When Norse and Danish galleys plied
Their oars within the Firth of Clyde,
When floated Haco's banner trim
Above Norwegian warriors grim,
Savage of heart and huge of limb.
for it was at the palace there that Haco, King of Norway, died in 1263.
There was only one considerable street in the town, and this was winding
and narrow and paved with flags in the centre, something like that in
Lerwick, but the houses were much more foreign in appearance, and many
of them had dates on their gables, some of them as far back as the
beginning of the fifteenth century. We went to the same hotel as on our
outward journey, and ordered a regular good "set out" to be ready by the
time we had explored the ancient cathedral, which, like our ship, was
dedicated to _St. Magnus_. We were directed to call at a cottage for the
key, which was handed to us by the solitary occupant, and we had to find
our way as best we could. After entering the ancient building, we took
the precaution of locking the door behind us. The interior looked dark
and dismal after the glorious sunshine we had left outside, and was
suggestive more of a dungeon than a place of worship, and of the dark
deeds done in the days of the past. The historian relates that St.
Magnus met his death at the hands of his cousin Haco while in the church
of Eigleshay. He had retired there with a presentiment of some evil
about to happen him, and "while engaged in devotional exercises,
prepared and resigned for whatever might occur, he was slain by one
stroke of a hatchet. Being considered eminently pious, he was looked
upon as a saint, and his nephew Ronald built the cathedral in accordance
with a vow made before leaving Norway to lay claim to the Earldom of
Orkney." The cathedral was considered to be the best-preserved relic of
antiquity in Scotland, and we were much impressed by the dim religious
light which pervaded the interior, and quite bewildered amongst the dark
passages inside the walls. We had been recommended to ascend the
cathedral tower for the sake of the fine view which was to be obtained
from the top, but had some difficulty in finding the way to the steps.
Once we landed at the top of the tower we considered ourselves well
repaid for our exertions, as the view over land and sea was very
beautiful. Immediately below were the remains of the bishop's and earl's
palaces, relics of bygone ages, now gradually crumbling to decay, while
in the distance we could see the greater portion of the sixty-seven
islands which formed the Orkney Group. Only about one-half of these were
inhabited, the remaining and smaller islands being known as holms, or
pasturages for sheep, which, seen in the distance, resembled green
specks in the great blue sea, which everywhere surrounded them.
[Illustration: ST. MAGNUS CATHEDRAL KIRKWALL]
[Illustration: STROMNESS]
I should have liked to stay a little longer surveying this fairy-like
scene, but my brother declared he could smell our breakfast, which by
this time must have been waiting for us below. Our exit was a little
delayed, as we took a wrong turn in the rather bewildering labyrinth of
arches and passages in the cathedral walls, and it was not without a
feeling of relief that we reached the door we had so carefully locked
behind us. We returned the key to the caretaker, and then went to our
hotel, where we loaded ourselves with a prodigious breakfast, and
afterwards proceeded to walk across the Mainland of the Orkneys, an
estimated distance of fifteen miles.
On our rather lonely way to Stromness we noticed that agriculture was
more advanced than in the Shetland Islands, and that the cattle were
somewhat larger, but we must say that we had been charmed with the
appearance of the little Shetland ponies, excepting perhaps the one that
had done its best to give us a farewell kick when we were leaving the
_St. Magnus_. Oats and barley were the crops chiefly grown, for we did
not see any wheat, and the farmers, with their wives and children, were
all busy harvesting their crops of oats, but there was still room for
extension and improvement, as we passed over miles of uncultivated
moorland later. On our inquiring what objects of interest were to be
seen on our way, our curiosity was raised to its highest pitch when we
were told we should come to an underground house and to a large number
of standing stones a few miles farther on. We fully expected to descend
under the surface of the ground, and to find some cave or cavern below;
but when we got to the place, we found the house practically above
ground, with a small mountain raised above it. It was covered with
grass, and had only been discovered in 1861, about ten years before our
visit. Some boys were playing on the mountain, when one of them found a
small hole which he thought was a rabbit hole, but, pushing his arm down
it, he could feel no bottom. He tried again with a small stick, but with
the same result. The boys then went to a farm and brought a longer
stick, but again failed to reach the bottom of the hole, so they resumed
their play, and when they reached home they told their parents of their
adventure, and the result was that this ancient house was discovered and
an entrance to it found from the level of the land below.
