Gully

“ D. Collins, `Account of New South Wales,' vol. ii. p. 214:
"A man, in crossing a gully between Sydney and Parramatta, was, in attempting to ford it, carried away by the violence of the torrent, and drowned."
1862. H. C. Kendall, `Poems,' p. 17:
"The gums in the gully stand gloomy and stark."
1867. A.L. Gordon, `Sea-spray, etc.,' p. 134:
"The gullies are deep and the uplands are steep." ”

“ Gull, a dupe, or a fool, is often used by our old dramatists, and is generally believed to have given rise to the verb; but a curious little edition of Bamfylde Moore Carew, published in 1827, says that TO GULL, or GULLY, is derived from the well known Gulliver, the hero of the famous Travels. How crammed with Slang are the dramatic works of the last century! The writers of the comedies and farces in those days must have lived in the streets, and written their plays in the public-houses, so filled are they with vulgarisms and unauthorised words. ”

“ The gully turned out to be a regular bonanza, and for weeks he worked on alone until he had stripped it from end to end. The creek near where he camped ran all year, and from morning till dark he panned and worked the "pay dirt," until there was no more to pan. ”

“ Intimacy, Orkn.
Isl. gilld, sodalitium, and bo, incola.
GULE, adj. Yellow.
V. Gool.
To GULLER, v. n. To guggle, S.; buller, synon.
Sw. kolr-a, id.
GULLY, s.
1. A large knife, S.
Ramsay.
2. To guide the gully, to have the chief management, S.
Ross.
3. A warlike weapon, S. B.
Poems Buchan Dial.
To Gulligaw, v. a. To wound with a knife in a quarrel, S. B.
From gully, and gaw to excoriate.
GULLION, s. A quagmire, Loth.
Su. G. goel, O. Germ. gulle, vorago.
GULP, s. A big unwieldy child, Ang.
GULSCHY, adj. Gross in the body, Clydes.
Teut. gulsigh, voracious. ”

“ The wild music of a host of gulls is the bagpipes of the coast, and arouses the same feelings in the breast of the sea-lover as the pipes do in that of a Scotsman. It is associated with the sound of the surge and the deadly thrust and heavy swell at the foot of the tough cliff. These things tug at the heart of a sea-lover. Lying amid the prickly furze, sheltered for a moment from the deadly wind-whistle, and gazing across that unscalable chasm, we have before us that gull-fortress exactly as it and its kind have been reproduced on the canvas of a well-known painter many many times. ”

“ 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. ”

“ More, perhaps, than any other subject, natural history abounds with statements, the evidence for which there is often no getting at, or, if one does get at it, it amounts to very little.
Oh, thou villain gull! What have I not just seen thee do? But heroics are out of place with animals, so I will just recount the incident in a staid, sober way. As, in my ascent of the cliff, I came over the crest of a green peak, a herring-gull flew up from the ground with something in its bill, which, as it mounted aloft, I saw to be a young puffin. ”

“ And the gulls on the cliff—do I not know just how they will comport themselves; how each bird will eye me suspiciously, sideways, with one brilliant eye at a time; how they will rise and float and dwell on the air, or sit on a rock with beaks to the wind—do I not know every word they will say in their herring-gull language? ”

“ The chasms and abyssmal depths look the very acme of wild unrelieved desolation. There is not a bright tint. The only signs of motion are the foaming cascades tearing down the gullies, their silvery streaks looking like the white locks of angry furies trailing over the barren jagged clefts. The only sign of life is where a ghostly gull, sated with the flesh of some poisoned rabbits, wings his heavy flight athwart the black-blue background of dripping rock.
We seem to be floating above the clouds, and to be dipping into a sea of mist. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ High up in their home crannies the sea birds could always catch the pearly shimmer of the breaking of an approaching school of herrings, even before they reached the line of tossing foam below. Then, swift and sure, they would dart out to meet them. It was wonderful to watch the herring gulls at their fishing, now skimming low over giant, green waves, now sinking into the trough of the sea. Then, with a sudden swift splash of feathery spray, behold the sharp-eyed gull secures the fish and is back again in his own nest upon the cliff. ”

“ As they rowed making for the schooner with the light of the westering sun in their eyes, they could see the head of the swimmer as he made back for the shore, and away on the beach near the trees they could see the great gulls congregated around the forms of the four dead men, a boiling of wings above the reef line and against the evening blue of the sky.
Predatory gulls when feeding on a carcase do not sit and gorge, they are always in motion more or less, especially when they are in great numbers as now. ”

“ No human sight in it all; no sail, for hours, upon the sea—only the gulls which, in their thousands and their all-possession, seem to have subdued the world. Men are gone, and gulls now take their place, become ennobled for want of a superior. ”

“ The tide was low. The fresh, keen scent of seaweed came up from the Point refreshing his sickened senses. Noisy gulls wheeled and tilted over the brown, kelp-covered rocks and on the ridge back of the Indian graveyard, ravens answered the gull cries with raucous soliloquies.
He was nearing the Point when his eye was attracted by a splash of white among the boulders. Something peculiar in its outline drew his inquiring steps. At the sound of crunching gravel under his feet a great huskie dog rose almost from under him. The young man sprang aside with a startled exclamation. ”

“ So it was off with shoes, and off with stockings, roll up trousers-legs, and away and away, with a run, and a shout, and a dash, and a splash, and a spatter. A little distance out from the shore there was a high rock, not so very, very high,—just the right height to give them [Pg 29] a good seat; and they sat down there, feet in the water, heads together, looking down into the water, watching the fries darting swiftly hither and thither.
It is just here that the gull part of the story comes in. Gulls are large sea-birds. They live upon fish, and they are their own fishermen. ”

