Incline

“ Why do rivers, flowing down steep inclines, early come to an even rate of speed, and not increase in speed to the bottom of the incline as do solid bodies in falling? Why does drift move from the margins to the middle of rapid streams? ”

“ The bottom is reached from the elevated waste where we stand by a very rough irregular winding incline plane—for although the descent is full of great blocks of stones, dreadfully steep, and liker a deranged staircase than anything else, we still call it a steep incline plane from the level of the plateau to the passage beneath which leads into the valley—high rock-walls rising on either side as we descend. ”

“ When the lower incline is moved endways, the upper one, which carries the work table, is moved vertically, and as the lower feed rolls are carried by the upper incline, and the upper rolls are guided to move vertically only, the lower rolls maintain their position beneath the upper ones, or in other words, the table and lower rolls move together in a vertical direction only, when the lower incline is operated. ”

“ The principle on which the feat was performed was, that the man on the bicycle, rushing down the incline, would get momentum enough to shoot across the gap. To prevent the wheel and rider from falling from the attraction of gravitation while it was flying across the space, the end of the incline was curved upward. ”

“ When, however, they are forced to take downhill, feeling their inability to descend in a straight line, they invariably travel in an oblique direction. If pressed hard down a very steep incline, they are apt, at times, to turn head over heels. ”

“ Should it be fine and yielding, the snow-shoes come into play, but when the crust is hard, no better support could be asked. The trouble lies in the steep incline, which becomes more decided the higher one climbs. ”

“ A house standing on an incline is likely to be better drained than one standing upon the summit of a hill, or on a level below a hill. Endeavour to obtain a position where the direct sunlight falls upon the house, for this is absolutely essential to health ”

“ The problem of the incline is an important one to engineers who have under their direction the construction of our highways and the laying of our railroad tracks. It requires tremendous force to pull a load [165] up grade, and most of us are familiar with the struggling horse and the puffing locomotive. ”

“ The direction in which we were travelling and the angle of the slope made the rope utterly useless. Close attention is very exhausting: much more exertion is required to walk ten steps, bestowing the utmost possible care on each movement, than to walk a hundred up or down a much steeper incline when the angle demands a more accustomed balance. Not for an instant might we relax our vigilance till, at 5.30 P.M., we reached once more the ridge close to the place where we had forced our way through the cornice in the morning. ”

“ Those whose ankles will only flex city-wise may only envy the ease with which mountaineering peasants walk straight up steep inclines, getting their heels down each step, or coastal fisher-folk hurry safely on flat soles along slippery sea slabs at impossible angles. ”

“ If, on the path of a body falling vertically from rest, one lays off a portion which is traversed in any time you please and whose upper terminus coincides with the point where the motion begins, and if this fall is followed by a motion deflected along any inclined plane, then the space traversed along the inclined plane, during a time-interval equal to that occupied in the previous vertical fall, will be greater than twice, and less than three times, the length of the vertical fall. ”

“ We mounted long inclines, whence we had a magnificent view of the hills and plains below, or looked up and across to the loops of the road above us. Sometimes we could watch the next relay station as we drove toward it, and with the glasses note the preparations for our arrival. ”

“ The body inclines inward, ready to take the pull, if it comes, down the thrust of our rigid leg. If the ledge is narrow, we rest against the rock with shoulder or our inside knee, but still keep a free poise of the body to meet any slight alterations in the direction of strain. If the ledge is too narrow to allow us to lean back and so take the strain down through our leg to the rock, or if the stance does not even allow of balancing without handholds, then we must look out for a belay or anchor, any knob or split corner of rock, round which to pass the rope as extra security. ”

“ The wheel-drivers were in no better case and in addition they had the waggon-pole to look after, and the centre-drivers were betwixt the devil and the deep sea.
Besides the rough country there were deep, narrow nullahs to be crossed, some of them with sides as steep as the roof of a house. Then the wheel-drivers reined in till the pole-bars almost lifted the weary horses from the ground, and those in front picked a perilous way step by step over the rocky surface of the incline. ”

“ If for a moment you are inclined to regard these taluses as mere draggled, chaotic dumps, climb to the top of one of them, and run down without any haggling, puttering hesitation, boldly jumping from boulder to boulder with even speed. You will then find your feet playing a tune, and quickly discover the music and poetry of these magnificent rock piles—a fine lesson; ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is one place in climbing the rocks where a rope is hung over a precipice, and by gently swinging on this rope a long step or giant stride is made across to a foothold beyond. It is only one of the many positions in mountaineering where imagination shows you what a slight distance there is between what you are and what you may become. In the descent a frightful avalanche of stones fell down just as we cleared the rocks, but it was not near enough to shake our nerves. ”

“ Wherever, in climbing, the angle of the surface is so steep that even these few inches of margin for the eye’s reassurance are lacking,—for instance, on a precipitous rock wall with only minute stances, or on an almost vertical ice slope,—then, by the nature of the case, the climber can use his hands; and from this second point of contact, through his fingers, the climber gets an even more concrete assurance of his balance than from the judgment of his eye. ”

“ See how they stretch their shoulders up the slope toward the bridge, with all the more energy because they are so near home. Look at their grand shaggy feet that seem to grasp the firm earth, at the patient strength of their necks, bowed under the heavy collar, at the mighty muscles of their struggling haunches! ”

