loose stones and boulders seem to hang in the The 

 air like a grey suspended fruit though the first Hill-Tarn, 

 tempest will set them rolling in avalanche; 

 there are so many hidden ravines, and sudden 

 precipices that lean beneath tangled brows like 

 smooth appalling faces ; on the eastern slopes 

 the mountain-sheep cannot climb more than 

 halfway; on the south and west the wailing 

 curlews are in continual flight above wide 

 unfrontiered reaches of peat-bog and quaking 

 morass ; so many crags lead abruptly to long 

 shelving ledges shelterless and slippery as ice, 

 and twice an abyss of a thousand feet falls 

 sheer from loose rock covered by treacherous 

 heather for a yard or more beyond the last 

 gnarled, twisted roots. 



But, when it is once reached, is there any 

 solitude in the world more solitary than here. 

 The tarn, or lochan rather for if it is not 

 wide enough to be called a loch it is larger 

 than the ordinary tarn one is familiar with on 

 high moorlands and among the hills has no 

 outlook save to the lonely reach of sky just 

 above it. A serrated crest of herbless and 

 lifeless precipice circles it. On the lower 

 slopes a rough grass grows, and here and there 

 a little bog-myrtle may be seen. At one end 

 a small dishevelled array of reed disputes the 

 water-edge, in thin, straggling, disconsolate 



49 E 



