"Gradient" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... high-hearted, if contrarious couple were by no means minded to arrive at, now or ever. But there is no warning sign-post at the turn of the road; and already their feet were nearing it, without knowledge that its easy gradient slips into the ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... have a year's apprenticeship where sympathy holds our hands! If only we could enter the new state by a gradient instead of a plunge! But there is no isle between, no one to lead us gently to the light. . . . And few of us would pause to be led. And so we struggle, and in the struggling hurt ourselves or are hurt. We strike out—and are struck back by stronger ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... of the road averages twenty-one feet. In difficult places, such as along ravines, or where the road had to be cut into the rock, it is naturally less wide, but nowhere under fourteen feet. The gradient averages 1—20 to 1—24. At a very few points, however, it is as steep as 1 in 15. If the hill portion of the road is excepted, where, being in zig-zag, it has very sharp angles, a light railway could be laid upon it in a surprisingly short time and at no considerable ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Homme was smoking like a volcano with innumerable craters. The attack took place about noon. At the same time, from this same place, lines of sharpshooters could be seen between the Corbeaux Wood and Cumieres and the gradient at the east of Mort Homme. They must have come from the Raffecourt or from the Forges Mill, through the covered roads in the valley-like depressions in the ground. It was the first wave immediately followed by ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... N. obliquity, inclination, slope, slant, crookedness &c adj.; slopeness^; leaning &c v.; bevel, tilt; bias, list, twist, swag, cant, lurch; distortion &c 243; bend &c (curve) 245; tower of Pisa. acclivity, rise, ascent, gradient, khudd^, rising ground, hill, bank, declivity, downhill, dip, fall, devexity^; gentle slope, rapid slope, easy ascent, easy descent; shelving beach; talus; monagne Russe [Fr.]; facilis descensus averni [Lat.]. V. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... collected, as if for a great field-day, and stones were thrown from slings in a way I thought perilous to the combatants. Roads have been made, and rivers bridged. The new roads are too narrow and steep to admit of wheeled conveyances; often they are only three or four feet in width, and are at a gradient which makes them trying for horses and for persons on foot; but they are an immense improvement on the footpaths with which the natives were satisfied till they came under British rule, and with which they are still satisfied when ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... downhill now, and the giant's weight was telling. On the opposite side of the valley was another pinewood. If he could only reach that, between the good going and the up-gradient Anthony felt that there was a bare chance. The thing behind, however, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... retreat of the ice-sheet above Eskdale long before the Glacial Period terminated, and this would suggest an explanation for the layer of Warp (an alluvial deposit of turbid lake waters) which partially covers the delta. The fierce torrents that poured into Lake Pickering down the steep gradient of this canon would require an exit of equal proportions, and it seems reasonable to suppose that the gorge at Kirkham Abbey was chiefly worn at the ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... it increased as it approached Denry. He withdrew the key from his mother's cottage and put it in his pocket. He was always at his finest in a crisis. And the onrush of the pantechnicon constituted a clear crisis. Lower down the gradient of Brougham Street was more dangerous, and it was within the possibilities that people inhabiting the depths of the street might find themselves pitched out of bed by the sharp corner of a pantechnicon that was determined ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... afterward re-draw same map from memory. Measure the heights of a tree, telegraph pole and church steeple, describing method adopted. Measure width of a river, and distance apart of two objects a known distance away and unapproachable. Be able to measure a gradient, contours, conventional signs ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... legs," the Honourable Jimmy warned him, "three cylinders missing, and the fourth makes a noise like popcorn when you come to a gradient." ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... refers to the necessity two travellers are under, who, having to ascend a steep escarpment of slippery grass, can only do so by mutual assistance. Sally and the doctor got to the top, and settled down to normal progress on a practicable gradient, and all the exhilaration of the wide, wind-swept downland. But what had been to the unconscious merpussy nothing but a mutual accommodation imposed by a common lot—common subjection to the forces of gravitation and the extinction of friction ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... reached this spot, a marked change had come over her. Her pretty, even brows were slightly drawn together in an odd, thoughtful pucker. Her usually merry eyes were watchful and sober. It may have been the gradient of the hills, but somehow her gait had lost something of its buoyancy. Her steps were lagging, even hesitating, and, when she finally halted, it was almost with an ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... midday dinner had partially digested, for we had eaten rather too much, we started for Duncansbay Head, following the coast line on an up-gradient until we reached the top, which formed the north-eastern extremity of Scotland, and from where we had to start on Monday morning. It was a lonely spot, and we were the only visitors; but we had a lively time there, as the thousands of wild birds ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... quotations from month to month depended entirely upon the home harvest. A bad harvest, or the prospect of one, would double the price of corn in a few weeks; and the promise of a good yield would lower it as rapidly. Prices were like the roads of the period, steep in gradient, reflecting in their phases the local conditions, ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... of brush and scrubby timber separated the camp from the actual work. From the water's edge to the donkey engine was barely four hundred yards. From donkey to a ten-foot jump-off on the lake shore in a straight line on a five per cent. gradient ran a curious roadway, made by placing two logs in the hollow scooped by tearing great timbers over the soft earth, and a bigger log on each side. Butt to butt and side to side, the outer sticks half their thickness above the ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of John Gilpin's ride. Back over the bridge, where Cavaliers and Roundheads once stood at push of pike for fifty minutes by "the towne clocke"; through the market-place, where the cheap-jack ceased lying that he might regard us; past the policeman at the Cross (slower at this point); up the steep gradient of the High Street; right through a flock of geese (illustrious bird! who not only warnest great cities of impending ruin, but keepest thyself out of harm's way better than any four-footed beast of the field), we drove our headlong course; ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... mountains the builders came to a solid mass of rock, which presented a barrier that to a surface road was impassable. They determined to tunnel it, and, after an enormous expenditure of labor, finished an inclined tunnel 225 feet in length, of the same gradient as the road. A gorge in the side of the mountain where a small stream, the Schnurtobel, had cut itself a passage also hindered their way, and was crossed by a bridge of lattice girder work in three spans, each 85 feet long. The entire roadbed, from ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... piccaninnies! Thou'll no be telling me thot, Pold veg! Did ums blubble bigsplash crytears cos fren Padney was took off in black bag? Of all de darkies Massa Pat was verra best. I never see the like since I was born. Tiens, tiens, but it is well sad, that, my faith, yes. O, get, rev on a gradient one in nine. Live axle drives are souped. Lay you two to one Jenatzy licks him ruddy well hollow. Jappies? High angle fire, inyah! Sunk by war specials. Be worse for him, says he, nor any Rooshian. Time all. There's eleven of them. Get ye gone. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... started from there, with a guard of six men on his road to Cape Town. During the night as they drew near De Aar, his guards fell asleep, and our brave Commandant prepared to leave the train. He seized a favourable opportunity when the engine was climbing a steep gradient and jumped off. But the pace was fast enough to throw him to the ground, though fortunately he only sustained slight injury. When daylight came he hid himself. Having made out his bearings he began to make his way back on the following night. He passed a house, but dared not seek admission, ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... as one of my managers reports that he has observed it under jack while it was not apparent on the coffee under other kinds of shade trees. But on hot westerly and southerly slopes, and especially where the soil is a bad retainer of moisture, and where the gradient is rather steep, jack may be used with advantage, as in such situations the heat is great and the light strong. I am therefore taking steps to remove jack by degrees from all but southerly and westerly exposures. I may add here that I have found that plants grown from seed procured from the ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... those who enjoyed the great pace, the driver allowed the train to go at thirty miles an hour, and then, to show his complete control over the carriages, he applied the brakes and came to a standstill on the steep gradient. But for the existence of the long, narrow ravine right through the heart of these lofty moors, we may reasonably doubt whether Whitby would ever have been joined with York other than by way of ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... and reconstruction of a whole district, formerly either squalid, over-blocked, and dilapidated in some parts, or oversteep and dangerous to traffic in others. But a short time before that same Holborn Valley was one of the most heartbreaking impediments to horse traffic in London, with a gradient on one side of one in eighteen, while opposite it was one in twenty. Thus everything on wheels, and every foot-passenger entering the City by the Holborn route, had to descend twenty-six feet to the Valley of the Fleet, and then ascend a like number to Newgate. ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... excepting those on the railway to Bourg. The Bourg or Satonay railway station is at the top of the Rue Terme, astreet commencing near the N.E. corner of the Place des Terreaux. From the Rue Terme the train is pulled up the hill by a rope in the same way as at Fourvire. The gradient is 16 per 100, and the distance 547 yards. At the top station, in the Boulevard de la Croix Rousse, passengers for Bourg enter the ordinary railway carriages. The rope railway runs every 5 minutes, fare 1d., and ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... They are buttressed on the outer edge by similar blocks set four or five inches lower, and themselves forming one side of the solidly paved water-way or gutter which was constructed as part of every such road on a steep gradient, to secure it from abrasion by flood or sudden rush from heavy rainfall. There are many excellent examples of this in the Forest of Dean. We are on the watch, however, for some part where the "margines" remain on both sides of the way. At last ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Antietam, however, is a more difficult obstacle than the Sauerbach, the brook which meanders through the open meadows of the Alsatian valley. A deep channel of more than sixty feet in width is overshadowed by forest trees; and the ground on either bank ascends at a sharp gradient to the crests above. Along the ridge to the west, which parts the Antietam from the Potomac, and about a mile distant from the former stream, runs the Hagerstown turnpike, and in front of this road there was a strong position. ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... made on the side of Islamgee was broad but very steep on the average at a gradient of one in three; half way an almost straight angle intersected it, and we feared that there might be some difficulty in turning the heavy waggons without upsetting them. He did not speak much at first, being intent on examining the waggons below; but as soon as the ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... by pipes, just as we should; but when they brought water from forty miles away they preferred to bring it in channels lined with impermeable cement and carried upon arches, which wound across the country according to the levels in order to avoid the excessive pressure of too steep a gradient. The reasons for their choice are simple enough. Their chief difficulty was in making pipes of iron of sufficient capacity. On the other hand, it was easy to construct a cemented channel in masonry of any size you desired. ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... experiments were made before the Society of Civil Engineers with the tricycle above described, and on that occasion it traversed the Rue Girardon and the Rue de Norvino to Montmartre (streets in which the gradient rises to 15 centimeters per meter) with a velocity ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... erection. The working speed of this line was restricted by the Board of Trade to ten miles an hour, which was readily obtained, although the gradients of the line were decidedly unfavorable, including an incline of two miles in length at a gradient of 1 in 38. It was intended to extend the line six miles beyond Bush Mills, in order to join it at Dervock station with the north of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... and precipitous that it was found necessary to build the bridge in two parts, each against the face of the cliff, and then gradually lower them until they met above the river, three hundred and fifty feet below. Finally by an almost intolerable gradient we topped the divide and found ourselves overlooking a wonderful, well-watered plain five thousand feet above the sea, and cultivated as far as the vision could carry with the care and precision ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... appeared grazing free amongst the bushes. A little further off lay the Aylonda valley studded with graves, and dark with verdure. Beyond it stretched the Wady Harawwah, a long gloomy hollow in the general level. The background was a bold sweep of blue hill, the second gradient of the Harar line, and on its summit closing the western horizon lay a golden streak—the Marar Prairie. Already I felt at the end of my journey. About noon, reaching a kraal, whence but that morning ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... Upper Wye, which needs it. They take the water from the Moselle (which is here broad and torrential and falls in steps, running over a stony bed with little swirls and rapids), and they lead it along at an even gradient, averaging, as it were, the uneven descent of the river. In this way they have a continuous stream running through fields that would otherwise be bare and dry, but that are ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... a stream. Far away a cow lowed, a long, deep monotone, or a goat's call trembled from nowhere to nowhere. But mostly there was a silence which buzzed with a multitude of small winged life. Going up the hills the Philosopher bent forward to the gradient, stamping vigorously as he trod, almost snorting like a bull in the pride of successful energy. Coming down the slope he braced back and let his legs loose to do as they pleased. Didn't