Slough

“ Then in my dream I went up to Help and said to him, Sir, since this place is on the way from The City of Destruction to The Wicket Gate, how is it that no one mends this patch of ground, so that those who come by may not fall in the slough?
Help.—This slough is such a place as no one can mend. It is the spot to which doth run the scum and filth that wait on sin, and that is why men call it the Slough of Despond. ”

“ The completion of the 40-foot was the climax of Herschel's career as a maker of telescopes. The fame of the great instrument spread over the world. Princes, dukes, and courtiers visited Slough in order to view one of the wonders of the age. Astronomers, too, came from all parts of the world—Lalande, Méchain, Legendre, Cassini from Paris, Oriani from Milan, Piazzi from Palermo, Sniadecki from Cracow. Slough became a place of pilgrimage, not only for astronomers, but also for large numbers who had only a slight interest in, or curiosity about, the science. ”

“ But Herschel was not always, even in extreme old age, depressed and gloomy. A German visitor to Slough, in 1819, thus described the great astronomer: "While we were standing by the great telescope, which we more admired than comprehended, its master appeared, a cheerful old man aged eighty-one. ”

“ He had, I think, a Slough of Despond in his mind, a slough that he carried everywhere with him, or else he could never have been as he was. ”

“ The name of the slough was Despond. ”

“ The sloughing goes on for a day and a night, beginning with the head and ending with the tail. During the sloughing of the skin an inner layer comes to the surface, for the creature emerges just as the embryo from its afterbirth. ”

“ Nevertheless, his health began to fail by gradual stages. His duties as King's Astronomer, nominal so far as scientific work was concerned, were somewhat exacting, and as he grew older he was less able to spend several hours in an evening explaining the heavenly bodies to groups of royal and aristocratic visitors. In October, 1806, the appearance of a bright comet attracted a large number of visitors to Slough. On the evening of the 4th, Caroline Herschel narrates, "two parties from the Castle came to see the comet, and during the whole month my brother had not an evening to himself. ”

“ Now the tendency of aqueous action over a large elevated surface is always to make that surface symmetrically and evenly convex and dome-like, sloping gradually more and more as it descends, until it reaches an inclination of about 40°, at which slope it will descend perfectly straight to the valley; for at that slope the soil washed from above will accumulate upon the hill-side, as it cannot lie in steeper beds. ”

“ Slipslop, in Fielding's
Joseph Andrews.
SLOP. Tea. How the blowens lush the slop. How the
wenches drink tea!
SLOPS. Wearing apparel and bedding used by seamen.
SLOP SELLER. A dealer in those articles, who keeps a slop shop.
SLOUCH. A stooping gait, a negligent slovenly fellow. To slouch; to hang down one's head. A slouched hat: a hat whose brims are let down.
SLUBBER DE GULLION. A dirty nasty fellow.
SLUG. A piece of lead of any shape, to be fired from a blunderbuss. To fire a slug; to drink a dram.
SLUG-A-BED. A drone, one that cannot rise in the morning. ”

“ Gentle or steep, extended or abrupt, some determined slope of the earth's surface is of course necessary before any wave can so much as overtake one sedge in its pilgrimage; and how seldom do we enough consider, as we walk beside the margins of our pleasant brooks, how beautiful and wonderful is that ordinance, of which every blade of grass that waves in their clear water is a perpetual sign—that the dew and rain fallen on the face of the earth shall find no resting-place ”

“ 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 slope of your roof is determined by the weight of snow. It is only within narrow limits that the discretion of the architect may range: gravity, wind, sun, rain, the size of men and animals, and such like, have more to say than he. ”

“ The road shunned its depths and, leading me down through the magnificent fringe of it, brought me out upon an open slope, if that can be called open which is densely covered to the height of a man's knees at times, and again to the height of his breast, with my old friend the macchia. ”

“ Ground sluices are natural gullies, answering the purpose of wooden sluices in localities where water is abundant for short periods only, and the construction of permanent sluices would not be judicious. In river mining, the current of a stream is turned aside, and sluices are erected in its bed for washing the dirt there accumulated. ”

“ The rock on each side of the sluice is worn smooth by the feet of many who have stridden across, caring nothing for the tales that are told of terrible accidents from a slip of the foot or from giddiness. ”

“ Our woods supply us with two sorts of plum, both edible—the sloe, or blackthorn (Prunus spinosa) , and the wild bullace (P. institia.) Every one knows the sloe, at least every one who has spent any part of his youth amidst woodland scenes; but as there are some who, having been 'all their life in populous cities pent,' know but little of country delights, for their benefit we will describe the growth and appearance of our plants, as well as their qualities, obvious or hidden. The sloe is more frequently seen as a spiny shrub than as a tree ”

“ Not only may a slope seem to be greater or less than it really is, but under certain circumstances a dead level [Pg 142] sometimes appears as an upward or downward inclination, while a gentle ascent may even be mistaken for a descent, and vice versa. ”

“ As the proportion of mould or clay in the sand becomes greater a flatter slope is necessary according to the nature of the earth with which it is incorporated, the degree of wetness, and also the exposure of the surface. ”

“ If, at the border of the dangerous slope, a sharp stamping with your ski produces a settling noise, followed by the breaking away of detached fragments of snow-slab, you will know that the slab is probably insecurely poised on a shallow vault below. ”

“ I speak of some rocky slopes as lines of rest, because, whenever a mountain side is composed of soft stone which splits and decomposes fast, it has a tendency to choke itself up with the ruins, and gradually to get abraded or ground down towards the débris slope; so that vast masses of the sides of Alpine valleys are formed by ascents of nearly uniform inclination, partly loose, partly of jagged rocks, which break, but do not materially alter the general line of ground. ”

