houses by the pier the largest was a combination of a
public house and a store, where we bought a supply of soda water. The
storekeeper was a man of slightly sinister aspect. He might have been a
character in one of Stevenson's novels. His aspect suggested distant and
enigmatic, and perhaps criminal, adventure. He had evidently some
education, and spoke of the natives with a sort of detached
condescension. I asked him if they were Catholics. He shrugged his
shoulders and said: "Some are. In this little island there are four
hundred inhabitants, and no fewer than five religions." With the
exception of this man's store, the only shop in Westray was locomotive.
We met it on a lonely road. It was a kind of glazed cart, the
transparent sides of which showed visions of the goods within.

Before leaving Westray we paid a visit to a much smaller island
opposite, Papa Westray, with an area of two thousand acres. It was
occupied by two farmers, whose average rent was more than ten shillings
an acre. On one of these farmers, thus separated from their kind, we
called. His farmstead was like a fortified town. His house was larger
than many a substantial manse. The sideboard in his spacious dining room
was occupied by two expensive Bibles and a finely cut decanter of
whisky, but his only neighbors from one year's end to another were
apparently his rival, by whom the rest of the island was tenanted, and a
female doctor lately imported from Edinburgh, whose business was more
closely related to the births of the population than to their maladies.

We had hoped, on leaving the Orkneys, to have gone as far north as the
Shetlands, but while we were lying off Westray the weather turned wet
and chilly, so we settled on going south again, visiting on our way the
islands of the outer Hebrides. The first stage of our journey was
rougher and more disagreeable than anything we had yet experienced. Once
again we were foiled in our efforts to get round Cape Wrath; and, having
spent an afternoon lying down in our cabins, we woke up to find
ourselves back again in the quiet of Scapa Flow. Next day we made a
successful crossing over sixty miles of sea to Tarbet, a little town
crouching on the neck of land which connects the Lewes with Harris. From
every cottage door there issued a sound of hand looms. The town or
village of Tarbet is in itself neat enough. One of its features is an
inn which would, with its trim garden, do honor to the banks of the
T