THE HILL-TARN 



ISOLATED, in one of the wildest and loneliest 

 mountain-regions of the Highlands of Ross, I 

 know a hill-tarn so rarely visited that one 

 might almost say the shadow of man does not 

 fall across its brown water from year's end to 

 year's end. It lies on the summit of a vast 

 barren hill, its cradle being the hollow of a 

 crater. Seven mountains encircle Maoldhu 

 from north, south, east, and west. One of 

 these is split like a hayfork, and that is why 

 it is called in Gaelic the Prong of Fionn. 

 Another, whose furrowed brows are dark with 

 the immemorial rheum of the Atlantic, is called 

 the Organ of Oisin, because at a height of about 

 two thousand feet it shows on its haggard 

 front a black colonnade of basalt, where all the 

 winds of the west make a wild and desolate 

 music. I have heard its lamentation falling 

 across the hill-solitudes and down through the 

 mountain-glens with a sound as of a myriad 

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