitre is excellent. Apply it to the face with the finger moistened with water and dipped in ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... Our minister compares it to needles, the points of which enter our pores. What is become of the heat of the summer; in what part of the world is it that the N. W. keeps these grand magazines of nitre? when I see in the morning a river over which I can travel, that in the evening before was liquid, I am astonished indeed! What is become of those millions of insects which played in our summer fields, and in our evening meadows; they were so puny and so delicate, the period of their ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... authorized by royal proclamation to dig up the floors of all dove-houses, stables, &c. In France, the plaster of old walls is washed to separate the nitrate of lime, which is a soluble salt, and this, by means of potash, or muriate of potash, is afterwards converted into nitre. Mr. Bowles, in his Introduction to the Natural History of Spain, assures us there is enough saltpetre in that country to supply all Europe ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... mummies have been found seated in recesses of the rock. Without any process of embalming, they were in as perfect a state of preservation, as the mummies of Egypt; for the air of the cave is so dry and unchangeable, and so strongly impregnated with nitre, that decomposition cannot take place. A mummy found here in 1813, was the body of a woman five feet ten inches high, wrapped in half-dressed deer skins, on which were rudely drawn white veins and leaves. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... state, in hitherto unknown and undeveloped territory. Besides gold, silver and copper, immense deposits of salt, borax, lime, platinum, sulphur, soda, potash-salts, cinnabar, arsenical ores, zinc, coal, antimony, cobalt, nickel, nitre, isinglass, manganese, alum, kaolin, iron, gypsum, mica and graphite exist ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... the same, but the amount of medicines demanded exceeded the stock of even the largest druggists. The first several chests were complete as ordered, but as early as April the Marshalls were running out of certain drugs. Gum opium and nitre "found by Congress" was included in the chest for the Pennsylvania 4th Battalion, and by May 11 the Marshalls were out of Peruvian bark, ipecac, cream of tartar, gum camphor, and red precipitate of mercury. The chests ...
— Drug Supplies in the American Revolution • George B. Griffenhagen
... red sulphuret of arsenic and take it up with oak gum, as much as it will bear. Put on a rag and apply, having soaped the place well first. I have mixed the above with a foam of nitre, ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... consequences of even the simplest accident. A short, feverish attack of illness having seized Mrs. Morgan, the housekeeper, on the night of Fenton's removal, she persuaded one of the maids to sit up with her, in order to provide her with whey and nitre, which she took from time to time, for the purpose of relieving her by cooling the system. The attack though short was a sharp one, and the poor woman was really very ill. In the course of the night, this girl was somewhat surprised ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... fuller's herb. Some have thought it so hard to determine, that they have kept into the translation the very Hebrew word borith. Jerome tells us,(1405) that the fuller's herb which grew in the marsh places of Palestina, had the same virtue for washing and making white which nitre hath. Yet I suppose the fuller's soap hath more of that virtue in it than the herb could have. However it is certain that {HEBREW LETTER BET}{HEBREW LETTER RESH}{HEBREW LETTER RESH},—borith, cometh from a word which signifieth to make clean, according to that, ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... wish to purify, in an equal measure of boiling water; a cupful of one to a cupful of the other. Strain this solution, and, letting it cool gradually, somewhat less than three-fourths of the nitre will separate in regular crystals. Saltpetre exists in the ashes of many plants, of which tobacco is one; it is also found copiously on the ground in many places, in saltpans, or simply as an effloresence. Rubbish, such as old mud huts, and mortar, generally abounds ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... Miss ——'s religion is wrong and mine right, or else it's just the other way. I wrote some verses, funny ones, and sent her to-day, and she returned for answer that verse in Proverbs about vinegar on nitre, and seemed distressed that I ever had such worldly and funny thoughts. I told her I should like her better if she ever had any but solemn ones, whence we rushed into a discussion about proprieties and I maintained that a mind was not in a state of religious health, if it could not safely ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... select substances that if administered to a healthy person will produce almost any known form of disease thus: brandy, cayenne pepper and quinine, will induce inflammatory