they know their business—Good luck to them, ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... coloured carpet, green, white and brown, through which ran two broad, twisting, silver threads, the rivers Brenta and Astico. There had been more than a hundred bends in the road up to this point, but the gradient was never uncomfortably steep. Snow lay thick on the higher levels and the pine and fir trees were all snow-crowned. Sometimes the road ran along the edge of rocky gorges, dropping sheer for hundreds of feet below, with a great mountain wall on the other hand rising sheer ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... made on the outward voyage by Simpson and Wright[36] into the atmospheric electricity over the ocean, one set of which consisted of an inquiry into the potential gradient, and observations were undertaken at Melbourne for the determination of the absolute value of the potential gradient over the sea.[37] Numerous observations were also made on the radium content of the atmosphere over the ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... a horseshoe section, 19 feet wide by 21 feet high. It has been cut 160 feet below the surface through the limestone and shale, but is arched with brick, having rubble above, and at the outfall is lined on the invert or under side with iron. The gradient is 36 feet in the mile, and the total fall is 205 feet, of which 140 feet are available for use. The capacity of the tunnel is 100,000 horse- power. In the lands of the company it is 400 feet from the margin of the river, to which it is connected by a canal, which is ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... some of the pieces. The only effect was that the larger ones became detached and threatened to roll down the gradient and crush us. It was evident that the obstacle was far beyond any efforts which we could make to remove it. The road by which Maple White had ascended ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... others it runs in the bed of the river, which is dotted everywhere with roaring rapids (as we are ascending very quickly), and when the water is high these roads are submerged and often impassable. In some places it was a six-inch path along the mountain slope, with a gradient of from sixty to seventy degrees, and landslips and rains ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... be described as the natural gradient which the machine automatically makes when engine power is cut off. It will be evident why it is safer for a pilot to fly, say, at four or five thousand feet high than just over the tree-tops or the chimney-pots of towns. ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... gazed at the foremost carriage in alarm, so nearly was it upset in one of the ruts of the ill-kept road; but the rate at which they were going saved it, and they thundered along without accident to where the gradient grew less steep. ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... mountain, 5900 ft. high, in the Swiss canton of Schwyz, with a superb view from the summit, on which hotels have been built for the convenience of the many who visit it; is reached by two toothed railways with a gradient of 1 ft. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... descended. After some scrambling we found ourselves on a landing-place, from which another low passage of an easier gradient led into a large ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... not easy travelling for artillery, but Turner was a man whom no difficulties dismayed. Within an hour a couple of his guns had been dragged up the steep gradient, were unlimbered, and served by the ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... parallel with the river on the north side round the immense curve which the Rio Grande describes in that particular section. We passed Sacramento (elev. 1,850 ft.), and, in numerous curves, the railway rose by a gradient of 31/2 per cent among hills seemingly worn out by torrential rains into rounded shapes with huge gaps between. We left the Rio Grande, there about 100 yards wide with thickly wooded banks and islands. At Conquista we had already again ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... has bethought him of putting the brook, which used to flow so gaily through the fields, to work. Halfway up the slope, a watercourse, economizing the gradient, diverts part of the water and conducts it into a large reservoir, which supplies the mill wheels with motor power. This basin stands beside a frequented path and is walled off at ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... The trail went far out to the right at an easy gradient, turned sharply, and came back to reach out as far to the left. It was more difficult than Marion had imagined, for the reason that the loose stones afforded an ill footing for the pony, which slipped and slid and stumbled, often ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... back upon the cushions and glanced at me with a quizzical smile. The big, up-to-date car which Colonel Menendez had placed at our disposal was surmounting a steep Surrey lane as though no gradient had existed. ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... and Pastura had a theoretical capacity of 84 000 gal. per day. It delivers only 65,000 gal. per day. There are 5 miles of bored pipe on the upper end of this section. Pressure gaugings show a hydraulic gradient in excess of the theoretical on the bored pipe, whereas the stave pipe on the lower end carries the 65,000 gal. on a flatter gradient ...
