Guly

“ After dark I returned alone, trudging first down The Gully almost to the Salt Lake, then cutting off to the right towards our base. It is very different from the great Gully at Helles (The Gully) , being but a watercourse, averaging 8 to 10 yards in width and most of it not over 6 feet deep. It has huge clumps of rushes and lofty, graceful reeds which give it a tropical appearance, and in a few places are pools of dirty, green water that has not dried up since the last rainy season, and in these water tortoises and big green frogs live in hundreds. ”

“ Often at night when the children, now grown sunburned and inured to the intense heat and blistering sands, were on their pallets, enjoying the peaceful sleep of tired but happy childhood, Gully and his wife would sit for hours and try to devise means whereby the coming winter might be lived through with some semblance of comfort. During these heart to heart talks, while seated before the door of their humble home, Gully's gaze would wander out across his broad acres, which under the pale starlight in this clear desert air, could easily be transformed, in vision, to fields of waving grain ”

“ Not being able to discover a good slope on which our bullocks could travel, I descended at once into the gully, and followed it in all its windings; knowing well from experience that it is easier to find a passage up a mountain range than down it. The gully had all the characters of those of the Boyd; the same sandstone rock, the same abruptness, and the same vegetation; excepting, perhaps, a new Grevillea, with pinnatifid leaves and yellowish-white woolly flowers, which we found here. ”

“ An inland gullery always seems to strike us as a trifle incongruous, for we are always apt to associate a Gull with the sea; yet here, miles away from the salt water, often surrounded by rural scenes, are Gulls in thousands as happy and contented as though they had never been near a coast in their lives. When the young are able to fly, however, the instinct of the sea apparently returns to them, and back they go to the salt water to wander far and wide, and lead a life of errantry until love brings them inland again in the following spring. ”

“ The Gullies are made here by frequent, and often very violent Rains, which every day almost fall on these Mountains, and first making a small Trough or Course for themselves, wash away afterwards whatever comes in their way and make their Channel extraordinary steep. ”

“ The track winds its toilsome way over the lowest rises and through gullies squeezed between the higher of the rough granite and sandstone hills. Much bigger ones—each duly catalogued and named by somebody at sometime, I have no doubt—loomed up in every direction. Many of the gullies are well grassed. Saltbush and mulga are met with occasionally; and everywhere spring up low bushes of the kinds that are fattening and well-beloved of flocks and herds. Rideable stretches of a mile or so may be passed over as hardly worth noticing. ”

“ At low tide the shore would be lined with these birds vainly trying to fill themselves with shellfish and such carrion as the waters had left. It couldn’t be called feeding; a Pacific-coast gull does not feed, it seeks simply to fill up the vast, unfathomable space within. Eternity is, of course, without end, but the nearest approach to eternity must be the inside of a gull; I would say stomach, but a stomach implies metes and bounds, and there is no proof that there are any metes and bounds inside of a gull. ”

“ Low tide. Far out on the desert of black clay a colony of gulls have spent the night. Their quarrelsome jargon reaches me as I cautiously raise my head over the dunes, for often a band of plover is feeding at dawn out on the mud, close enough for a shot. Nothing in view save the gulls, those gossiping concierges of the bay, who rise like a squall of snow as I make a clean breast of my presence, and start across the soggy, slippery mud toward the marsh running out to the open sea. ”

“ Gulo appeared quite suddenly and very early, for him, next afternoon, beside some tangled brush on the edge of a clearing. He was sitting up, almost bolt-upright, and he was shading his eyes with his forepaws. A man could not have done more. ”

“ And, far behind him, the man in the sleigh drew out his rifle from under the fur rugs. He judged that the time had about come. The end was very near.
But he judged wrong. Gulo made the wood at length. With eyes of dull red, and breath coming in short, rending sobs, he got in among the trees. He did it, though the feat seemed impossible, for the trees had been so very far away. Got in among the trees—yes, but dead-beat, and—to what end? To be "treed" ignominiously and calmly shot down, picked off like a squirrel on a larch-pole. That was all. ”