“ What a gull will eat, and want no liver pill, would make any other respectable bird on the wing bilious; but the gull is always bright and cheerful, and ready for another gorge, and its natural store of gastric juice would set up a chemical factory. When fish is scarce the gull goes inland and feeds upon the fields, or joins the noble army of poachers over gentlemen's preserves.
On the wing the gull is the spirit of poetry, and in storm the spirit of the tempest ”

“ Then as they went on their way the sun broke over the edge of the high lands and gulls rising above the cliff edge flitted like birds born of snow and fire.
They stopped for ten minutes to breakfast, then they went on, and now suddenly came something new. On the wind they could hear the sound of gulls quarrelling, a sound quite distinct from the ordinary mewing and wheezing of the gulls at peace.
“We’re near there,” said Raft. “Hark at the gulls, they’re fighting over the scraps. Them chaps, whoever they are, have been killing seals and boiling the blubber. ”

“ Yet one gig alone this morning has brought in fourteen thousand herrings. No wonder that there is an atmosphere of excitement in the harbour. No wonder that the carts almost run over you as they make journey after journey between boat and barrel. No wonder that three different sorts of sea-gulls—the herring gull, the lesser black-headed gull, and the black-backed gull—have gathered about us in screaming multitudes and fill the air like a snowstorm. Every child in the town seems to be making for home with its finger in a fish's mouth, or in two fishes' mouths, or in three fishes' mouths. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To injure a gull wilfully is to invite disaster. It may be that the origin of the feeling is simply the fact that gulls gather in vociferous crowds round the boats and in the harbour when the fishing has prospered, and in this way become associated in the fisherman's mind with all those agreeable ideas or images and emotions connected with a good catch—smiles and cheerful words of greeting in the home, with food in abundance, money for the rent and for needed clothes and other good things for the little ones. ”

“ But you must tear yourself away from the whales, for half a mile to windward there you sight a cloud of birds fishing furiously, the gannets swooping and soaring, and then suddenly shutting their wings and dropping in quick succession, pop, pop, pop, like bullets into the sea; and a dense mass of gulls flying and swimming, screaming and squattering, and flapping their wings on the surface of the water. How a gull ever gets a living is a wonder; he seems so dainty and hesitating and afraid to commit himself. ”

“ We soon became entangled in an intricate mesh of deep, soft gullies. The great depth of these gullies, the ridges of dry ashes that surmounted them, the steep, viscid slopes and the beds filled with running water hot and odorous, wherein a peculiar alga thrives, and the intervening reaches of slumpy snow afforded us two hours of very laborious work. Cautiously we proceeded, leading the ponies, searching for places to descend the slopes and then working much harder to get out of the ravine, only to find it necessary to repeat the performance many times. ”

“ Every gull thus rising with a launce in its beak was of course instantly pursued and set upon by all the others flying near and had to fight furiously to retain his capture.
That is invariably the gull's way: even when fish are swarming on the surface and easily taken they must give vent to their predatory instincts and waste time and energy in robbing one another and in squabbling and screaming, instead of every bird trying to catch as many as he can for himself. ”

“ To prove that the Gull is capable of consuming a large quantity of food, as well as quick-sighted, a single anecdote will suffice:—"A man who was shooting on the banks of the river Yare, seeing something, which had the appearance of an eel half-swallowed, hanging from the mouth of a Gull which was flying overhead, fired at the bird, and on taking it up, found, not an eel, but—five tallow candles attached to a piece of thread, to the other end of which was fastened a sixth, the latter having been almost entirely swallowed. ”

“ GULLS AND TERNS AT HOME
Gull Island was only a great sand heap, anchored by rocks and covered with coarse grass; but the children had hardly taken a few steps along the beach when they began to exclaim at the number of strange birds. Some were flying, others walking about on the sand, where there were many tufts of grass and mats of seaweeds that looked as if they had been used for nests. Dodo nearly stepped upon a couple of greenish, dark-spotted eggs, that were nearly as large as a Hen's. "Are the Gulls still nesting, Uncle Roy? And what are those dark streaky birds over there?" ”

“ Right towards us, as if on some express and special errand, came the gull, one of the largest and most beautiful of sea-birds, until he was within less than fifty yards of us, when by a change of poise, and a scarcely perceptible movement of wing, he slowly swept round our heads, screaming the while as only a black-backed gull can scream—a wild and eerie note that may be heard for a league. ”

“ Lives there any such slow, itch-brained, beef-witted gull, who by the riveld bark or outward rind of a tree will take upon himself to forespeak how long it will stand, what mischaices of worms, caterpillars, boughs breaking, frost bitings, catel rubbing against, it shall have? As absurd is it by the external branched seams of furrowed wrinkles in a man's face or hand, in particular or in general to conjecture and foredoom his fate. ”

“ Skeat adds, "formerly written gullet: `It meeteth afterward with another gullet,' i.e. small stream. Holinshed, `Description of Britain,' c. 11: F. goulet, `a gullet . . . a narrow brook or deep gutter of water.' (Cotgrave.) Thus the word is the same as gullet." F. goulet is from Latin gula. Gulch is the word used in the Pacific States, especially in California.
1773. `Hawkesworth's Voyages,' vol. iii. p. 532—Captain Cook's First Voyage, May 30, 1770:
"The deep gullies, which were worn by torrents from the hills." ”