Cairngorm, a mountain on the mutual border of Kirkmichael parish, Banffshire, and Abernethy parish, Inverness-shire, culminating 3 miles NE of the summit of Ben Macdhui in Aberdeenshire. It has a conical outline, and rises to an altitude of 4084 feet above sea-level. It is clothed, over much of its sides, with Scotch pine forest, and covered on the top almost all the year round with snow; and it stands grouped with a great knot of the Grampians, occupying an area of about 140 square miles, sending off the head-streams of the river Dee, and of great affluents of the Spey, and often called from it the Cairngorm group. The mountain-masses of the group are broken and dissevered by intervening depressions and intersecting glens; their rocks are famous for containing numerous specimens of the beautiful rock crystals popularly called Cairngorm stones; the shoulders of some of them break down in stupendous precipices; the shoulders and skirts of others are clothed with verdure or with forest; and some of the glens display sublime features of alpine scenery.Ord. Sur., sh. 74,1877. See Hill Burton's Cairngorm Mountains (Edinb. 1864).
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