"The island is oval in shape, 180 feet long, and 135 feet broad in the widest part. It has tolerably deep water round it, excepting towards the nearest shore, a distance of about one hundred yards, where, in dry seasons, it does not exceed 6 or 7 feet.... "In the middle of the island, which is thickly covered with trees of thirty or forty years' growth, but with a few much older toward the south end, a circular mound appeared, resembling a low tumulus, 45 feet in diameter, rising in the centre to about 3-1/2 feet in height, round the edges of which there were, in some parts, traces of a low wall of three or four courses of small stones, like a miniature dike. The island rises gradually from the water to the base of the mound, which at that season (the beginning of October) was about 18 inches above it, so that the top of the mound, which was the highest part of the island, was then about 5 feet above the loch. Spacious cuttings were made in the centre, afterwards extended to the edge of the mound in various directions, with the following results:--The island proved to have been a crannog, formed apparently on a shoal in the lake, composed of shingle over blue clay, the object having obviously been to raise a platform which would be above the water even when the lake was at its fullest, as, even at the present time, there is a considerable rise in the wet months, although pains are taken to keep clear the outfall from the loch. The mound was found to be of earth and stones mixed, extending beneath which, at a depth of 5 feet in the centre, but decreasing in depth towards the edge, was found a flooring of trunks of trees, oak and alder, in two layers, crossing each other at right angles in some places, in others lying rather confusedly. These were mostly not more than 6 or 8 inches in diameter, but one solitary trunk of an oak, near the centre, lying at a higher level, and possibly the remains of a hut or other superstructure, was fully two feet in diameter, although much decayed. These layers of wood were traced as having covered a circular space about fifty feet in diameter, thus agreeing nearly with the size as well as the shape of the mound.... The extent of the mound would appear to have been that of the crannog proper, but the existence of a solitary oak pile, 50 feet from it, on the weather side of the island, makes it probable that either a breakwater had been placed there, as was also supposed to be the case in Dowalton Loch, or a 'chevaux-de-frise' of sharp-pointed stakes for defence.