“ Miss Moppet and Peter flew from one window to another and cheered and shouted to their hearts' content. Even Grandma Effingham and Clarissa waved their handkerchiefs, while Gulian, on the doorstep, raised his cocked hat in courtly salute to General Washington. Gulian was beginning to learn that perhaps one might find something to be proud of in America, even if we were lacking in the rank and titles he so admired. ”

“ But not all the crossing in the world could have accounted for his character; that came straight from the Devil, his master. Gulo, however, was not a cross. He was himself, Gulo, the wolverine, alias glutton, alias carcajou, alias quick-hatch, alias fjeldfras in the vernacular, or, officially, Gulo luscus. But, by whatever name you called him, he did not smell sweet; and his character, too, was of a bad odor. A great man once said that he was like a bear cub with a superadded tail; but that great man cannot have seen his face. ”

“ The boys sprang up the muddy sides of the gully, dripping like water-gods, reckless of wet jackets, torn trowsers, and shoes from which the water came up in gushes, and helped pitch that great, knotty log end foremost into the gully, where it was to form a line for the water to sweep over. ”

“ When the boats are in harbour, the gulls are at home, too. Every roof-ridge is alive with them, and they even take an intelligent interest in the domestic cooking. It is one of the most ridiculous sights to observe a gull perched on the edge of a chimney-pot smelling the odours that come up from cottage chimneys. When the tide is out, the gulls quest diligently in the ooze and scavenge all the offal that is plentifully flung into the harbour, for there is nothing nice in the feeding of a gull. Dead kittens and dogs come as handy and as tasty morsels as potatoes and cabbage-stalks. ”

“ It swims lightly enough even on a rough sea, riding like a cork on the wave-crests, and sleeps upon the water, when roaming far from land. Flocks of this Gull may often be seen standing upon the mud-flats or level sandy reaches, preening their plumage, and waiting, it may be, for a turn of the tide that may bring some particular food of which they are in quest. ”

“ Gula, gū′la, n. a piece in some insects, esp. in the beetles, &c., forming the lower surface of the head, behind the mentum, bounded laterally by the genæ or cheeks: the upper part of a bird's throat, between mentum and jugulum.—adj. Gū′lar. [L., 'throat.']
Gulch, gulch, n. (U.S.) a ravine or narrow rocky valley, a gully.—v.t. (prov.) to swallow greedily. [Prob. the n. and v. are connected.]
Gulden, gōōl′den, n. a certain gold or silver coin in Germany in the Middle Ages: the unit of account in Austria, having the value of about 2s. ”

“ On the other hand, we are all outlaws, and if we were to land on the mainland we should be hunted down and killed, sooner or later, or, worse still, taken and condemned to the galleys afresh. But outside the Gulf, some two hundred miles or more to the westward, there is a certain uninhabited island, at which this galley has often called for water. It is large enough to support four or five times our number, and although none of us are navigators we could easily find it by simply following the coast line. ”

“ This Gull is found in winter on the coast from British Columbia southward to Lower California, but nests in the interior from Utah northward. They nest very abundantly around the Great Salt Lake, placing their nests generally upon the bare ground. Sometimes there is a scant lining of grasses or weeds and again the nests will be situated in the midst of a tussock of grass. Three or four eggs generally constitute a set, but occasionally five are laid. The usual nesting time is during May. They show the same great variations in color and markings common to most of the Gulls. ”

“ There appeared to be nothing alive at all throughout this white land, but you must never trust to that in the wild. Things there are very rarely what they seem. For instance, Gulo came into a clearing, dim under the night sky, though it would never be dark that night. To the ear and the eye that clearing was as empty as a swept room. To Gulo's nose it was not, and he was just about to crouch and execute a stalk, when half the snow seemed to get up and run away. ”