[Illustration: SHETLAND PONIES.]
We went in search of the caretaker, and found him busy with the harvest
in a field some distance away, but he returned with us to the mound. He
opened a small door, and we crept behind him along a low, narrow, and
dark passage for a distance of about seventeen yards, when we entered a
chamber about the size of an ordinary cottage dwelling, but of a
vault-like appearance. It was quite dark, but our guide proceeded to
light a number of small candles, placed in rustic candlesticks, at
intervals, round this strange apartment. We could then see some small
cells in the wall, which might once have been used as burial places for
the dead, and on the walls themselves were hundreds of figures or
letters cut in the rock, in very thin lines, as if engraved with a
needle. We could not decipher any of them, as they appeared more like
Egyptian hieroglyphics than letters of our alphabet, and the only figure
we could distinguish was one which had the appearance of a winged
dragon.
The history of the place was unknown, but we were afterwards told that
it was looked upon as one of the most important antiquarian discoveries
ever made in Britain. The name of the place was Maeshowe. The mound was
about one hundred yards in circumference, and it was supposed that the
house, or tumulus, was first cut out of the rock and the earth thrown
over it afterwards from the large trench by which it was surrounded.
[Illustration: "STANDING STONES OF STENNESS."]
Our guide then directed us to the "Standing Stones of Stenness," which
were some distance away; but he could not spare time to go with us, so
we had to travel alone to one of the wildest and most desolate places
imaginable, strongly suggestive of ghosts and the spirits of the
departed. We crossed the Bridge of Brogar, or Bruargardr, and then
walked along a narrow strip of land dividing two lochs, both of which at
this point presented a very lonely and dismal appearance. Although they
were so near together, Loch Harry contained fresh water only and Loch
Stenness salt water, as it had a small tidal inlet from the sea passing
under Waith Bridge, which we crossed later. There were two groups of the
standing stones, one to the north and the other to the south, and each
consisted of a double circle of considerable extent. The stones
presented a strange appearance, as while many stood upright, some were
leaning; others had fallen, and some had disappeared altogether. The
storms of many centuries had swept over them, and "they stood like
relics of the past, with lichens waving from their worn surfaces like
grizzly beards, or when in flower mantling them with brilliant orange
hues," while the areas enclosed by them were covered with mosses, the
beautiful stag-head variety being the most prominent. One of the poets
has described them:
The heavy rocks of giant size
That o'er the land in circles rise.
Of which tradition may not tell,
Fit circles for the Wizard spell;
Seen far amidst the scowling storm
Seem each a tall and phantom form,
As hurrying vapours o'er them flee
Frowning in grim security,
While like a dread voice from the past
Around them moans the autumnal blast!
These lichened "Standing Stones of Stenness," with the famous Stone of
Odin about 150 yards to the north, are second only to Stonehenge, one
measuring 18 feet in length, 5 feet 4 inches in breadth, and 18 inches
in thickness. The Stone of Odin had a hole in it to which it was
supposed that sacrificial victims were fastened in ancient times, but in
later times lovers met and joined hands through the hole in the stone,
and the pledge of love then given was almost as sacred as a marriage
vow. An antiquarian description of this reads as follows: "When the
parties agreed to marry, they repaired to the Temple of the Moon, where
the woman in the presence of the man fell down on her knees and prayed
to the God Wodin that he would enable her to perform, all the promises
and obligations she had made, and was to make, to the young man present,
after which they both went to the Temple of the Sun, where the man
prayed in like manner before the woman. They then went to the Stone of
Odin, and the man being on one side and the woman on the other, they
took hold of each other's right hand through the hole and there swore to
be constant and faithful to each other." The hole in the stone was about
five feet from the ground, but some ignorant farmer had destroyed the
stone, with others, some years before our visit.
There were many other stones in addition to the circles, probably the
remains of Cromlechs, and there were numerous grass mounds, or barrows,
both conoid and bowl-shaped, but these were of a later date than the
circles. It was hard to realise that this deserted and boggarty-looking
place was once the Holy Ground of the ancient Orcadeans, and we were
glad to get away from it. We recrossed the Bridge of Brogar and
proceeded rapidly towards Stromness, obtaining a fine prospective view
of that town, with the huge mountain masses of the Island of Hoy as a
background, on our way. These rise to a great height, and terminate
abruptly near where that strange isolated rock called the "Old Man of
Hoy" rises straight from the sea as if to guard the islands in the rear.
