Those who "halt between two opinions," in the matter of religion, are like travellers who halt in indecision at cross-roads, with tempest and the night hurrying up behind them; […] like a cragsman, who has quitted hold on the rope by which he has let himself down from the overhanging brow of the cliff to the eagle's nest, and hesitates to spring and seize the rope in its rapidly diminishing oscillations.—Union Magazine.

[H]ere and there are traversed by a winding footpath like a staircase, which few but native cragsmen are venturesome enough to scale.

Let us suppose that we are doing a mountain walk to the village which is our home. At mid-day we come to the top of a cliff where we are, in space, very near it because it is just below us. We could drop a stone into it. But as we are no cragsmen we can't get down. We must go a long way round; five miles, maybe.

A skilled cragsman himself, he told his officers that he believed that a determined party of Gurkhas and other experienced climbers could reach the enemy by this route.

The cragsman was dragging a yearling kid by its hind leg. He seemed happy enough to set his own butchering duties aside to advise on the best cuts to preserve the tail and legs.

Cragsman

Meaning

Noun

Origin