was probably partly natural and partly artificial. Through the centre of this lake, which is now drained, there runs a raised way pointing to the hills. It is a broad and elevated causeway constructed of earth and stones, and is now called _Iomaire an tachair_, or ‘the ridge of the way.’ It is 220 yards long and about 22 feet wide.[521] In a hollow among the hillocks to which it points, and at some little distance, is the foundation of a small oval house measuring about 18 feet long by 14 broad, outside measure, now called _Cabhan Cuildeach_; and from the door of the house proceeds a small avenue of stones, which grows wider as it ascends to a hillock; and there are traces of walls which appear to have enclosed it. It is difficult to avoid the conjecture that it was the construction of this causeway which gave to Cillene, the anchorite abbot, his epithet of Bridgemaker, more especially as it points towards what appears to have been an anchorite’s cell, to which it was probably designed to give ready access across the lake; and, if he constructed it, we have only to look to an old anchorite establishment in Ireland to find what afforded him his pattern. In the island of Ardoilen, on the west coast of Ireland, already referred to as affording an example of an early anchorite establishment, we find that ‘on the south side of the enclosure there is a small lake, apparently artificial, from which an artificial outlet is formed, which turned a small mill; and along the west side of this lake there is an artificial stone path or causeway, 220 yards in length, which leads to another stone cell or house, of an oval form, at the south side of the valley in which the monastery is situated. This house is eighteen feet long and nine wide, and there is a small walled enclosure joined to it, which was probably a garden. There is also, adjoining to it, a stone altar surmounted by a cross, and a small lake which, like that already noticed, seems to have been formed by art.’[522] There is no appearance of a stone altar near the cell in Iona. In other respects the resemblance seems too striking to be accidental. [Sidenote: The term _Comhorba_, or Coärb, applied to abbots of Columban monasteries.]