The shades of evening were falling fast as we entered Stromness, but
what a strange-looking town it seemed to us! It was built at the foot of
the hill in the usual irregular manner and in one continuous crooked
street, with many of the houses with their crow-stepped gables built as
it were over the sea itself, and here in one of these, owing to a high
recommendation received inland, we stayed the night. It was perched
above the water's edge, and, had we been so minded, we might have caught
the fish named sillocks for our own breakfast without leaving the house:
many of the houses, indeed, had small piers or landing-stages attached
to them, projecting towards the bay.
We found Mrs. Spence an ideal hostess and were very comfortable, the
only drawback to our happiness being the information that the small
steamboat that carried mails and passengers across to Thurso had gone
round for repairs "and would not be back for a week, but a sloop would
take her place" the day after to-morrow. But just fancy crossing the
stormy waters of the Pentland Firth in a sloop! We didn't quite know
what a sloop was, except that it was a sailing-boat with only one mast;
but the very idea gave us the nightmare, and we looked upon ourselves as
lost already. The mail boat, we had already been told, had been made
enormously strong to enable her to withstand the strain of the stormy
seas, besides having the additional advantage of being propelled by
steam, and it was rather unfortunate that we should have arrived just at
the time she was away. We asked the reason why, and were informed that
during the summer months seaweeds had grown on the bottom of her hull
four or five feet long, which with the barnacles so impeded her progress
that it was necessary to have them scraped off, and that even the great
warships had to undergo the same process.
Seaweeds of the largest size and most beautiful colours flourish, in the
Orcadean seas, and out of 610 species of the flora in the islands we
learned that 133 were seaweeds. Stevenson the great engineer wrote that
the large Algæ, and especially that one he named the "Fucus esculentus,"
grew on the rocks from self-grown seed, six feet in six months, so we
could quite understand how the speed of a ship would be affected when
carrying this enormous growth on the lower parts of her hull.
_Wednesday, September 13th._
We had the whole of the day at our disposal to explore Stromness and the
neighbourhood, and we made the most of it by rambling about the town and
then along the coast to the north, but we were seldom out of sight of
the great mountains of Hoy.
Sir Walter Scott often visited this part of the Orkneys, and some of the
characters he introduced in his novels were found here. In 1814 he made
the acquaintance of a very old woman near Stromness, named Bessie
Miller, whom he described as being nearly one hundred years old,
withered and dried up like a mummy, with light blue eyes that gleamed
with a lustre like that of insanity. She eked out her existence by
selling favourable winds to mariners, for which her fee was sixpence,
and hardly a mariner sailed out to sea from Stromness without visiting
and paying his offering to Old Bessie Miller. Sir Walter drew the
strange, weird character of "Norna of the Fitful Head" in his novel _The
Pirate_ from her.
The prototype of "Captain Cleveland" in the same novel was John Gow, the
son of a Stromness merchant. This man went to sea, and by some means or
other became possessed of a ship named the _Revenge_, which carried
twenty-four guns. He had all the appearance of a brave young officer,
and on the occasions when he came home to see his father he gave
dancing-parties to his friends. Before his true character was known--for
he was afterwards proved to be a pirate--he engaged the affections of a
young lady of fortune, and when he was captured and convicted she
hastened to London to see him before he was executed; but, arriving
there too late, she begged for permission to see his corpse, and, taking
hold of one hand, she vowed to remain true to him, for fear, it was
said, of being haunted by his ghost if she bestowed her hand upon
another.
It is impossible to visit Stromness without hearing something of that
famous geologist Hugh Miller, who was born at Cromarty in the north of
Scotland in the year 1802, and began life as a quarry worker, and wrote
several learned books on geology. In one of these, entitled _Footprints
of the Creator in the Asterolepis of Stromness_, he demolished the
Darwinian theory that would make a man out to be only a highly developed
monkey, and the monkey a highly developed mollusc. My brother had a very
poor opinion of geologists, but his only reason for this seemed to have
been formed from the opinion of some workmen in one of our brickfields.
