horizon some forty miles away, and found
ourselves, on a windless evening, entering Scapa Flow. We little thought
that those then little visited waters would one day witness the making
of British and German history. Scapa Flow is a miniature Mediterranean,
with the mainland of the Orkneys on one side and the island of Hoy on
the other. At the northeastern end of it, some ten miles away, a high,
red building--a lonely tower--was visible. This was the tower of the
great cathedral of Kirkwall. Approaching the Orkneys from Thurso the
first things that struck us were certain great structures crowning the
mounded hills. These, we discovered afterward were so many great
farmsteadings, protected from the wind by cinctures of high walls, many
of the Orcadian holdings being at once rich and extensive, and
commanding very high rentals.

Kirkwall, in respect of its shops, surprised us even more than Thurso.
There were chemists, grocers, booksellers, whose windows would hardly
have been out of place at Brighton; but haunting suggestions of the old,
the remote, the wild, were tingling in the air everywhere. The huge
tentacles of the kraken might have lifted themselves beyond Kirkwall
harbor. The beautiful palace of the old Earls of Orkney would have been
still habitable if only some local body early in the nineteenth century
had not stolen its slates for the purpose of roofing some schoolhouse.
Tankerness House, entered by a fortified gate, and built round a small
court, can have hardly changed since the days of Brenda and Minna
Troyle. In the nave of the great cathedral, which took four centuries in
building, one would not have been surprised at meeting Magnus Troyle or
Norna. The nave is full of the records of old Orcadian notables. These
are not, however, for the most part, attached to the walls as tablets.
They are attached to the pillars by extended iron rods, from which they
hang like the swaying signs of inns. A country without railways and
without coal--how peaceful England might be if only it were not for
these!

But our peace in a physical sense was very abruptly broken when we
quitted Kirkwall en route for the Holy Grail of our pilgrimage, Noltland
Castle, which secludes itself on the far-off island of Westray, and,
leaving the quiet of Scapa Flow behind us, encountered once more the
tumults of the Pentland Firth. But these were nothing in comparison with
those that met us as soon as we had rounded the southwest corner o