“ Ugly gravel heaps, staring mounds of 'pipe-clay,' deposits of sludge, a surface filled with holes, broken windlasses, the wrecks of whims, all combine to make a hideous picture as they stand revealed in the pitiless sunshine. ”

“ If, then, the slope of the banks is considerable, or if the earth of which they are composed rests on a smooth and slippery stratum inclining towards the bed of the lake, they are liable to fall or slide forward when the mechanical support of the water is removed, and this sometimes happens on a considerable scale. ”

“ If the upper surface of a hard stony stratum be uncovered, whether artificially in a quarry, or by the waves at the foot of a cliff, it is easy to determine towards what point of the compass the slope is steepest, or in what direction water would flow, if poured upon it. ”

“ The steep verdant slope, whose base is at the water's edge is topped by a lofty rampart of broken, turreted rocks, which are exquisitely rich and mellow in color--mainly dark browns and dull greens, but splashed with other tints. ”

“ You find a quiet little hill of clay, with nothing stirring round about; you smash into it with your boot-heel or a bit of wattle, and instantly the earth is covered in every direction with a scrambling, scurrying—doubtless, if one could hear them, a screaming—crowd, all bent on knowing what has caused the disturbance. ”

“ Although the slope is not very steep, the sensation of slipping down gently into some distant, unknown abyss is unpleasantly suggestive of danger. As the ground sinks under you, the world might easily be imagined to have broken loose from its moorings, and to be floating away to some inconceivable destination. ”

“ It is clear that the nature of the support must influence the slope of the heap, for, resting on a polished surface like a plate of glass, the slope is less than when supported on a rough surface, as a wooden floor. ”

“ On the other hand, during rain much of the finest earth is washed to a considerable distance from the castings, even where the slope is an extremely gentle one, and is thus wholly lost as far as the above calculations are concerned. ”

“ But here it challenged man to essay a fall; for where it burst its way over rocky slopes were channels jeopardous and hardly navigable, sequences of foaming rapids, races of wild water swirling round opposing boulders, and careering indignant of restraint between long walls of beetling rock. ”

“ On all its rugged sides there were treacherous slopes which looked hard enough to support a man, but which, once stepped on, gave sickeningly away to slide and slither for a hundred feet straight down to some abrupt edge, where they fell in dusty cataracts to blind basins and walled cups below. ”

“ The slope upon which Golden is situated is a comparatively gentle one, but directly back of the city the angle changes and the surface of the world mounts abruptly toward the heavens, which seem to rest like a great coverlet upon the upland snows. ”

“ The line defining the edge of the field against the sky, sloping in the direction in which the Sower walks, adds to the impression of motion which is so strongly suggested by the picture. As we look, we almost expect to see the Sower reach the foot of the slope, and stride out of sight, still flinging the grain as he goes. ”

“ The outer slope is relatively steep and well-defined where the detritus is coarse, and relatively gentle and ill-defined where it is fine. Thus the stream tends to construct a sort of platform in the water just beyond its debouchure. ”

“ How it flatters the ground!- Yonder sterile field might be a garden, and you would never suspect that that gentle slope with its pretty dimples and curves was not the smoothest of meadows, yet it is paved with rocks and stone. ”

“ In slips the form generally assumed in soils having considerable cohesive power nearly approaches that of a parabolic curve, which shows that a straight slope is not the correct one in tenacious soil, and theory confirms it. ”

“ The slope of the mountain is cut into steps, and the rectangular space thus obtained is transformed into a house by means of a clay roof, which at the back rests on the ground, and in front is supported by pillars ”

“ The effect on slopes of debris is often most peculiar. Naturally they derive their tint from that of the rocks above, out of whose fragments they are formed. If those rocks are a mass of a single colour, such will be the tint of the debris slope. ”

“ She moved apparently without stepping, with the peculiar gliding grace that is the inheritance of North-born people.
The irregularities of the slab floor seemed to lose stability, to become fluid and flow under her feet like waves in a rapid. ”

“ All alternate beds of shale or any softer earth than the rock, particularly broken shales when found mixed with sand and clay and the lias shales, and rock should be regarded as treacherous and liable to slip. ”

“ IN certain endless uplands, uplands like great flats gone dizzy, slopes that seem to contradict the idea that there is even such a thing as a level, and make us all realize that we live on a planet with a sloping roof, you will come from time to time upon whole valleys filled with loose rocks and boulders, so big as to be like mountains broken loose. ”

“ Every here and there, where the slate cliffs run down in steep slopes to the valleys, you can see from the very top to the bottom, that is to say on a slope of some nine hundred feet, what look like little streams that are perhaps a foot wide at the top and ten or a dozen at the bottom where they open out. ”

“ The ground looms a little ahead. And as it rises, the dead grass ceases underneath my feet. My feet tread sterile clay: they strike on it hard as if the clay were frozen, and yet the air of the field is wet and sultry.... My feet stop.
I am at the top of the little loom of the ground. ”

“ Why, a black and beetling wall of rock rising sheerly perpendicular up out of the water, and towering to a height of over one thousand feet. Although the loch is five hundred yards wide, you can hardly get rid of the impression that this immense wall of rock is bending towards you from the top, and about to fall and crush your pigmy body to atoms. ”

“ The shallows may easily be distinguished at a considerable distance: being composed of light, shifting sand, and acted upon by a strong current, the water above them appears discolored; assuming a dun, or yellow hue, sufficiently contrasted with the deeper parts, to enable the eye at once to trace their respective limits. ”

“ But wherever the slopes are steep we rivulets have our way. We pick up and carry away the particles of sand and clay so that only the bare, hard rocks remain.
When the steep slopes become gentle, and we can no longer carry away all the particles of crumbled rock, then the carpet of plants spreads over the surface. ”

“ 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. ”