terrace2 (teras)

[Also terra , terra e, tar race, tarris, tarras; = MD. terras, tiras, D. tras, rubbish, brick-dust, = G. tarras, tra , J. A. Symonds, Italy and Greece, p. 68. 2. In geol . , a strip of land, nearly level, extending along the margin of the sea, a lake, or a river, and terminating on the side toward the water in a more or le abrupt descent; a beach; a raised beach. Also called in Scotland a carse , and in parts of the United States where Spanish was formerly spoken a mesa , or meseta . Terraces are seen in many parts of the world, and vary greatly in width, height, and longitudinal extent, as well as in the mode of their formation. Marine terraces, or raised beaches, have usually been caused by the elevation of the land, the preëx isting beach having been thus lifted above the action of the water, and a new one formed at a lower level. Raised beaches, terraces, or ancient sea-margins of this kind form conspicuous features in the coast topography of various regions, as of Scand in a via, Scotland, and the Pacific coast of North and South America. Some river and lake-terraces may have been formed by the upheaval of the region where they occur; but a far more important and general cause of their existence is the diminution of the amount of water flowing in the rivers or standing in the lakes -a phenomenon of which there are abundant proofs all over the world, and the beginning of which reaches back certainly into Tertiary times, but how much further is not definitely known, since the geological records of such change of climate could not be preserved for an indefinite period, and very little is known in regard to the position of rivers, or bodies of water distinctly separated from the ocean, at any remote geological period. Rarely called a bench . This stream runs on a hanging terrace , which in some parts is at least sixty feet above the Barrady. Pococke , Description of the East, II. i. 123. 3. A street or row of houses running along the face or top of a slope: often applied arbitrarily, They [the kilns] plastered within with a reddish mortar or tarris . Letter of 1677, in Jewitt's Ceramic Art, I. 40. Tarrace , or Terrace , a coarse sort of plaister, or mortar, durable in the weather, chiefly used to line basons, cisterns, wells, and other reservoirs of water. Chambers, Cyclopædia (ed. 1738).