Note 727 — Chapter XXVI
Reading edition
“The muir is a hill, but a very gentle one; and it has the peculiarity of being a regular curve, presenting in all parts a segment of a sphere, or rather an oblate spheroid. There are no rapid declivities and no plains. Hence, in every part of the hill, there is a close sky line, caused by the immediate curve, and where there is so much of the curve, as will reach a perpendicular of some eight feet between two bodies of men, they cannot see each other.”—Burton’s Scotland (1689–1748), vol. ii. p. 193.