A gentleman who took an interest in geology used to visit them at
intervals for about half a year, and persuaded the men when excavating
the clay to put the stones they found on one side so that he could
inspect them, and after paying many visits he left without either
thanking them or giving them the price of a drink! But my brother was
pleased with Hugh Miller's book, for he had always contended that Darwin
was mistaken, and that instead of man having descended from the monkey,
it was the monkey that had descended from the man. I persuaded him to
visit the museum, where we saw quite a number of petrified fossils. As
there was no one about to give us any information, we failed to find
Hugh Miller's famous asterolepis, which we heard afterwards had the
appearance of a petrified nail, and had formed part of a huge fish whose
species were known to have measured from eight to twenty-three feet in
length. It was only about six inches long, and was described as one of
the oldest, if not the oldest, vertebrate fossils hitherto discovered.
Stromness ought to be the Mecca, the happy hunting-ground, or the
Paradise to geologists, for Hugh Miller has said it could furnish more
fossil fish than any other geological system in England, Scotland, and
Wales, and could supply ichthyolites by the ton, or a ship load of
fossilised fish sufficient to supply the museums of the world. How came
this vast number of fish to be congregated here? and what was the force
that overwhelmed them? It was quite evident from the distorted portions
of their skeletons, as seen in the quarried flags, that they had
suffered a violent death. But as we were unable to study geology, and
could neither pronounce nor understand the names applied to the fossils,
we gave it up in despair, as a deep where all our thoughts were drowned.
We then walked along the coast, until we came to the highest point of
the cliffs opposite some dangerous rocks called the Black Craigs, about
which a sorrowful story was told. It happened on Wednesday, March 5th,
1834, during a terrific storm, when the _Star of Dundee_, a schooner of
about eighty tons, was seen to be drifting helplessly towards these
rocks. The natives knew there was no chance of escape for the boat, and
ran with ropes to the top of the precipice near the rocks in the hope of
being of some assistance; but such was the fury of the waves that the
boat was broken into pieces before their eyes, and they were utterly
helpless to save even one of their shipwrecked fellow-creatures. The
storm continued for some time, and during the remainder of the week
nothing of any consequence was found, nor was any of the crew heard of
again, either dead or alive, till on the Sunday morning a man was
suddenly observed on the top of the precipice waving his hands, and the
people who saw him first were so astonished that they thought it was a
spectre. It was afterwards discovered that it was one of the crew of the
ill-fated ship who had been miraculously saved. He had been washed into
a cave from a large piece of the wreck, which had partially blocked its
entrance and so checked the violence of the waves inside, and there were
also washed in from the ship some red herrings, a tin can which had been
used for oil, and two pillows. The herrings served him for food and the
tin can to collect drops of fresh water as they trickled down the rocks
from above, while one of the pillows served for his bed and he used the
other for warmth by pulling out the feathers and placing them into his
boots. Occasionally when the waves filled the mouth of the cave he was
afraid of being suffocated. Luckily for him at last the storm subsided
sufficiently to admit of his swimming out of the cave; how he managed to
scale the cliffs seemed little short of a miracle. He was kindly treated
by the Islanders, and when he recovered they fitted him out with
clothing so that he could join another ship. By what we may call the
irony of fate he was again shipwrecked some years afterwards. This time
the fates were less kind, for he was drowned!
[Illustration: THE WRECK.]
We had a splendid view of the mountains and sea, and stayed as usual on
the cliffs until the pangs of hunger compelled us to return to
Stromness, where we knew that a good tea was waiting for us. At one
point on our way back the Heads of Hoy strangely resembled the profile
of the great Sir Walter Scott, and this he would no doubt have seen when
collecting materials for _The Pirate_.
We had heard both in Shetland and Orkney that when we reached John o'
Groat's we should find an enormous number of shells on the beach, and as
we had some extensive rockeries at home already adorned with thousands
of oyster shells, in fact so many as to cause our home to be nicknamed
"Oyster Shell Hall," we decided to gather some of the shells when we got
to John o'Groat's and send them home to our friends. The question of
packages, however, seemed to be rather a serious one, as we were assured
over and over again we should find no packages when we reached that
out-of-the-way corner of Scotland, and that in the whole of the Orkney
Islands there were not sufficient willows grown to make a single basket,
skip, or hamper. So after tea we decided to explore the town in search
of a suitable hamper, and we had some amusing experiences, as the people
did not know what a hamper was. At length we succeeded in finding one
rather ancient and capacious basket, but without a cover, whose
appearance suggested that it had been washed ashore from some ship that
had been wrecked many years ago, and, having purchased it at about three
times its value, we carried it in triumph to our lodgings, to the
intense amusement of our landlady and the excited curiosity of the
Stromnessians.
