ry neither wide nor high, but as
rough as God made it to this day; the deep sea on either hand of it,
full of rugged isles and reefs most perilous to seamen--all overlooked
from the eastward by some very high cliffs and the great peak of Ben
Kyaw. _The Mountain of the Mist_, they say the words signify in the
Gaelic tongue; and it is well named. For that hill-top, which is more
than three thousand feet in height, catches all the clouds that come
blowing from the seaward; and, indeed, I used often to think that it
must make them for itself; since when all heaven was clear to the sea
level, there would ever be a streamer on Ben Kyaw. It brought water,
too, and was mossy[2] to the top in consequence. I have seen us sitting
in broad sunshine on the Ross, and the rain falling black like crape
upon the mountain. But the wetness of it made it often appear more
beautiful to my eyes; for when the sun struck upon the hillsides there
were many wet rocks and watercourses that shone like jewels even as far
as Aros, fifteen miles away.

The road that I followed was a cattle-track. It twisted so as nearly to
double the length of my journey; it went over rough boulders so that a
man had to leap from one to another, and through soft bottoms where the
moss came nearly to the knee. There was no cultivation anywhere, and
not one house in the ten miles from Grisapol to Aros. Houses of course
there were--three at least; but they lay so far on the one side or the
other that no stranger could have found them from the track. A large
part of the Ross is covered with big granite rocks, some of them larger
than a two-roomed house, one beside another, with fern and deep heather
in between them where the vipers breed. Any way the wind was, it was
always sea air, as salt as on a ship; the gulls were as free as moorfowl
over all the Ross; and whenever the way rose a little, your eye would
kindle with the brightness of the sea. From the very midst of the land,
on a day of wind and a high spring, I have heard the Roost roaring like
a battle where it runs by Aros, and the great and fearful voices of the
breakers that we call the Merry Men.

Aros itself--Aros Jay, I have heard the natives call it, and they say it
means _the House of God_--Aros itself was not properly a piece of the
Ross, nor was it quite an islet. It formed the south-west corner of the
land, fitted close to it, and was in one place only separated from the
coast by a little gut of the sea,