fever; scammony and ipecac will cause cholera morbus; nitre, calomel and opium, will provoke typhoid or typhus fever; digitalis will cause Asiatic, or spasmodic cholera; cod liver oil and sulphur promote scurvy, and all the cathartic family inevitably cause diarrhcea, the disease in each case being nothing more than the effort of Nature ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... in the archway and looked down, and the terror of the scene overwhelmed her. Through a broken arch beyond the barricade pale moonbeams crossed the darkness, like the bars of some soft melody; in the middle the serpent coil was hissing with the deadly nitre; at the foot of the steps was her false lover—husband he had called himself—with his hat off, and his white face turned in the last supplication towards her, as hers had been turned towards him just now. Should a woman be as ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... however, "rubedo, calor, dolor," among its symptoms. Cochlearia, theriaca and similar articles, according to him, are almost always injurious. If no foetor exist, (and, of coarse, no actual mortification,) he applies a solution of sal ammoniac or nitre, with some vinegar or lemon juice; sometimes as a lotion, sometimes by keeping a rag imbued with it always in the ulcer. Hard rubbing he reprobates. If the disease have made progress, and foetor exist, muriatic acid is used: in the less aggravated stages, diluted with honey of roses ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... what shall we say of some priests of Nicaragua, who renovate their burial-grounds by exhuming the bones of the dead, with the earth that surrounds them, and selling the mass to the manufacturers of nitre? No sentiment of reverence for the sepulchres of their fathers incites them to resist the inroads of foreign pirates,—for they manufacture their fathers' ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... fire a pistol at the bottom of the cavern, for although gunpowder may be exploded even in carbonic acid by the application of a heat sufficient to decompose the nitre, and consequently to envelop the mass in an atmosphere of oxygen gas, yet the mere influence of a spark from steel produces too slight an augmentation of temperature for ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... use! besides, you'd get into a —— row if you went to him now. When I wos 'ome and like this my mother used to go to a chemist and git me some sweet spirits of nitre, and it always made me as right as a trivet. But there ain't no such ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... nor the toad Within thy banks make their abode! Taking thy journey from the sea, May'st thou ne'er happen in thy way On nitre or on brimstone mine, To spoil thy taste! this spring of thine Let it of nothing taste but earth, And salt conceived, in their birth Be ever fresh! Let no man dare To spoil thy fish, make lock or ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... kind of salt, called by the ancients nitre, but more commonly among us saltpetre. It is composed of nitric acid and potassa.[11] It is found in earthy substances; sometimes native or pure, in the form of a shapeless salt. Vast quantities are found in several of the marly earths of the East Indies, China, Persia, and also ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... he paused a moment at a loophole of the vault beneath his dwelling, and puffing his cigar into a bright coal, he carefully twitched the match-rope which led to the train, opened the loose strands, and placed the fire to it. Waiting an instant till he saw the nitre sparkle as it ignited, he moved away with long, swinging strides toward the sheds. There, glancing through the now deserted halls the crew had occupied, where quantities of fagots, and kindling-wood, and barrels of pitch were standing, he continued on till ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... perceive something very peculiar in their history and situation. They were particularly devoted to the worship of the Sun; and they were generally situated near hot springs, or else upon foul and fetid lakes, and pools of bitumen. It is, also, not uncommon to find near them mines of salt and nitre; and caverns sending forth pestilential exhalations. The Elysian plain, near the Catacombs in Egypt, stood upon the foul Charonian canal; which was so noisome, that every fetid ditch and cavern was from it called Charonian. Asia Proper comprehended little more than Phrygia, and a part of Lydia; ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... words which Worcester and the English dictionaries spell re, while Webster, the Century, and the Standard prefer er:Calibre, centre, litre, lustre, maneuvre (I. maneuver), meagre, metre, mitre, nitre, ochre, ombre, piastre, sabre, sceptre, sepulchre, ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... Goldsmiths to teach them the Art of separating them by the Fire, without the trouble and charge they are fain to be at to sever them. Whereas they may be very easily parted by the Affusion of Spirit of Nitre or Aqua fortis (which the French therefore call Eau de Depart:) so likewise