Buteau

“ The acreage of bare rock grew wider and broader. The buttes now often turned to walls about 150 feet high, all much broken, but indicating the approach to another closing in of the rocks upon us. Many of these buttes were beautiful in their castellated form as well as because of a picturesque banded character, and opposite our dinner-camp, which was on a ledge of rock, was one surprisingly symmetrical, resembling an artificial structure. I thought it looked like an art gallery, and the Major said it ought to be named after the artist, so he called it "Dellenbaugh's Butte" then and there. ”

“ It is a suggestive circumstance that gaps, other than valleys, are almost invariably found either in the north or south walls, or in both, and seldom in other positions. The buttress, or long-extending spur, is a feature frequently associated with the ring- plain rampart, as are also numbers of what, for the lack of a better name, must be termed little hillocks, which generally radiate in long rows from the outer foot of the slope. ”

“ For our bones within us are but inside walls and buttresses, that is to say, houses constructed of lime and stone, as it were, by coral insects; and our houses without us are but outside bones, a kind of exterior skeleton or shell, so that we perish of cold if permanently and suddenly deprived of the coverings which warm us and cherish us, as the wing of a hen cherishes her chickens. ”

“ Where the leg, for instance, has been lost, they feel as if the foot was present, but as though the leg were shortened. If the thigh has been taken off, there seems to them to be a foot at the knee; if the arm, a hand seems to be at the elbow, or attached to the stump itself. ”

“ An idea of it may be imparted by taking a dozen shingles and laying them on a level, as you would upon a roof, with the butts lapping a couple of inches only. Consider this the bed of a river with the water flowing over it from the thin end of the shingles, the butts being from three or four feet to ten in thickness. At each butt, or where the rock breaks abruptly, there is a scarcely perceptible motion of the water; immediately beneath is a deep hole, growing shallower as the next butt is reached ”

“ Many workmen to form a neat thin joint with a minimum amount of labour hollow the bed and thus when the stone is set all weight is thrown upon the edges with the frequent result that these are crushed.
Coping.—The coping or capping stones are placed on the top of walls not covered by a roof, spanning their entire width and throwing off the rain and snow, thus keeping the interior of the wall dry. The fewer the number of joints the better the security, and for this reason it is well to form copings with as long stones as possible. ”

“ COURT HOUSE ROCK is a high, square-shaped bluff, or butte, on the North Platte River. It is composed of a hard, yellowish clay, which is but slowly eroded by the weather, though soft enough to be cut readily with a knife. On all sides except one, this rock or butte is nearly or quite vertical, and its sides, smoothed and polished by the wind and the rain, offer no projecting points, to serve as foot or hand holds for one who might wish to climb up or down. On one side there is a way by which an active man may reach the summit, where he finds a flat tableland of moderate extent. ”

“ And yet again we had learned something: that the stockinged foot finds a firmer hold on dry limestone than a nailed boot; that wet limestone slabs are slippery and an abomination to be avoided; that the thrusting muscles of one’s legs are more powerful and more enduring than the pulling muscles of one’s arms; and that strong fingers are of more use in climbing than a pair of well-developed biceps. ”

“ Every step is a labour: each leg is pulled out of one hole, even in the harder plots, and placed on the edge of another into which it slips down by aid of the lubricating mud upon the surface; and in many instances the poor animal rests upon its chest or its belly, the hole being too deep for its legs to fathom. ”

“ Could a man step straight into a pair of wet boots, so as to avoid putting bare feet into the mud, and then withdraw alternate feet from them, for the removal of pyjamas and the putting-on of shorts and socks, while the booted foot remained firmly planted in the slush for his support? ”

“ The sides of the well seemed to be made of smooth, hardened earth, and were damp and covered with slime. Using all my strength, I let myself down to the full length of my arms until I hung well below the level of the floor. Here I managed to draw one of the mats over my head, and clung to the walls of that gloomy pit like a beetle. Kicking against the sides with the toes of my boots, I managed to make holes in the hard clay, large enough to allow of my resting my feet sufficiently to take off some of the strain from my fingers and arms. ”

