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The fate of one of the sheriffs of this county, in former times, merits notice, especially as connected with a ruin in the parish of Eccliscraig, formerly a place of great strength, being erected on a perpendicular and peninsulated rock, sixty feet above the sea, at the mouth of a small rivulet.
Here and there, in its perpendicular sides, steps have been cut for descent. Vines and lichens grow on the walls: in one place, at the bottom, an orange grove has taken root. There is even a mill down there, where there is breadth enough for a building; and altogether, the ravine is not so delivered over to the power of darkness as it used to be.
At this point indicated on the planisphere one of these currents was rolling, the Kuro-Scivo of the Japanese, the Black River, which, leaving the Gulf of Bengal, where it is warmed by the perpendicular rays of a tropical sun, crosses the Straits of Malacca along the coast of Asia, turns into the North Pacific to the Aleutian Islands, carrying with it trunks of camphor-trees and other indigenous productions, and edging the waves of the ocean with the pure indigo of its warm water.
The strata of which it was composed, upheaved almost to the perpendicular, shaped an opening like the half of a Gothic arch divided vertically and leaning over a little to one side, which opening rose to the full height of the cave, and seemed to lay bare every corner of it to a single glance. In length it was only about four or five times its width.
The porters wear blue smocks and trousers of the same material, secured at the waist by a belt of perpendicular red and black stripes. The railway carriages have always two foot-boards, and the doors besides the usual handles have a second one half-way down the panels presumably for additional security. It is really in the nature of a bolt that turns on a pivot and falls into a bracket.
It seemed hardly worth our while to attempt to camp out permanently. I will pass over Sunday without further comment. The recollection is weird and extravagant. I remember being surprised at finding certain stretches of pavement perpendicular, and of trying to climb them. Still we must have got a line in the paper on Saturday night, for on Monday the bell began ringing violently before we were up.
They are common enough in some parts of England; and, in the condition in which they are ordinarily found, it might be difficult to give satisfactory reasons for denying them to be merely mineral bodies. They appear, in fact, to consist of nothing but concentric layers of carbonate of lime, disposed in subcrystalline fibres, or prisms, perpendicular to the layers.
Once, at the careless nod of an Indian, I strained up an all but perpendicular slope, only to have the trail end hundreds of feet above the river in a fading cow-path and leave me to climb down again. Farther on it dodged from under my feet once more and, missing a reputed bridge, forced me to ford a chest-deep river which all but swept me away, possessions and all, at the first attempt.
Willy and Peter could with difficulty stop, and save themselves from falling into a deep narrow gully with perpendicular sides which appeared before them. They leaned over the edge. It was thirty or forty feet deep, a stream of water running at the bottom. Had they gone over, they would probably have broken their necks. "He will escape by the end of the gully," cried Willy.
The choir is thought to have received a groined vault of oak after the rebuilding of the east end, but this vault was probably renewed more than once, especially after the accident to the tower about 1450, and the fall of the spire in 1660. Its chief feature, however, is the splendid bosses along the ridge, which are survivals from either the Decorated or a subsequent Perpendicular vault.