Hill (topography)

“ But for the sense of mysterious beauty, for snatches of pictures one will never forget, the little vistas which open on the upward or the downward trail, framed by hanging boughs or encircled by a half frame of stone and hillside—these are, perhaps, more lovely. The hill itself, seen from a distance, floating lightly like a vast blue ball against a vaster sky, is dreamily suggestive in a way which the actual view, superb as it is, is not. ”

“ Hills are insensibly crumbling into the valleys, valleys are silently eroded, and crags that ever since the birth of man have been the landmarks of the race, are yet slowly but surely melting away. It matters not where the hill or plain may lie, the highest mountains of the tropics and the frozen soil of the poles, yield each in its measure and degree to the influence of the general law. ”

“ The ridge of the hill is green, but like most such lands is soft; and this is the nature of the way till you reach the last stage, which is steeper (excepting near the very summit) , and is formed of large fragments of slaty-rocky, intermixed with a kind of sparry marble of considerable size. The first part of the journey is the least agreeable, from its soft and boggy nature; halfway up the lake appears to most advantage, its glassy surface studded with islands, round which appears to breathe a perpetual spring. ”

“ The inferiority and meagreness of such effects of hill, compared with the massive purple and blue of our own heaps of crags and morass, or the solemn grass-green and pine-purples of the Alps, have always struck me most painfully; and they have rendered it impossible for any poet or painter studying in the south, to enter with joy into hill scenery. ”

“ The eye travelled up naturally from the green line of trees to the green slope, and saw that slope as part of a great rounded hill, rather like a bit of the Downs in general appearance; but had it been hollow you could have gone on pouring your Chanctonburies and Sinoduns and Beachy Heads and Hogs backs into it, and they would have rattled about like small-shot inside. The stream of trees let you see how big it was, as hills on the horizon show the greatness of the setting moon. ”

“ The slight slope of a green hill, the rise of a grassy bank at an after-period, bends the calm stream hither and thither through the plains, offering the most beautiful image of the effect of circumstances on the course of human life. ”

“ The top of the hill is not level but slightly convex, and presents a very even surface one hundred and fifty feet wide by one thousand long, measuring from its extremity to the point where it connects with the table land. ”

“ Dark forms, running hither and thither, seemed to interweave with the shadows, while others lay stretched up the hillside or sat squatting on barrows and timbers. For a hundred yards and more the slope of the hill showed the toil of many weeks. Hillocks of earth, sand, clay, stones, a confusion of timbers, barrows, baulks, spades and mattocks, ropes, lime-heaps and what not, littered the border of the Slack. Had you tried to thread your way among these you would have run the risk of walking suddenly into the deep cutting in the hillside that sheltered the furnaces themselves. ”

“ The mountain summits, which are often wrapped in the clouds, at other times exhibit the freest outline; the immense scooped hollows which sink at your feet, declivities of so vast a depth as to give one terror to look down; with the unusual forms of the lower region of hills, particularly Bull Hill, and Round Hill, each a mile over, yet rising out of circular vales, with the regularity of semi-globes, unite upon the whole to exhibit a scenery to the eye in which the parts are of a magnitude so commanding, a character so interesting, and a variety so striking, p. ”

“ The summit of the hill is a dreary plateau strewed with great boulders, from which is a striking view of mountain peaks, with valleys branching in various directions closed by glistening glaciers, while gleaming among their barren surroundings are lakes and fjords. ”

“ A green hill, one of those bare table-lands so common in the Campagna, rises on the right. Ascend it to where a broad furrow in the slope seems to mark the site of an ancient road. You are on a plateau, almost quadrangular in form, rising steeply to the height of nearly two hundred feet above the Tiber, and isolated, save at one angle, where it is united to other high ground by a narrow isthmus. Not a tree—not a shrub on its turf-grown surface—not a house—not a ruin—not one stone upon another, to tell you that the site had been inhabited. ”

