"This crannog," writes Sir H. Maxwell, "is situated in the centre
of a peat moss, formerly a lake, and still in most summers and all
winters a quaking morass. Towards the centre of this moss, which is
about sixty acres in area, there is a circular enclosure 54 feet in
diameter, surrounded by a low wall. This is marked in the Ordnance
Survey maps as a fort; but no fort, in the ordinary acceptation, could
exist in the centre of what had been, at no very great distance of
time, a lake. Although no timbers were visible at the time of our
visit, the whole surface of the enclosure being green with grass,
and the surrounding moss covered with heather and bog plants, its
situation and character indicated its true nature to those experienced
in lake-dwellings, and a very slight excavation at once confirmed this
view. Beginning in the centre, the diggers exposed beneath the shallow
layer of vegetable soil the familiar features of a fascine-dwelling.
The only novel and most interesting feature in this crannog is the
surrounding fence, which, doubtless, was the usual mode of protecting
the huts or wigwams of the interior, but which in most crannogs
hitherto examined has been reduced by the action of the waves to a
shapeless mound or beach of small boulders. Here, however, owing to
flat flags having been used, the structure is perfect, surrounding
the entire islet to a height of about three feet. The depth of the
structure from the surface to the alluvial bed of the lake was 4 feet.
The lake bottom, into which the piles were driven, was soft peat, 7
feet deep. The moss around the island had grown since the structure
was made to the level of the island; but no deductions could be made
from that fact as to the age of the crannog, owing to the varying
rate of the growth of moss, and to the uncertainty as to when the
lake became filled up and moss ceased to grow. In the wonderfully
accurate and laborious map of Timothy Pont, published in 1672, the
present moss appears as a lake. Three days' labour sufficed to clear
out the greater part of the contents of the enclosure. The chief
relics disclosed, besides great quantities of bones of the usual kind,
including those of the goat and the roe-deer, were 17 small beads of
scarlet vitreous slag (=Fig. 167=), forming a portion of a necklace;
a rough shale ring, several excellent hammer and grinding-stones,
many quartz pebbles, which had been brought for some unknown reason
[sling-stones?] from the seashore, distant about a mile; two broken
crucibles (=Fig. 168=), a spinning-whorl of bone or horn. From a
depth of three feet, flint flakes, a small jet ring, a portion of a
perforated jet ornament, and a remarkable button-like object of bronze
(=Fig. 168=)." (B. 426, p. 113.)
[Illustration: =Fig. 168.=--Broken Crucible and a Bronze Button (1/1).]