I'jgi. antiquities in Scotland. 2^9 



there are the remains of an extensive fortification of 

 this sort. 



Here, as usual, the vitrified wall surrounds a level 

 area on the top of the hill, running all round in an 

 irregular form, so as to be every where on the edge 

 of the precipice of the hill. Nothing uncommon is 

 discoverable in the appearance of the walls, unlefs in 

 one place, where the farmer, who occupies the hill 

 and the fields around it, had opened up a free stone 

 quarry, which he had accidentally discovered on the 

 side of the hill near to the top of it, out of which he 

 dug free stone for the purpose of inclosing his 

 farm. In pursuing the course of the quarry, he 

 came at length to undermine the foundations of the 

 wall, when part of it tumbled down, and laid open. 

 the internal structure of that wall, which exhibited 

 phenomena considerably different from any I had hi- 

 therto observed. 



That part of the vitrified wall which remained 

 there, when I visited it in the year 1788, consisted 

 of irregular ^or/zow/a/ streaks, I cannot call them stra- 

 ta, of vitrified matter, and unvitrified stone, inter- 

 mingled alternately between one another. These 

 vitrified streaks were, as I said, irregular, and "had 

 evidentally been produced by some cause that acted 

 by fits and starts, and had no connection with the na- 

 ture of the materials of which the wall had been 

 made, as this consisted of a congeries of stones, of va- 

 rious sorts and sizes, that had been carelefsly thrown 

 together, that were evidentally of the same nature in 

 tlie parts that were vitrified, and in those that were 

 only more or le£s scorched, (Sometimes one part of 