“ On the north-easterly side the hill rises slopingly, but towards the south and west it shoots up abruptly from the plain, presenting a mass of jagged perpendicular rock three hundred and sixty feet in height. ”

“ One hill alone, the highest in elevation, and about ten miles to the south-westward, was enveloped in a cloud, which just permitted a dim and hazy sight of a signal-post, a light-house, and an ancient chantry, built on its summit. ”

“ Its high white houses, ornamented with balconies and conservatories, rise amphitheatre-like on the slope of a hill; stairs lead from landing-place to landing-place to the summit of this hill; and from every street we behold the blue sea, with its large merchantmen and crowds of smaller vessels. ”

“ No hill, covered with common scrub or patches of purple heath, could have been so sublimely hilly as that ridge up to which the ranked furrows rose like aspiring angels. No valley, confused with needless cottages and towns, can have been so utterly valleyish as that abyss into which the down-rushing furrows raged like demons into the swirling pit.
It is the hard lines of discipline and equality that mark out a landscape and give it all its mould and meaning. It is just because the lines of the furrow arc ugly and even that the landscape is living and superb. ”

“ It is a common experience to steer for a range, sighted from perhaps a distance of fifteen miles, and find on closer inspection that it is no more than a low line of rocks. It is equally common for a hill to appear as quite a respectable mountain when seen from one point, but entirely to disappear from view when seen from the opposite direction, so gentle is the slope. ”

“ For the last four or five hours we had been gradually ascending the mountains, and at length found ourselves on the top of a green hill, which, when contrasted with the bold heights that begirt it, might be deemed a valley, though itself many thousand feet above the level of the sea. One side of this grassy platform appeared perfectly perpendicular. In this direction it was separated from a steep ridge by a narrow ravine, so deep and so rugged that all attempts to trace its base were fruitless. ”

“ A glimpse might occasionally be caught, through a gap between the hill-tops, of a company of distant mountain-peaks, pyramidal, as these hills are apt to be, and resembling the camp of an army of giants. The landscape was not altogether savage; sometimes a hillside was covered with a rich field of grain, or an orchard of olive-trees, looking not unlike puffs of smoke, from the peculiar line of their foliage; but oftener there was a vast mantle of trees and shrubbery from top to bottom, the golden tufts of the broom shining out amid the verdure, and gladdening the whole. ”

“ Looking down from the summit, the forest is a closely woven vesture, which has fallen over the body of the range, clinging closely to its form, sinking into the deep cañons, covering the hill-tops with even velvety folds, and only lost here and there where a bold mass of rock gives it no foothold, or where around the margin of the mountain lakes bits of alpine meadow lie open to the sun. ”

“ The most familiar sheet of water viewed from a new hill-top, yields a novel and unexpected pleasure. When we have travelled a few miles, we do not recognize the profiles even of the hills which overlook our native village, and perhaps no man is quite familiar with the horizon as seen from the hill nearest to his house, and can recall its outline distinctly when in the valley. We do not commonly know, beyond a short distance, which way the hills range which take in our houses and farms in their sweep. ”

“ When on the top of a hill, whose summit is flat, and of a pretty large extent, we meet with hard stone directly under the stratum of vegetable earth, we must remark, that what appears to be the summit, is not so in fact, but only the continuation of some higher hill, whose upper strata are soft stone and the lower hard ”

“ A mountain may be described (it cannot be defined) as an elevated region of irregular surface rising comparatively abruptly from lower ground. The actual elevation of a summit above sea-level does not necessarily affect its mountainous character; a gentle eminence, for instance, rising a few hundred feet above a tableland, even if at an elevation of say 15,000 ft., could only be called a hill. [34] But it may be said that any abrupt slope of 2000 ft. or more in vertical height may justly be called a mountain, while abrupt slopes of lesser height may be called hills. ”

“ Instead of being level, like plains, the land in some places slopes up and up until it is higher than a house, or the tallest tree. Such land is called a hill.
A very high hill is called a mountain. ”

