What is "alluvial"

Usage examples of "alluvial".

G stripped away the covering of softer rock, exposing the core and depositing alluvial metal deposits extensively in the area.

Although these vessels lacked the large holds in which to carry bulky cargoes, they dealt in the goods of higher value: copper and gum arabic, pearls and mother-of-pearl shells from the Red Sea, ivory from the markets of Zanzibar, sapphires from the mines of Kandy, yellow diamonds from the alluvial field along the great rivers of the empire of the Moguls, and cakes of black opium from the mountains of the Pathans.

That same day Xhia led them to the Gariep river, and he showed Koots the wheel ruts of many wagons scored deeply into the soft alluvial earth along its banks.

The iron foundry of one of the most famous gun manufacturers in all the Punjab and the Indus basin which meant in all India was located on this flat and featureless alluvial plain.

Malarial swamps and sand dunes shifted alternately over the land as the twin rivers ran wild over the alluvial plain.

Then they would have seen the cultivated alluvial flood plains in the distance, not at all the way Hausner had seen it from the flight deck of Concorde 02, but it must have looked inviting, even though they knew it was the place of their bondage.

The wind had dropped, and he could see only an occasional line of dust clouds racing across the flat alluvial plains.

Under the direction of the Asiatic immigrants and of the eugineering science whose first home had been in the alluvial plain of Babylonia, they accomplished those great works of irrigation which confined the Nile to its present channel, which cleared away the jungle and the swamp that had formerly bordered the desert, and turned them into fertile fields.

The alluvial deposits first tilled up the depths of the bay, and then, under the influence of the currents which swept along its eastern coasts, accumulated behind that rampart of sand-hills whose remains are still to be seen near Benha.

The true Nile, the Eastern Nile, is less a river than a sinuous lake encumbered with islets and sandbanks, and its navigable channel winds capriciously between them, flowing with a strong and steady current below the steep, black banks cut sheer through the alluvial earth.

If on any river which winds through alluvial plains a jetty is so constructed as to deflect the stream at any point, the course which it follows will be altered during its subsequent flow, it may be, for the distance of hundreds of miles.

When the stream rises, the sediment settles in this tangle, and soon extends the alluvial plain from the neighbouring bank, or in rarer cases the river comes to flow on either side of an island of its own construction.

When this result is accomplished, the old curve is deserted, sand bars are formed across their mouths, which may gradually grow to broad alluvial plains, so that the long-surviving, crescent-shaped lake, the remnant of the river bed, may be seen far from the present course of the ever-changing stream.

Thus at every stage from the torrent to the sea the detritus has from time to time to rest within the alluvial banks, there awaiting the decay which slowly comes, and which may bring it to the state where it may be dissolved in the water, or divided into fragments so small that the stream may bear them on.

As the alluvial deposit is laid down, a good deal of vegetable matter was built into it.