We spent the remainder of the evening in looking through Mrs. Spence's
small library of books, but failed to find anything very consoling to
us, as they related chiefly to storms and shipwrecks, and the dangerous
nature of the Pentland Firth, whose turbulent waters we had to cross on
the morrow.
The Pentland Firth lies between the north of Scotland and the Orkney
Islands, varies from five and a half to eight miles in breadth, and is
by repute the most dangerous passage in the British Isles. We were told
in one of the books that if we wanted to witness a regular "passage of
arms" between two mighty seas, the Atlantic at Dunnet Head on the west,
and the North Sea at Duncansbay Head on the east, we must cross Pentland
Firth and be tossed upon its tides before we should be able to imagine
what might be termed their ferocity. "The rush of two mighty oceans,
struggling to sweep this world of waters through a narrow sound, and
dashing their waves in bootless fury against the rocky barriers which
headland and islet present; the endless contest of conflicting tides
hurried forward and repelled, meeting, and mingling--their troubled
surface boiling and spouting--and, even in a summer calm, in an eternal
state of agitation"; and then fancy the calm changing to a storm: "the
wind at west; the whole volume of the Atlantic rolling its wild mass of
waters on, in one sweeping flood, to dash and burst upon the black and
riven promontory of the Dunnet Head, until the mountain wave, shattered
into spray, flies over the summit of a precipice, 400 feet above the
base it broke upon." But this was precisely what we did not want to see,
so we turned to the famous _Statistical Account_, which also described
the difficulty of navigating the Firth for sailing vessels. This
informed us that "the current in the Pentland Firth is exceedingly
strong during the spring tides, so that no vessel can stem it. The
flood-tide runs from west to east at the rate of ten miles an hour, with
new and full moon. It is then high water at Scarfskerry (about three
miles away from Dunnet Head) at nine o'clock. Immediately, as the water
begins to fall on the shore, the current turns to the west; but the
strength of the flood is so great in the middle of the Firth that it
continues to run east till about twelve. With a gentle breeze of
westerly wind, about eight o'clock in the morning the whole Firth, from
Dunnet Head to Hoy Head in Orkney, seems as smooth as a sheet of glass.
About nine the sea begins to rage for about one hundred yards off the
Head, while all without continues smooth as before. This appearance
gradually advances towards the Firth, and along the shore to the east,
though the effects are not much felt along the shore till it reaches
Scarfskerry Head, as the land between these points forms a considerable
bay. By two o'clock the whole of the Firth seems to rage. About three in
the afternoon it is low water on the shore, when all the former
phenomena are reversed, the smooth water beginning to appear next the
land and advancing gradually till it reaches the middle of the Firth. To
strangers the navigation is very dangerous, especially if they approach
near to land. But the natives along the coast are so well acquainted
with the direction of the tides, that they can take advantage of every
one of these currents to carry them safe from one harbour to another.
Hence very few accidents happen, except from want of skill or knowledge
of the tides."
[Illustration: A NORTH SEA ROLLER.]
There were some rather amusing stories about the detention of ships in
the Firth. A Newcastle shipowner had despatched two ships from that port
by the same tide, one to Bombay by the open sea, and the other, via the
Pentland Firth, to Liverpool, and the Bombay vessel arrived at her
destination first. Many vessels trying to force a passage through the
Firth have been known to drift idly about hither and thither for months
before they could get out again, and some ships that once entered
Stromness Bay on New Year's Day were found there, resting from their
labours on the fifteenth day of April following, "after wandering about
like the _Flying Dutchman_." Sir Walter Scott said this was formerly a
ship laden with precious metals, but a horrible murder was committed on
board. A plague broke out amongst the crew, and no port would allow the
vessel to enter for fear of contagion, and so she still wanders about
the sea with her phantom crew, never to rest, but doomed to be tossed
about for ever. She is now a spectral ship, and hovers about the Cape of
Good Hope as an omen of bad luck to mariners who are so unfortunate as
to see her.
