The which alone is a practicable if rough and often 



Hill-Tarn, broken way, came scattered groups and then 

 isolated trees of birch and mountain -ash. 

 Thereafter for a long way the heather climbed. 

 Then it gave way more and more to bracken. 

 In turn the bracken broke like the last faint 

 surf against huge boulders and waste stony 

 places. The grouse called far below. The 

 last deer were browsing along their extreme 

 pastures, some five hundred to eight hundred 

 feet below the precipitous bastions of Maoldhu. 

 Higher than they I saw a circling hawk and 

 three ravens flying slowly against the wind. 

 Then came the unpeopled wilderness, or so it 

 seemed till I heard the wail of a solitary curlew 

 (that spirit of the waste, for whom no boggy 

 moors lie too low and desolate, for whom no 

 mountain -ranges are too high and wild and 

 solitary), and once, twice, and again in harsh 

 response but faint against the wind, the barking 

 of a hill-fox and its mate. All life had ceased, 

 I thought, after that, save an eagle which in 

 a tireless monotony swung round and round 

 the vast summit of Maoldhu. But suddenly, 

 perhaps a hundred feet above me, six or seven 

 ptarmigan rose with a whirr, made a long 

 sailing sweep, and settled (slidingly and gradu- 

 ally as flounders in shallow waters among grey 

 pebbles and obscuring sand-furrows) among the 



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