Clayey

It is not until the next stanza that Isabella herself actually begins digging (“with a knife … more fervently than misers can”), but by then Keats has already taken us by the hand deep into the “clayey soil and gravel hard” of Lorenzo’s grave.

But without a domestic industry processing this red clayey soil to make our own metals, only the large corporations exporting it reap the most benefit, at the expense of the poor and the environment.

Between these ridges are depressions filled with limestone and clayey sand capable of supporting vegetation after a rain.

Clayey soil, due to its differential drying rate with respect to the surface, will induce horizontal cracks, reducing columns to blocky peds.

Its red, laterite, dense clayey soils retain water well, which limits their agricultural potential for many crops, but is ideal for keeping water in paddy fields and local village reservoirs.

To the west, between the ocean and the plateaus, are alternating areas of clayey plains (regs) and sand dunes (ergs), some of which shift from place to place, gradually moved by high winds.