The dangerous places at each end of the Firth were likened to the Scylla
and Charybdis between Italy and Sicily, where, in avoiding one mariners
were often wrecked by the other; but the dangers in the Firth were from
the "Merry Men of Mey," a dangerous expanse of sea, where the water was
always boiling like a witch's cauldron at one end, and the dreaded
"Swalchie Whirlpool" at the other. This was very dangerous for small
boats, as they could sail over it safely in one state of the tide, but
when it began to move it carried the boat round so slowly that the
occupants did not realise their danger until too late, when they found
themselves going round quicker and quicker as they descended into the
awful vortex below, where the ancient Vikings firmly believed the
submarine mill existed which ground the salt that supplied the ocean.
We ought not to have read these dismal stories just before retiring to
rest, as the consequence was that we were dreaming of dangerous rocks,
storms, and shipwrecks all through the night, and my brother had toiled
up the hill at the back of the town and found Bessie Miller there, just
as Sir Walter Scott described her, with "a clay-coloured kerchief folded
round her head to match the colour of her corpse-like complexion." He
was just handing her a sixpence to pay for a favourable wind, when
everything was suddenly scattered by a loud knock at the door, followed
by the voice of our hostess informing us that it was five o'clock and
that the boat was "awa' oot" at six.
We were delighted to find that in place of the great storm pictured in
our excited imagination there was every prospect of a fine day, and that
a good "fish breakfast" served in Mrs. Spence's best style was waiting
for us below stairs.
_Thursday, September 14th._
After bidding Mrs. Spence farewell, and thanking her for her kind
attention to us during our visit to Stromness, we made our way to the
sloop, which seemed a frail-looking craft to cross the stormy waters of
the Pentland Firth. We did not, of course, forget our large basket which
we had had so much difficulty in finding, and which excited so much
attention and attracted so much curiosity towards ourselves all the way
to John o' Groat's. It even caused the skipper to take a friendly
interest in us, for after our explanation he stored that ancient basket
amongst his more valuable cargo.
There was only a small number of passengers, but in spite of the early
hour quite a little crowd of people had assembled to witness our
departure, and a considerable amount of banter was going on between
those on board the sloop and the company ashore, which continued as we
moved away, each party trying to get the better of the other. As a
finale, one of our passengers shouted to his friend who had come to see
him off: "Do you want to buy a cow?" "Yes," yelled his friend, "but I
see nothing but a calf." A general roar of laughter followed this
repartee, as we all thought the Orkneyman on shore had scored. We should
have liked to have fired another shot, but by the time the laughter had
subsided we were out of range. We did not expect to be on the way more
than three or four hours, as the distance was only about twenty-four
miles; but we did not reach Thurso until late in the afternoon, and we
should have been later if we had had a less skilful skipper. In the
first place we had an unfavourable wind, which prevented our sailing by
the Hoy Sound, the shortest and orthodox route, and this caused us to
miss the proper sea view of the "Old Man of Hoy," which the steamboat
from Stromness to Thurso always passed in close proximity, but we could
perceive it in the distance as an insular Pillar of Rock, standing 450
feet high with rocks in vicinity rising 1,000 feet, although we could
not see the arch beneath, which gives it the appearance of standing on
two legs, and hence the name given to the rock by the sailors. The
Orcadean poet writes:
See Hoy's Old Man whose summit bare
Pierces the dark blue fields of air;
Based in the sea, his fearful form
Glooms like the spirit of the storm.
[Illustration: "OLD MAN OF HOY."]
When pointing out the Old Man to us, the captain said that he stood in
the roughest bit of sea round the British coast, and the words "wind and
weather permitting" were very applicable when stoppages wore
contemplated at the Old Man or other places in these stormy seas.
We had therefore to sail by way of Lang Hope, which we supposed was a
longer route, and we were astonished at the way our captain handled his
boat; but when we reached what we thought was Lang Hope, he informed the
passengers that he intended to anchor here for some time, and those who
wished could be ferried ashore. We had decided to remain on the boat,
but when the captain said there was an inn there where refreshments
could be obtained, my brother declared that he felt quite hungry, and
insisted upon our having a second breakfast. We were therefore rowed
ashore, and were ushered into the parlour of the inn as if we were the
lords of the manor and sole owners, and were very hospitably received
and entertained. The inn was appropriately named the "Ship," and the
treatment we received was such as made us wish we were making a longer
stay, but time and tide wait for no man.