— The Water Supply of the El Paso and Southwestern Railway from Carrizozo to Santa Rosa, N. Mex. • J. L. Campbell
... foot of the hill the road zigzags, making a fairly easy gradient to the summit, on which stands a house whose owner kindly allows visitors to walk about his grounds and participate in the view. When riding, we followed the road that continues on the right for several miles, in order to prolong the ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... varied at will by a simple electric field normal to the applied voltage gradient—a field which could be generated by a couple of dry cells if need be—and ranged from a hundred thousand to about three billion. For all practical purposes, here ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson
... movements in the opposite direction changing connections in the opposite order of succession, and, therefore, slowing the car. There is, however, no definite speed corresponding to each notch, for this will vary with the load on each car, and with the gradient upon which ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... constructed of longitudinal and transverse box girders 2 ft. 8 in. deep, and rests on two axles 6 in. in diameter; round these axles swivel the cast-iron bogie frames which carry the ground wheels. This arrangement was adopted because the crane has to travel up a gradient of 1 in 30, and the bogies enable it to take the incline better; they also distribute the weight more evenly on the wheels. The gauge of the rails is 15 ft, the wheels are 2 ft. 6 in. in diameter, and have heavy steel ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... name of Acton's home, was situated just within the borders of Yorkshire. A single line of rails takes you from Lowbay Junction up the Westmoreland hills to the top of the heaviest gradient in the kingdom, and then hurtles you down into the little wayside station of Lansdale, ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... whine of scores of shells hurrying all together through the air. Every five minutes or so a certain howitzer, tucked into some hiding-place, vents its periodical growl, and we can hear the huge projectile climbing slowly, up his steep gradient with a hiss like that of water from a fire-hose. There is some other heavy shell which passes us also, somewhere in the middle of his flight. We cannot distinguish the report of the gun, and we do not hear the shell burst; but at regular intervals we can quite distinctly hear ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... narrowed down from one side or the other - in other words, when an abrupt change of the field-conditions, that is, a sudden leap from light to dark or from dark to light, is introduced within this realm. In this case, clearly, the effect of the transverse field-gradient on such a leap will be different, depending on the relation between the directions of the two (see small arrows in Fig. i). Our eyes witness to this difference by seeing the colours of the blue pole of the colour-scale appear when the field-gradient ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... slept securely there. Did the divine fingers draw me a little more closely, and press the lines engraven on the Hand into my soul, and leave an impression of dreams there? I felt myself going swiftly on and up through a skyey gradient, and the soft, balmy air, displaced by my passing through, fell back into its own place with pearly music. I wanted to open my eyes and see where I was going; but I could not. I was passive in action, active in thought only. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... himself. Precariously balanced, he descended the Square again, frowning hard, his teeth set, and actually managed to swerve into King Street. Constance, in the parlour, saw an incomprehensible winged thing fly past the window. The cousins Povey sounded an alarm and protest and ran in pursuit; for the gradient of King Street is, in the strict sense, steep. Half-way down King Street Dick was travelling at twenty miles an hour, and heading straight for the church, as though he meant to disestablish it and perish. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... anything like its velocity through free space. It was soon found, as Professor Mendenhall says, "that it is no more correct to assign a definite velocity to electricity than to a river. As the rate of flow of a river is determined by the character of its bed, its gradient, and other circumstances, so the velocity of an electric current is found to depend on the conditions under which the flow takes place."[2] Mile for mile the original Atlantic cable had twenty times the retarding effect of a good aerial line; the best ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... echoed and re-echoed from the heights above, and intensified the electric battery within him. He went down the slopes regardless of gradient at a pace that might have left even Zeppa behind if he had followed; but ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... And wine were always iced, And bores were kicked out straightway Through a convenient gateway; Then down the year's long gradient 'Twere sad to be enticed, If wit were always radiant, And wine were ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... to the main road sloped obliquely along the face of the hill, descending by a tolerably easy gradient for a distance of about a mile before it joined the road at a depth of some three hundred feet below the level of the house. Upon reaching the road, which, be it remembered, completely encircled the lake, Escombe had yet another opportunity to note the thoroughness ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... through the snow to the Otome Pass, on an immemorial and nearly perpendicular bridle path, and once by the modern road to the tunnel which, with characteristic address, the Japanese have bored through the rock, thus reducing a very steep gradient. ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... built of stone, and has a neat appearance, but the approach to it is not very good. You have to mount a small flight of steps to get to it, and their gradient is so acute that if you should fall on them you would never proceed onward, nor lie still, but wend your way in a rolling manner to the bottom. Internally the church is one of the prettiest in Preston. It is not large; we don't suppose it will accommodate more than about 250; but it is peculiarly ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... and the starting. Their respective positions will be gathered from Fig. 92, which shows a station on a double line. Between the distant and the home an interval is allowed of 800 yards on the level, 1,000 yards on a falling gradient, and 600 yards on a rising gradient. The home stands near the approach end of the station, and the starting at the departure end of the platform. The last is sometimes reinforced by an "advance starting" signal some distance ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... Metropolitan Railway near Smithfield; but how could the hands of the affianced couple be joined? If there was no viaduct, there must be a tunnel. Now, the bank of the river being a very short distance from Smithfield, a very steep and dangerous gradient would have been required to effect the junction. Moreover, had the line been carried under Ludgate Hill, there must have been a slight detour to ease the ascent, the cost of which detour would have been enormous. The tunnel proposed would have involved the destruction of a few trifles—such, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... train in motion. So hilly is the little island that if the engine is approaching the chances are it looks as if it were about to plunge wildly down on its head and turn a somersault into the station, or else it seems to be gradually climbing up a steep gradient after the fashion of a fly on the wall. But everything appears well managed, and the dulness of the daily press is never enlivened by accounts of a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... crest of the encircling hills to the circular belt of plain below was of course quite an easy matter, compared with the ascent of the outer slope on the previous day, the gradient of the road being practically uniform all the way, and just steep enough to necessitate a slight application of the brakebar to the rear wheels of the wagon from the crest to the plain; and Dick noted with some surprise that their taciturn friend, the officer in command, appeared ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... towards six o'clock in the evening of the following day, having passed the time pleasantly in Paris, the train bore them swiftly beyond Pontarlier and down the steep gradient of the Gorges de l'Areuse towards Neuchatel. The Val de Travers, through which the railway slips across the wooded Jura into Switzerland, is like a winding corridor cleft deep between savage and precipitous walls. ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... relieved. Mechanically, my feet worked to and fro on the pedals. It was a gentle down-gradient now towards the town. I had no further need ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... arranged on the line Haaren-Wurselen, the hardest section of the Aix la Chapelle-Julich Railway. This section has a gradient of 1 in 65 on a length of 4 kilos; and two curves of 250 and 300 meters radius and 667 meters length. The goods train consisted of twenty-two goods wagons, sixteen of which were empty and six loaded. The total weight of the wagons was ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various
... senile in a man in his early twenties. At others, it is distinctly feminine in its hairlessness, and the delicate texture of the skin, as well as in the clean-cut patterning of the features. Every gradient between premature senility ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... bottom clearly owing to mist and bad light, and the possibility of the slope ending in a sheer fall occurred to us; but the fog that was creeping up behind allowed no time for hesitation. We descended slowly at first, cutting steps in the snow; then the surface became softer, indicating that the gradient was less severe. There could be no turning back now, so we unroped and slid in the fashion of youthful days. When we stopped on a snow-bank at the foot of the slope we found that we had descended at least 900 ft. in two or three minutes. We looked back and saw the grey fingers of the fog ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... violence of the sudden storms and the diluvial character of the winter rains. Doubtless the outsides of the walls were faced with well burnt bricks, carefully set, and often coated with an