“ To have an idea of our situation, you must imagine us marching in single file on the steep mountain side, placing with the greatest care our feet in the steps, which the hardness of the snow rendered it necessary for our leader to cut with an axe, supporting ourselves with our poles against the upper side of the slope, and having on the other side, the same rapid slope terminating below in a precipice several hundred feet in height, over which we saw rapidly hurried all the small pieces of ice, that we loosened with our feet. ”

“ As we climbed with the tips of our fingers in some small crevice, and the tips of our toes just resting on some painfully minute ledge, probably covered with ice or snow, one question gradually forced itself upon us, almost to the exclusion of the previously absorbing one, whether we should get to the top of the mountain, and this was, how on earth we should ever get down again—get down, that is to say, in any other state than that of débris. ”

“ May the Lord preserve the traveller from a fall! At one place, the way is upon long beams introduced into holes made in [Pg 20] the rock, like a bridge, and covered up with earth. Brr!—At the thought that a little stone might get loose and roll down the slope of the mountain, or that a too strong oscillation of the beams could precipitate the whole structure into the abyss, and with it him who had ventured upon the perilous path, one feels like fainting more than once during this hazardous passage. ”

“ How by nature obtained.continually bringing out curves of this kind in all visible forms, and that circular lines become nearly impossible under any circumstances. The gradual acceleration, for instance, of velocity, in streams that descend from hill-sides, as it gradually increases their power of erosion increases in the same gradual degree the rate of curvature in the descent of the slope, until at a certain degree of steepness this descent meets, and is concealed by the right line of the detritus. ”

“ But the pressure has often been oblique instead of vertical, and then the slope of the mountain is uneven, with a gradual ascent on one side and an abrupt wall on the other; or in some instances the pressure has been so lateral that the mountain is overturned and lies upon its side, and there are still other cases where one mountain has been tilted over and has fallen upon an adjoining one. ”

“ The direction of the resolution of these forces is towards a slope, therefore, the farther the surface of a slope is from the line of action and reaction, the greater is its distance from the disturbing force and the lateral resistance it receives from the mass. ”

“ We keep the rope on unless we are certain that the breaking of a step or a slip will lead to no worse results. If there is a long, steep wall of ice or snow below, or the suggestion of crevasses or a bergschrund, or a rock cliff, or even a section of the slope which we cannot see and which may contain a cliff, we may take no chance, and the rope must be retained. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus, I urged, when a man falls from a ladder because (as is commonly said) of the breaking of the rung on which his foot was resting, the real or dynamical cause of his fall is the force of gravity, or attraction of the earth, which pulls him to the ground when his foot is no longer supported; the loss of support being only the material condition or collocation, which allowed the force previously acting as pressure on the rung to produce the downward motion of the man who stood upon it. ”

“ The climber soon learns to shorten his glance, to accept a reduced distance between his two requisite points of contact. The few inches of visible surface near his feet, be it only the edge of a rock ledge or the curve of a snow wall, projected against nothingness, will serve him, with practice, as sufficient rest-point for his eye, and give him the assurance that his body is upright and his balance secure. ”

“ The waving line of the column arising from a series of alternate curves in opposite direc­tions is altogether peculiar to man; it allows a proper distribution of the weight with respect to the centre of gravity, the line of which, carried through the entire trunk, must fall within the entire space covered by the feet, or by one foot when we support the body by one only. As this line passes through all the curves, motion is allowed in the upper regions without impairing the general equili­brium. ”

“ We usually specify a slope by its inclination to a level plane which is parallel to the plane of the horizon, or at right angles to the direction of gravity. At any given spot the level is, physically considered, definite and unalterable. ”

“ It shows that the body executes each of its vertical elevations during the downward pressure of the foot, so that it begins to rise the moment the foot touches the ground; it attains its maximum elevation at the middle of the pressure of this foot, and begins to descend again in order to reach its minimum at the moment when one foot has just risen, and before the other has reached the ground. ”

“ Over against the hole was the steep slope of earth and scree already mentioned, steep almost as a wall, and the scree so loose that it seemed to be in a state of suspended animation. As soon as one came into contact with the treacherous stuff, an avalanche [108] of stones was launched, and I sought in vain for a spot where it would be safe to unrope and await the next man. ”

“ If he fall into a hole, he must extend his arms horizontally over the edges of the unbroken ice, and only tread water, till a ladder or a plank is pushed towards him, or a rope is thrown for his hold. ”

“ When the elevation is determined by sights the angle of elevation is the angle between the line of sight and the axis of the piece, when these lines are in the same vertical plane,—or the angle between the line of sight and a plane containing the axis of the piece and a horizontal line intersecting it at right angles, when they are not. The graduations of tangent scales and fixed breech-sights give this angle in degrees. The graduation of the pendulum hausse gives the angle correctly only when the line of sight is horizontal. ”

“ To advance upon this ledge, as steep as a roof, and where one false step would inevitably send the climber rolling to the bottom of the ravine, demands steady nerves. It invests the whole jaunt with just enough of the perilous to excite the apprehensions, or provoke the enthusiasm of the individual who stands there for the first time, looking askance at his guide, and revolving the chances of crossing it in safety. ”

“ During the development of balance climbing, whose basis is footwork upon any angle and any kind of surface, the scale has been steadily readjusting itself. Simultaneously with, or possibly as a result of, the unification of our several climbing methods upon rock, ice and snow into a single technique of balance, has come the new interest in foot-attachments, the popularizing of the use of ice-claws and of ski. ”