Immediately the little dog was lost in an unexplored country. The narrow glen was musical with springs, and the low growth was undercut with a maze of rabbit runs, very distracting to a dog of a hunting breed. Bobby knew, by much journeying with Auld Jock, that running water is a natural highway. Sheep drift along the lowest level until they find an outlet down some declivity, or up some foaming steep, to new pastures.英文原著 · 《Greyfriars Bobby》
On the northern and southern sides the Castle wall rose from the very edge of sheer precipices. Except for loopholes there were no openings. But on the west there was a grassy terrace without the wall, and below that the cliff fell away a little less steeply. The declivity was clothed sparsely with hazel shrubs, thorns, whins and thistles; and now and then a stunted fir or rowan tree or a group of white-stemmed birks was stoutly rooted on a shelving ledge. Had any one, the visitors asked, ever escaped down this wild crag?英文原著 · 《Greyfriars Bobby》
Foot by foot he went down, with no guidance at all. It is the nature of such long, low, earth dogs to go by leaps and bounds like foxes, calculating distances nicely when they can see, and tearing across the roughest country with the speed of the wild animals they hunt. And where the way is very steep they can scramble up or down any declivity that is at a lesser angle than the perpendicular. Head first they go downward, setting the fore paws forward, the claws clutching around projections and in fissures, the weight hung from the stout hindquarters, the body flattened on the earth.英文原著 · 《Greyfriars Bobby》
I inquired for a walk, and, mounting near two hundred steps made round a rock, walked up and down for about a hundred yards viewing the sea, to which I quickly descended by steps that cheated the declivity. The ocean and these tremendous bulwarks enclosed me on every side. I felt the confinement, and wished for wings to reach still loftier cliffs, whose slippery sides no foot was so hardy as to tread. Yet what was it to see?--only a boundless waste of water- -not a glimpse of smiling nature--not a patch of lively green to relieve the aching sight, or vary the objects of meditation.英文原著 · 《Letters on Sweden, Norway, and Denmark》
At length Freeman drew rein and glanced around him. They were in a lonely and-- Don Miguel thought--a most desolate and unattractive spot. An open space of about half an acre was bounded on one side by a growth of wild mustard, whose slender stalks rose to more than the height of a man's head. On the other side was a grove of live-oak; and in front, the ground fell away in a rugged, bush-grown declivity.英文原著 · 《The Golden Fleece》
Freeman, however, presently saw a sight which, if less spectacularly impressive, was far more agreeable to his eyes. On a shelf or cup of the declivity was a little clump of vegetation, and in the midst of it welled up a thin stream of water. The mustang scrambled eagerly towards it, and, before Freeman had had time to throw himself out of the saddle, he had plunged his muzzle into the rivulet. He sucked it down with such satisfaction that it was evident the water was not salt. Freeman laid himself prone upon the brink, and followed his steed's example. The draught was cool and pure.英文原著 · 《The Golden Fleece》