me three
minutes killed, cleaned, pickled, and tubbed by the fishermen's wives
and daughters in their brightest caps and jewellery, for the whole scene
is a fair and a festival.

In due time we arrived at Kirkwall, where we stayed a fortnight, in the
course of which we were soon invited to Mr. Balfour's castle at
Shapinshay. I call to mind in that mediaeval-looking stronghold (but it
is a modern structure) his splendid banqueting-room, lighted by the
illuminated points of twelve stags' heads, each having twelve tynes,
thus 144 of them, ranged on the sides of that baronial hall: the castle,
of grey granite in the Norman style, having its own gasometer, all the
light was gas; this struck me as a remarkable feature inside: on the
outside was one quite as memorable. Those sterile-looking isles of the
North Sea are so swept by stormy winds as to be absolutely treeless:
insomuch that it is jocularly said, that for cutting down a tree at
Kirkwall, the penalty is _death!_ simply because no trees exist there.
Well, the wealthy Baron of Shapinshay conquers nature thus; he has dug
round the castle vast hollow gardens (not a continuous moat) in which
flourishes a profusion of flowers and shrubs and even trees,--till
arboriculture is cut shear off, if it dares to look over the mounds. I
put it thus:--

"When to the storm-historic Orcades
The wanderer comes, he marvels to find there
A stately palace, towering new and fair,
Bedded in flowers, though unbanked by trees,
A feudal dream uprisen from the seas:
And when his wonder asks,--Whose magic rare
Hath wrought this bright creation?--men reply,
Balfour's of Balfour: large in mind and heart,
Not only doth his duteous care reclaim
All Shapinshay to new fertility,
But to his brother men a brother's part
Doing, in always doing good,--his fame
Is to have raised an Orcade Arcady,
Rich in gems of Nature as of Art."

At Kirkwall we could not help noticing what a fine race of men and
women, blue-eyed and yellow-haired, many of these Northerners are; at
St. Magnus Cathedral they trooped in looking like giants, seeming taller
perhaps because the pews are on a dead level with the floor. Of course
we duly did all the sights of the place, in the way of the ruinous
bishop's palace and so forth, and received hearty welcomes from both
high and low, the isolation of those parts conducing to the popularity
of strangers; to s