“ He rose up, half-blind, almost senseless, but mad with rage beyond any conception of fury, did old Gulo, and he hurled himself upon that eagle.
What happened then no man can say. There was just one furious mix-up of whirling, powdered snow, that hung in the air like a mist, out of which a great pinion, a clawing paw, a snapping beak, a flash of fangs, a skinny leg and clutching, talons, a circling bushy tail appeared and vanished in flashes, to the accompaniment of stupendous flappings and abominably wicked growls. ”

“ One summer day when he was out in his boat fishing for pollack at his favourite ground a mile or two beyond the Godrevy Lighthouse he noticed three guillemots near him, one old bird with its half-grown young one, and a second young bird which accompanied the others but kept at a little distance from them. This young guillemot had doubtless been lost or left by its parents. There was no other bird in sight except a great black-backed gull, flying idly about, now making a wide circle and occasionally dropping on to the water to examine some small floating object, then flying off again. ”

“ In 1840 there was a small patch of stones, gravel, sand, and earth, called Gull Island, lying near the center of the Canadian rapid and about one hundred rods above the Horseshoe Fall. It was apparently twenty rods long by two rods wide, and was covered with a growth of willow bushes. It was so named because it was a favorite resort of that singular combination of the most delicate bones and lightest feathers called a gull.
The birds seem large and awkward on the wing, but as they sit upon the water nothing can appear more graceful. They are far-sighted and keen-scented. ”

“ Below them, crouching on the hot sand of the beach that skirts the bases of the cliff, a flock of gulls are resting, like heaps of foam left stranded by the tide. They do not shrink as the dark figures pass over. There are no eggs to plunder from the rocks; no young broods to harry; and a full-grown herring gull will show fight even to a raven. ”

“ I had reminded him of the threats of the Galla medicine men. I had tried to persuade him that the safest place for him would be a small pension in the West End, one of those select affairs kept by a major’s widow, which does not flare the names and pedigrees of its distinguished visitors as advertising matter in the dailies.
But Durand had only laughed.
“My dear Johnny, you don’t know the West Coast as I know it. Nor do you know the Gallas as I know them. A Galla, for sake of revenge, will climb a minaret with his bare feet, and track the mists of dawn to their home. ”

“ There are no excuses in Nature.
Retribution was swift. Gulo yelled aloud—and he was a dumb beast, too, as a rule, but I guess the pain was excruciating—as a hooked stiletto, it appeared, stabbed through fur, through skin, deep down through flesh, right into his back, clutching, gripping vise-like. Another stiletto, hooked, too, worse than the first one, beat at his skull, tore at his scalp, madly tried to rip out his eyes. Vast overshadowing pinions—as if they were the wings of Azrael—hammered in his face, smothering him, beating him down. ”

“ These gulls are not fond of fishing; they prefer that others should fish for them. When the great gull, or any other of the fishing-tribes, has got a load, and filled his stomach, neck, and bill, with fish, and is flying slowly and heavily away to his expectant brood, this arrant freebooter, the skua gull, dashes at the sober fisherman; and his only chance of life is to disgorge all he has, and the skua catches it in its fall, or picks it up from the surface of the water or land. ”

“ Whatever opinion may be held as to the synonyms of this Gull, I am perfectly assured of the above mentioned variations in the colour, size, and markings of the younger and older birds. I am equally sure that no individuals acquire the full beauty of their plumage before the third spring. The young are at first of a dull greenish-yellow, spotted with dark brown on the head and rump. In a very few days they leave the nest, ramble about in its vicinity, waiting the arrival of their parents with food, and conceal themselves under stones or in crevices at the appearance of danger. ”

“ He visited Gaul in his youth, about 880, and he writes:—"When I was a young man in Gaul, I may have seen the Attacotti, a British people who live upon human flesh; and when they find herds of pigs, droves of cattle, or flocks of sheep in the woods, they cut off the haunches of the men and the breasts of the women, and these they regard as great dainties;" in other words they prefer the shepherd to his flock. ”