it
has been long abandoned, "as a speculation which would not pay."

I observed scattered over the beach, in the neighborhood of the lead
mine, considerable quantities of the hard chalk of England; and, judging
there could be no deposits of the hard chalk in this neighborhood, I
addressed myself on my way back, to a kelp-burner engaged in wrapping up
his fire for the night with a thick covering of weed, to ascertain how
it had come there. "Ah, master," he replied, "that chalk is all that
remains of a fine large English vessel, that was knocked to pieces here
a few years ago. She was ballasted with the chalk; and as it is a light
sort of stone, the surf has washed it ashore from that low reef in the
middle of the tideway where she struck and broke up. Most of the
sailors, poor fellows, lie in the old churchyard, beside the broken ruin
yonder. It is a deadly shore this to seafaring-men." I had understood
that the kelp-trade was wholly at an end in Orkney; and, remarking that
the sea-weed which he employed was chiefly of one kind,--the long brown
fronds of tang dried in the sun,--I inquired of him to what purpose the
substance was now employed, seeing that barilla and the carbonate of
soda had supplanted it in the manufacture of soap and glass, and why he
was so particular in selecting his weed. "It's some valuable medicine,"
he said, "that's made of the kelp now: I forget its name; but it's used
for bad sores and cancer; and we must be particular in our weed, for
it's not every kind of weed that has the medicine in't. There's most of
it, we're told, in the leaves of the tang." "Is the name of the drug," I
asked, "iodine?" "Ay, that must be just it," he replied,--"iodine; but
it doesn't make such a demand for kelp as the glass and the soap." I
afterwards learned that the kelp-burner's character of this strip of
coast, as peculiarly fatal to the mariner, was borne out by many a sad
casualty, too largely charged with the wild and the horrible to be
lightly forgotten. The respected Free Church clergyman of Stromness, Mr.
Learmonth, informed me that, ere the Disruption, while yet minister of
the parish, there were on one sad occasion eight dead bodies carried of
a Sabbath morning to his manse door. Some of the incidents connected
with these terrible shipwrecks, as related with much graphic effect by a
boatman who carried me across the sound, on an exploratory ramble to the
island of Hoy, struck me as of a character considerabl