“ Upon that slope was ranged a crowd of squatting people, and a staid-looking individual with his back turned stood nearer by. Afterwards I found he was lecturing all those sitters on the ethics of gravity and the inherent properties of falling bodies; at the moment I only knew he was directly in my line as I descended, and him round the waist I seized, giddy with the light and fresh air, waltzed him down the slope with the force of my impetus, and, tripping at the bottom, rolled over and over recklessly with him sheer into the arms of the gaping crowd below. ”

“ As soon as thy feet are on the moss, cut the rope, stop not to untie it, fall on thy breast, and crawl into that hole—my finger shows it now—where slab of stone leans unto stone, and the body of a large heart may lie hidden. ”

“ I saw first the pale blue sky through a net of heather, then a big shoulder of hill, and then my own boots placed neatly in a blaeberry bush. I raised myself on my arms and looked down into the valley, and that one look set me lacing up my boots in mad haste. ”

“ Prop buttresses against dead weight.
This is the group with which we have principally to do; and a buttress of this kind acts in two ways, partly by its weight and partly by its strength. It acts by its weight when its mass is so great that the weight it sustains cannot stir it, but is lost upon it, buried in it, and annihilated: neither the shape of such a buttress nor the cohesion of its materials are of much consequence; a heap of stones or sandbags, laid up against the wall, will answer as well as a built and cemented mass. ”

“ The veins stood out onto my temples, and my feet sunk into the ground, but the earth bulged and cracked all around the big rock, rivulets of dirt began to trickle down, and the big boulder groaned, give way and lurched over. ”

“ Curb and bucket and sweep are there to-day, similar in form and appearance no doubt and equally useful for the drawing of water, as near like those of which the poet wrote as is the water of to-day like that of his time. Even at the well itself the lapse of a century has left but one thing permanent. ”

“ On withdrawing the suffering limb from its hiding-place the mystery is solved—that comfortable hole, which fitted the foot so excellently, is a natural well, in which the offerings of many forest showers have been carefully stored. ”

“ Some butcher boys, also returning from their night's work at market, were next on the ground, and selected adjacent awning posts and trees, as good points of observation. Mechanics and shop girls, going to their labor, recklessly postponed the duties of the day, and stopped to stare, awestricken, at the house.
A knot of people in a street, is like a drift of wood in a river. It chokes up the stream, and catches all the other wood that is floating down. ”

“ The top of the Butte hollows out like a saucer, an' in the bowl there's a little sunk spring. No one much ever goes up there. There's a little scragglin' timber, an' the trail—it's an old game trail—is hard to find if you don't know where to look for it. ”

“ If you will tip a board or a ruler up to an angle of sixty-five degrees, and then imagine that slope to be hard, icy snow crust, with a drop of two or three thousand feet to the bottom of a cañon below you, you’ve got some idea of what the climbers were up against. ”

“ The outer wall is, as a rule, somewhat more slanting than the inner. Viewing a foot in profile, the toe and heel should be parallel; that is, the line from the hair to the ground at the toe should be parallel to the line from the hair to the ground at the buttress. ”

“ With the exception of one mining-camp—Red Butte—and a single railroad track—the Red Butte branch of the Short Line—skirting its western edge, that half of the clothes-basket is a jumbled wilderness of wooded hills just about as Nature left it. ”

“ On the rare occasions when we were not all seated on a flat stone admiring the prospect in concert, four scattered wanderers might be seen leaning on their axes, wrapped in serene contemplation of the glories of a steep slope of screes. ”

“ No matter how people might seek to shelter themselves, they got wet on all sides. The moisture slid down the back of your neck, laid itself like a wet towel about your knees, penetrated into your boots and far up your trousers. ”

“ The mystery of the downs hangs about house and wood, as they stand there alone, so unlike all around, with the green slopes, studded with great stones just about this part, stretching away on all sides. ”