impenetrable enamel; but an inclined plane of a more or less gentle gradient wound from base to summit to give access to the latter. When a storm burst upon one of these towers, this plane became in a moment the bed of a torrent, for its outer edge would, of course, be protected by a low wall. The water ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... Komaticks were racing and tearing down the gradient of the land to our camp, and all of us were out to see the finish. Kudlooktoo and Arkeo an even distance apart; and, heads up, tails up, a full five sledge-lengths ahead, with snowdust spinning free, the dog-team of the ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... out at about 2 p.m. So strong was the Battalion that D Company, which itself numbered over 200, was unable to travel with us and had to follow by a later train. In its early stages the journey, though similar to most of the kind, produced one formidable incident, for at the top of the steep gradient between Candas and Doullens the train snapped in half; its hind portion was left poised in a cutting for an hour, until two locomotives arrived to push it on to Doullens, whither the forward half, in gay ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... Lincolnshire being all on a dead level, there is a stiff gradient on the Great Northern line, as it passes through the county, about 2 miles from Essendine, where an elevation is attained about 10ft. higher than the cross of St. Paul’s Cathedral; and only some 10ft. lower than the highest point, at Grant’s House, near Berwick. On the old Coach-road from London ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... christener's ear: and, even as he spoke, the voice of a noising arose and droned from Spezzia, its hills, its villages, and its sea; the Boodah, only half-liberated, strained in travail; crashed from her bands; slipped down the greased gradient—plunged—and, gathering momentous way, went wading deep, deeper—like Behemoth run mad—amid a wrath of froths and a brawling ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... (a gradient of 1 foot in two miles). In other words, the velocity of light must be 10,000 times as great as the velocity of the earth in its orbit. This amounts to a speed of 190,000 miles a second—not so very different from what Roemer had reckoned ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... water-power of mountain streams whereby the trains are also to be run through the tunnel, which ascends, from the northern or Savoy side, at Modane, all the way to its exit at Bardonneche, with a gradient equal to 19 in 1000. The machine, once presented to the rock, projects into it simultaneously four horizontal series of sixteen scalpels, working backward and forward, by means of springs cased in, and put in motion ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... moment or two Osborn did not answer. Redmire bank was an obstacle to horse traffic, and the road surveyor had plans for easing the gradient that would necessitate cutting down a wood where Osborn's pheasants found shelter. He had refused permission, and the matter had been dropped; but, if the farmers insisted, the council might be forced to use their ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... its diurnal variation be interrupted, danger may be apprehended. No positive rule can be given as to the amount of depression to be expected, but at the center of some of the storms the barometer is said to stand fully 2 inches lower than outside the storm field. The average barometric gradient, near the vortex of the most violent of these storms, is said to be rather more than 1 inch in 50 nautical miles. As the center of the storm is approached the more rapid become the changes of wind, until at length, ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... process toxic waste products clamoring for removal so the ailing body is not drowned in it's own poisons. It is often necessary to use clear vegetable broth, vegetable and wheat grass juices, and fruits juices, or whole sprouts to slow down the cleansing gradient and sometimes, to resupply the ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... insensibility which came upon Glaisher, and in a lesser degree upon Coxwell, when, in 1862, they ascended in a balloon to the height of thirty thousand feet, was due to the extreme speed with which a perpendicular ascent is made. Doing it at an easy gradient and accustoming oneself to the lessened barometric pressure by slow degrees, there are no such dreadful symptoms. At the same great height I found that even without my oxygen inhaler I could breathe without undue distress. It was bitterly cold, however, and my thermometer was at zero, Fahrenheit. ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the rear of this came a couple of cabs, the forerunners of a long procession of flying vehicles, going for the most part to Chalk Farm station, where the North-Western special trains were loading up, instead of coming down the gradient into Euston. ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... of this conversation, running through a most beautiful valley, glorious with tropical vegetation. The train was gradually rising on an easy gradient to the higher lands, where we hoped to get fresher air, for the heat in the valley was most oppressive after three weeks passed practically in the open on the deck of ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties |
