ength he gave up the search, and stopped the
engine. The passengers amused themselves with fishing. Several coal-fish,
a large fish of slender shape, were caught, and one fine cod was hauled up
by a gentleman who united in his person, as he gave me to understand, the
two capacities of portrait-painter and preacher of the gospel, and who
held that the universal church of Christendom had gone sadly astray from
the true primitive doctrine, in regard to the time when the millennium is
to take place.

The fog cleared away in the evening; our steamer was again in motion: we
landed at Kirkwall in the middle of the night, and when I went on deck the
next morning, we were smoothly passing the shores of Fair Isle--high and
steep rocks, impending over the waters with a covering of green turf.
Before they were out of sight we saw the Shetland coast, the dark rock of
Sumburgh Head, and behind it, half shrouded in mist, the promontory of
Fitfiel Head,--Fitful Head, as it is called by Scott, in his novel of the
Pirate. Beyond, to the east, black rocky promontories came in sight, one
after the other, beetling over the sea. At ten o'clock, we were passing
through a channel between the islands leading to Lerwick, the capital of
Shetland, on the principal island bearing the name of Mainland. Fields,
yellow with flowers, among which stood here and there a cottage, sloped
softly down to the water, and beyond them rose the bare declivities and
summits of the hills, dark with heath, with here and there still darker
spots, of an almost inky hue, where peat had been cut for fuel. Not a
tree, not a shrub was to be seen, and the greater part of the soil
appeared never to have been reduced to cultivation.

About one o'clock we cast anchor before Lerwick, a fishing village, built
on the shore of Bressay Sound, which here forms one of the finest harbors
in the world. It has two passages to the sea, so that when the wind blows
a storm on one side of the islands, the Shetlander in his boat passes out
in the other direction, and finds himself in comparatively smooth water.
It was Sunday, and the man who landed us at the quay and took our baggage
to our lodging, said as he left us--

"It's the Sabbath, and I'll no tak' my pay now, but I'll call the morrow.
My name is Jim Sinclair, pilot, and if ye'll be wanting to go anywhere,
I'll be glad to tak' ye in my boat." In a few minutes we were snugly
established at our lodgings. There is no inn throughout al