“ The photographs show very well the climbing position of the foot, and, if a comparison be made of an amateur’s foot, it does not appear that the angle made by the foot with the leg is more acute in the case of the guide. ”

“ But as the stones become harder beneath one's feet, one senses the toil embodied in them. Male and female coolies still trudge over these stony paths, carrying baskets of gravel, tar, or sand higher and higher. ”

“ With the sole of the foot on the floor, and the heel well down when the leg is carried forward to the extreme position, the angle that the leg makes with the floor will indicate sufficiently, much as is shown in the picture of sitting down using only one limb. ”

“ Then the man being laid on the sound side, we bring the sound leg between the two posts below the piece of wood corresponding to the step of a ladder, while the affected one is brought above it, so that the head of the thigh is to be adapted to it; but a folded garment is to be first wrapped about it to prevent the thigh from being bruised. ”

“ It needs but a moment for the conversation to become general,—about roots under the shoulder, stubs in the back, a ridge on which it is impossible for the sleeper to balance, the non-elasticity of boughs, the hardness of the ground, the heat, the smoke, the chilly air. ”

“ If you can find a good, stout, willing butt—a butt who lends himself to nicknames, and has a temper as even as a billiard-table and as long as a tailor's bill—secure him at once and make him the nucleus of your crew. ”

“ Every pack-horse of the mountains knows the trick of planting legs like stanchions and blowing his sides out in a balloon when the men are tightening cinches. No matter how tight girths may be, before every climb and at the foot of every slope there must be re-tightening. ”

“ Driving the iron claws of our boots into the scars made by the axe, and the spikes of our bâtons into the slope above our feet, we ascended steadily until the summit was attained, and the top of the mountain rose clearly above us. ”

“ We do not use our own limbs other than as machines; and a leg is only a much better wooden leg than any one can manufacture.
“Observe a man digging with a spade; his right fore-arm has become artificially lengthened, and his hand has become a joint. The handle of the spade is like the knob at the end of the humerus ”

“ The nails in our boots could get no grip on the smooth wet granite, and it was sometimes entertaining to the last man to watch the peculiar gymnastic progression of those in front—albeit, if he let his eyes wander from the rock on which he was treading, he was soon, himself, providing a more entertaining exhibition. ”

“ The gait, a racial distinction, is shambling and ungraceful, utterly unlike the strut of Southern Europe and the roll of the nearer East; the tread is ponderous, and the light fantastic toe is unknown. ”

“ Inasmuch as you will be a great deal called on to handle abrading and sometimes frozen ropes, you will want a pair of heavy buckskin gauntlets. An extra pair of stout high-laced boots with small Hungarian hob-nails will come handy. It is marvelous how quickly leather wears out in the downhill friction of granite and shale. I once found the heels of a new pair of shoes almost ground away by a single giant-strides descent of a steep shale-covered thirteen-thousand-foot mountain. ”

“ While we outside are noting the unformed heel, the leg without a calf, the lines of the skeleton that prevent an erect attitude, they within have observed that human beings cannot run up the wire netting, or swing by their tails on the railings ”

“ And on these,' said he, 'having bound the leathern bags, and fastened them one to another, and affixing stones, and letting them down like anchors, and binding them on either side, I will lay on wood, and put earth over them. And that you will not then sink, you shall presently very clearly perceive; for each leathern bag will support two men from sinking, and the wood and earth will keep them from slipping. ”

“ The bit of towelling round the loins, brushed by the wind, left bare a species of knees and legs, carved by two thousand years of toil into humanized Norman piers, buttressed with muscle, in which ankles have no lot nor part, which have carried and still carry unreasonable loads from childhood to the grave. ”

“ Two inferior belts, divided from each other by deep intersecting vales, appear tier above tier, the pyramidal snow-capped heights, which seem to lift themselves into another world, crowning the whole with almost awful majesty. ”