the Metalline part of Vitriol will not be so easily and conveniently separated from the Saline part even by a violent Fire, as by the Affusion of certain Alkalizate Salts ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... body. By far the largest part of this waste nitrogen is expelled from the bodies of men and many other mammals in the form of urea. Pure urea is an odourless transparent crystalline substance, of cooling saline taste like nitre. It is soluble in an equal volume of water, and is expelled from the body with great ease. In the herbivora the nitrogenous waste takes the form of another body called hippuric acid. The nearly solid light-coloured urinary excretion ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... found upon the maritime plain is salt or brackish. There is nothing concerning which the African traveller should be so particular as water; bitter with nitre, and full of organic matter, it causes all those dysenteric diseases which have made research in this part of the world a Upas tree to the discoverer. Pocket filters are invaluable. The water of ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... must have recourse to artificial means. Nitre in broth, for instance,—about three grains to ten (cattle fed upon nitre grow fat); or earthy odors,—such as exist in cucumbers and cabbage. A certain great lord had a clod of fresh earth, laid in a napkin, put under his nose every morning after sleep. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... In 1801, Sir H. Davy knew that "dry nitre, caustic potash, and soda are conductors of galvanism when rendered fluid by a high degree of heat," (Journals of the Royal Institution, 1802, p. 53,) but was not aware of the general law which I have been engaged in developing. It is remarkable, ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... journeys about the country buying wine. We hear of him at Westerhaim, on the river Iller, settling a dispute among the fishermen. On one of his journeys to fetch wine from Constance, at the hospice there he fell in with a man who could fire balls out of a machine by means of nitre, and who boasted that he could demolish with this weapon a certain castle in the neighbourhood. Over supper they began to argue, the artillerist maintaining that nitre was cold, and that the explosion which discharged the balls was caused by the ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... is not the engagement, but the severe cold with which I perceive you are afflicted. The vaults are insufferably damp. They are encrusted with nitre." ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... only be applied at the commencement of the disease. In all diseases of indirect debility, therefore, it is proper to attempt the introduction of oxygen into the system, by the oxygenated muriate of potash, acid fruits, nitre, &c. I do not think that the inhaling of oxygen gas for a few minutes in the day can do much good; but free ventilation of apartments, and gentle exercise in the open air, ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... this happened, and he at once began scraping away the sand with his feet. In less than a minute a smooth surface became visible—the surface of a wooden covering. The next thing I saw was that he had raised it and was peering down into a space below. Instantly, a strong odour of nitre and bitumen, mingled with the strange perfume of unknown and powdered aromatics, rose up from the uncovered space and filled the vault, stinging the throat and making the ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... Nature we observe this tendency to run into definite forms, and nothing is easier than to give scope to this tendency by artificial arrangements. Dissolve nitre in water, and allow the water slowly to evaporate; the nitre remains and the solution soon becomes so concentrated that the liquid condition can no longer be preserved. The nitre-molecules approach each other, ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... whence the houses that are built of it in the two cities, appear as hewn out of one solid rock, and become harder, the more they are exposed to the inclemencies of the weather. This hardness may, with good reason, be ascribed to the salt of nitre, which contracts a certain viscidity from the rain wherewith it is mixed, and which easily penetrates into these stones, because their substance is spongy and cretaceous, and adheres to ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... Mr. Mumbles roared out 'Fire, fire!' as loud as he was able. But now the indiscriminate ignition of rockets, crackers, squibs, Catherines, fiery fountains, flaming cascades, sparkling arbours, and gunpowder and nitre pillars, and suns, stars, and comets enveloped the whole throne and its appurtenances in a blaze of fiery splendour. Rockets shot out on every side, fiery squibs ran along the ground, Catherine wheels danced on every shoulder, and crackers banged at every heel. Such a scene ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... place bleed the horse severely. Give him spirits of nitre, in water which should not be too cold, for it would chill him. Keep him well covered with blankets, and rub his legs and body well; blister him around the chest with mustard seed, and be sure to give him no cold water, unless there is spirits of ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid
... trah it orn, a did. Hooman nitre is the sime everywheres. Them eathens is jast lawk ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... the French in manufacturing salpetre, has been of so slow a growth, that any reference to it is peculiarly unlucky. For several months the Convention has recommended, invited, intreated, and ordered the whole country to occupy themselves in the process necessary for obtaining nitre; but the republican enthusiasm was so tardy, that scarcely an ounce appeared, till a long list of sound penal laws, with fines and imprisonments in every line, roused the public spirit ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... radical of the acid which is extracted from nitre or saltpetre be better known, we have judged proper only to modify its name in the same manner with that of the muriatic acid. It is drawn from nitre, by the intervention of sulphuric acid, by a process similar to that described for extracting the muriatic acid, and ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... sycamore, palm, acacia, and cedar, of which the sawdust and shavings were supposed to possess both antiseptic and emollient properties. Among the mineral substances are to be noted sea-salt, alum, nitre, sulphate of copper, and a score of different kinds of stones—among the latter the "memphite stone" was distinguished for its virtues; if applied to parts of the body which were lacerated or unhealthy, it acted as an anaesthetic and facilitated the success of surgical operations. Flesh taken ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... powder has been condemned by survey, it has been directed to be thrown overboard. This should never be done; the nitre contained, which forms three-fourths (3/4) of the powder, is still perfectly good, and can be made serviceable. In future, condemned powder is always to be returned ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... the intent upturned faces into which had crept a look of blankness. There were those who thought vaguely that nitrogen was the scientific name for mosquito, while others confused it with nitre, an excellent emergency ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... Napoleon I, to secure saltpetre for making gunpowder, composted "filth, dead animals, urine and offal with alternate layers of turf and lime mortar," and asserted that "a nitre-bed is the very pattern of a vine-border" and that "when the materials have been turned over and over again for a year or two they are in exactly the proper state to yield either gunpowder or grapes." Napoleon's niter-bed ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... attention to the circumstance at that time, the flame of the candle, besides being larger, burned with more splendour and heat than in that species of nitrous air; and a piece of red-hot wood sparkled in it, exactly like paper dipped in a solution of nitre, and it consumed very fast—an experiment which I had never thought of trying with nitrous ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... force was discovered, were substituted for the metallic cylinders, and their action upon the magnet was proved to be precisely the same in kind as that of the cylinders of bismuth. The enquiry was also extended to other insulators: to phosphorus, sulphur, nitre, calcareous spar, statuary marble, with the same invariable result: each of these substances was proved to be polar, the disposition of the force being the same as that of bismuth and the reverse of that of iron. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... One thing they needed: gunpowder for their muskets. But that they must make as they went along; that is, if they could get the materials. Charcoal they could procure, enough to set the world on fire; but nitre they had not yet seen; perhaps they should find it among the hills: while as for sulphur, any brave man could get that where there were volcanoes. Who had not heard how one of Cortez' Spaniards, in like need, was lowered in a basket down the smoking crater ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... with violent effervescence, or explosion of air, by the acids of vitriol, nitre, and of common salt, and by distilled vinegar; the neutral saline liquors thence produced having each ...
— Experiments upon magnesia alba, Quicklime, and some other Alcaline Substances • Joseph Black
... preaching did fairly describe A bishop, who ruled all the rest of his tribe; And who is this bishop? and where does he dwell? Why truly 'tis Satan, Archbishop of Hell. And He was a primate, and He wore a mitre, Surrounded with jewels of sulphur and nitre. How nearly this bishop our bishops resembles! But he has the odds, who believes and who trembles, Could you see his grim grace, for a pound to a penny, You'd swear it must be the baboon of Kilkenny:[2] Poor Satan will think the comparison ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift |
