Flammifer
Well-Known Member
An illustration of the pitfalls of reading 'too closely'. 10 minutes were spent discussing whether there was a drop to the left of the road the company was on or a rise.
If one reads on 6 sentences, one finds, "but the main road wound away left and climbed with several loops up to the level ground at the top". This pretty clearly indicates that what is on the left of the Company and the Road is a rise of land (up which the road must loop to get to the level (five fathoms - or 30 feet above) at the top of the 'low cliff'.
So, although there is a lot of value to discussing the effect of JRRT calling the land to the left a 'steep fall', there should be no ambiguity about what the land is actually doing, if one has just read on 6 more sentences.
If one reads on 6 sentences, one finds, "but the main road wound away left and climbed with several loops up to the level ground at the top". This pretty clearly indicates that what is on the left of the Company and the Road is a rise of land (up which the road must loop to get to the level (five fathoms - or 30 feet above) at the top of the 'low cliff'.
So, although there is a lot of value to discussing the effect of JRRT calling the land to the left a 'steep fall', there should be no ambiguity about what the land is actually doing, if one has just read on 6 more sentences.