ox LANDSLIPS. 303 



tliem carefully, made up his mind to drive a row of strong 

 piles along the " cess " as rapidly as possible; and, being a 

 man who never allowed the grass to grow under his feet, he 

 obtained and sent down half a dozen lofty pile engines with 

 30-cwt. monkeys, and piles were obtained by buying some 

 very straight-grown young beech-trees from the woods in the 

 neighbouring Chalford Valley. These piles were not less 

 than 10 inches in diameter, and were cut into 20-feet lengths. 

 Everything w^as on the ground in three or four days. The 

 " cess " made a capital floor for the pile engines to stand 

 upon ; the piles went easily through this plastic clay, each 

 engine being able to drive ten or a dozen piles in the day ; 

 so in less than a couple of days all the piles upon a 100-yard 

 slip were driven in a row. But the slip took no notice of 

 them, and the pile heads, which stood up a foot or so above 

 the ground, kept on advancing in line along with the " cess," 

 but wdth an increasing prominence of curvature in the 

 centre. 



The idea of pinning down the ^' cess," which w^as gradually 

 moving forwards, to the ground below, which was not 

 moving, and so stopping the advance of the slip, w^as so 

 obvious that it was quite natural that piles should be the 

 first thing tried, and every one was surprised that they 

 should have entirely failed to produce any effect. 



Now, these slips seldom advanced at a greater speed than 

 an inch in an hour, a movement quite imperceptible to the 

 eye. This w^as about the rate of this slip, and yet it pro- 

 gressed with such force as to shear off these green beech 

 piles at the '' slipping surface," 10 feet below the " cess," 

 without the smallest apparent check — a fact which at first 

 exercised my mind very much. The piles had, I knew, gone 

 into the sound ground below the slip to a depth of eight 

 feet ; and how could that soft clay form a cutting-edge by 