“ Seven hundred feet is considered a good-sized hill; one thousand feet, a mountain. Both the north and the south sides of the straits rise two thousand feet in places. Through these rock walls ice has poured and torn and ripped a way since the ice age preceding history, cutting a great channel to the Atlantic. Here, the iron walls suddenly break to secluded silent valleys, moss-padded, snow-edged, lonely as the day Earth first saw light. ”

“ This scenery is indeed grand and interesting. The summit of the lowest hill in the neighbourhood is said to be 4000 feet above the level of the sea. I own I have strong doubts about this. It is with the heights of mountains, as with the numbers of books in a great library,--we are apt to over-rate each. However, those mountains, which seem to be covered with perennial snow, must be doubtless 8000 feet above the same level.89 To obtain a complete view of them, you must ascend some of the nether hills. ”

“ WE have all of us seen hills, or what we call hills, from the monstrous protuberances of the Andes and the Himalaya to such puny pimples as lie about the edges of your fens. Next to a waterfall, the first natural object (according to my own experience) to impress itself on a child's mind is a hill, some spot from which he can enlarge his horizon. Hills, and still more mountains, attract the human imagination and curiosity. ”

“ That which in winter on a Scotch hill would be a slide of snow, and in the Alps an avalanche, becomes amongst these giant peaks an overwhelming cataclysm shaking the solid bases of the hills, and capable with its breath alone of sweeping down forests. ”

“ The extraordinary jaggedness of the rocks is not at all exaggerated, and is the more surprising when you get into it, because from a distance it appears one smooth forest-covered hill, of very inconsiderable height, and of a gradual slope. ”

“ Every traveller, with the smallest attention, will perceive that the opposite sides of a hill exactly correspond. Whenever the hills to the right of the valley form a projection, those opposite recede to the left. These hills have also nearly the same elevation, and it is very rare to see any great inequality of height in the two hills separated by a valley. I can assert, that the more I have looked on the circumference and heights of hills, the more I have been convinced of the correspondence of the angles, and of the resemblance they have with the beds and borders of rivers ”

“ It happens sometimes that toward the centre of great hill ranges ordinary stratified rocks of the coherent groups are hardened into more compact strength than is usual with them; and out of the hardened mass a peak, or range of peaks, is cut as if out of a single block. ”

“ Some streets and roads are flat and level. Others slope like hills. Can you name a street which is level, and one that slants or slopes? Which road is easier to walk on? Why? Do you prefer the level or the sloping street when roller-skating? Why? Which is the best when you are coasting?
You may have noticed that some of the fields in the park or in the country are nearly flat. Other fields lie on slopes or hills. We call the flat part of the land a plain, whether it is in the city or in the country. The sloping part of the land forms a hill. ”

“ That Side of the sixth Hill which lies Eastward, is as long as the Hill itself; but does not, in all parts of it, fall with the same Descent. For the Descent varies, according as the Valley adjoining lies higher or lower. Where the Valley lies upon the Level, the Pitch of the Hill rises to the Height of six hundred Paces; where it does not lie so low, ’tis not above five hundred Paces high; where it rises higher, not above four hundred. ”

“ In regions of gently rolling country even small hummocks are sometimes called "mountains," while out West, where scenery grows so tall, the Black Hills seem to the people only stepping-stones to the big Rockies. So they call them "hills." In the region of the Himalaya Mountains—mountains that don't think anything, you remember, of climbing up 16,000 to 30,000 feet in the air—a peak of 10,000 feet is often called a "hill." ”

“ At times the trail led up the steep face of the outer hill to the plateau above, and then a rich view would lie beneath—a view so vast with the glories of the snowy range, and so filled with nearer river and diamond-shaped island, that many a time I drew rein upon some lofty standpoint to look, as one looks upon things which we would fain carry away into the memory of an after-time. ”