On one of the boldest abutments of the ravine perched an enchanted castle with towers and spires hundreds of feet in height.

Towards the rear of the house, on the west side, he came across a curious abutment of masonry jutting out squarely from the wall.

The walls of the abyss rose straight from the water into dizzy abutments, conical peaks, and rounded masses, beyond and above which gleamed the distant sunlit walls of a higher terrace of the plateau.

There was a grim abutment at least eighteen hundred feet high; at its base two rocks, which had tumbled ages ago from the summit, formed a rude breakwater; and on this barrier had collected a bed of coarse pebbles, strewn with driftwood.

The workmen of the enterprise, who lived about 325 feet above this mill and about 650 feet from the south abutment, heard nothing of it, the wind having carried the noise in an opposite direction.

Some learned writers think that those stately abutments are too massive for the red man of the forest to have constructed.

Hinton supposes a conductor to be a body which has the property of serving as a terminal abutment to such a hyper-vortex as has been described.