the
precipices which skirt the island of which it forms so conspicuous a
feature, that rise sheer over the breakers from eight hundred to a
thousand. Unlike, however, the arrangement on the mainland, it is the
newer rocks that attain to the higher elevations; the heights of Hoy are
composed of that arenaceous upper member of the Lower Old Red
Sandstone,--the last formed of the Palaeozoic deposits of Orkney,--which
overlies the ichthyolitic flagstones and shales of Caithness at Dunnet
Head, and the ichthyolitic nodular beds of Inverness, Ross, and
Cromarty, at Culloden, Tarbet Ness, within the Northern Sutor, and along
the bleak ridge of the Maolbuie. It is simply a tall upper story of the
formation, erected along the western line of coast in the Orkneys, which
the eastern line wholly wants. Its screen of hills forms a noble
background to the prospect which opens on the traveller as he ascends
the eminence beyond the Free Church manse of Frith and Stennis. A large
lake, bare and treeless, like all the other lakes and lochs of Orkney,
but picturesque of outline, and divided into an upper and lower sheet of
water by two low, long promontories, that jut out from opposite sides,
and so nearly meet as to be connected by a threadlike line of road, half
mound, half bridge, occupies the middle distance. There are moory hills
and a few cottages in front; and on the promontories, conspicuous in the
landscape, from the relief furnished by the blue ground of the
surrounding waters, stand the tall stones of Stennis,--one group on the
northern promontory, the other on the south. A gray old-fashioned house,
of no very imposing appearance, rises between the road and the lake. It
is the house of Stennis, or Turmister, in which Scott places some of the
concluding scenes of the "Pirate," and from which he makes Cleveland and
his fantastic admirer Jack Bunce witness the final engagement, in the
bay of Stromness, between the Halcyon sloop of war and the savage Goffe.
Nor does it matter anything that neither sea nor vessels can be seen
from the house of Turmister: the fact which would be so fatal to a
dishonest historian tells with no effect against the honest "_maker_,"
responsible for but the management of his tale.

I got on to Stromness; and finding, after making myself comfortable in
my inn, that I had a fine bright evening still before me, longer by some
three or four degrees of north latitude than the July evenings of
Edinburgh, I set