ew of the sea. I scarce expected being
introduced in Orkney to a scene in which the traveller could so
thoroughly forget that he was on an island. Of the parish of Harray,
which borders on Mr. Garson's property, no part touches the sea-coast;
and the people of the parish are represented by their neighbors, who
pride themselves upon their skill as sailors and boatmen, as a race of
lubberly landsmen, unacquainted with nautical matters, and ignorant of
the ocean and its productions. A Harray man is represented, in one of
their stories, as entering into a compact of mutual forbearance with a
lobster,--to him a monster of unknown powers and formidable
proportions,--which he had at first attempted to capture, but which had
shown fight, and had nearly captured him in turn. "Weel, weel, let a-be
for let a-be," he is made to say; "if thou does na clutch me in thy
grips, I'se no clutch thee in mine." It is to this primitive parish that
David Vedder, the sailor-poet of Orkney, refers, in his "Orcadian
Sketches," as "celebrated over the whole archipelago for the
peculiarities of its inhabitants, their singular manners and habits,
their uncouth appearance, and homely address. Being the most landward
district in Pomona," he adds, "and consequently having little
intercourse with strangers, it has become the stronghold of many ancient
customs and superstitions, which modern innovation has pushed off from
their pedestals in almost all the other parts of the island. The
permanency of its population, too, is mightily in favor of 'old use and
wont,' as it is almost entirely divided amongst a class of men yelept
_pickie_, or petty lairds, each ploughing his own fields and reaping his
own crops, much in the manner their great-great-grandfathers did in the
days of Earl Patrick. And such is the respect which they entertain for
their hereditary beliefs, that many of them are said still to cast a
lingering look, not unmixed with reverence, on certain spots held sacred
by their Scandinavian ancestors."

After an early dinner I set out for the barony of Birsay, in the
northern extremity of the mainland, accompanied by Mr. Garson, and
passed for several miles over a somewhat dreary country, bare, sterile,
and brown, studded by cold, broad, treeless lakes, and thinly mottled by
groups of gray, diminutive cottages, that do not look as if there was
much of either plenty or comfort inside. But after surmounting the hills
that form the northern side of