For the next inn he spurs amain,
In haste alights, and scuds away--
But time and tide for no man stay.
[Illustration: THE SHIP INN, LANG HOPE. The sign has now been removed to
a new hotel, visible in the photograph, on the opposite side of the
ferry.]
Whether it was for time or tide or for one of those mysterious movements
in the Pentland Firth that our one-masted boat was waiting we never
knew. We had only just finished our breakfast when a messenger appeared
to summon us to rejoin the sloop, which had to tack considerably before
we reached what the skipper described as the Scrabster Roads. A stiff
breeze had now sprung up, and there was a strong current in the sea; at
each turn or tack our boat appeared to be sailing on her side, and we
were apprehensive that she might be blown over into the sea. We watched
the operations carefully and anxiously, and it soon became evident that
what our skipper did not know about the navigation of these stormy seas
was not worth knowing. We stood quite near him (and the mast) the whole
of the time, and he pointed out every interesting landmark as it came in
sight. He seemed to be taking advantage of the shelter afforded by the
islands, as occasionally we came quite near their rocky shores, and at
one point he showed us a small hole in the rock which was only a few
feet above the sea; he told us it formed the entrance to a cave in
which he had often played when, as a boy, he lived on that island.
[Illustration: DUNNET HEAD AND LIGHTHOUSE.]
The time had now arrived to cross the Pentland Firth and to sail round
Dunnet Head to reach Thurso. Fortunately the day was fine, and the
strong breeze was nothing in the shape of a storm; but in spite of these
favourable conditions we got a tossing, and no mistake! Our little ship
was knocked about like a cork on the waters, which were absolutely
boiling and foaming and furiously raging without any perceptible cause,
and as if a gale were blowing on them two ways at once. The appearance
of the foaming mass of waters was terrible to behold; we could hear them
roaring and see them struggling together just below us; the deck of the
sloop was only a few feet above them, and it appeared as if we might be
swallowed up at any moment. The captain told us that this turmoil was
caused by the meeting of the waters of two seas, and that at times it
was very dangerous to small boats.
Many years ago he was passing through the Firth with his boat on a
rather stormy day, when he noticed he was being followed by another boat
belonging to a neighbour of his. He could see it distinctly from time to
time, and he was sure that it could not be more than 200 yards away,
when he suddenly missed it. He watched anxiously for some time, but it
failed to reappear, nor was the boat or its crew ever seen or heard of
again, and it was supposed to have been carried down by a whirlpool!
We were never more thankful than when we got safely across those awful
waters and the great waves we encountered off Dunnet Head, and when we
were safely landed near Thurso we did not forget the skipper, but bade
him a friendly and, to him, lucrative farewell.
We had some distance to walk before reaching the town where, loaded with
our luggage and carrying the large basket between us, each taking hold
of one of the well-worn handles, we attracted considerable attention,
and almost every one we saw showed a disposition to see what we were
carrying in our hamper; but when they discovered it was empty, their
curiosity was turned into another channel, and they must see where we
were taking it; so by the time we reached the house recommended by our
skipper for good lodgings we had a considerable following of "lookers
on." Fortunately, however, no one attempted to add to our burden by
placing anything in the empty basket or we should have been tempted to
carry it bottom upwards like an inmate of one of the asylums in
Lancashire. A new addition was being built in the grounds, and some of
the lunatics were assisting in the building operations, when the foreman
discovered one of them pushing his wheelbarrow with the bottom upwards
and called out to him, "Why don't you wheel it the right way up?"
"I did," said the lunatic solemnly, "but they put bricks in it!"
We felt that some explanation was due to our landlady, who smiled when
she saw the comical nature of that part of our luggage and the motley
group who had followed us, and as we unfolded its history and described
the dearth of willows in the Orkneys, the price we had paid, the
difficulties in finding the hamper, and the care we had taken of it when
crossing the stormy seas, we could see her smile gradually expanding
into a laugh that she could retain no longer when she told us we could
have got a better and a cheaper basket than that in the "toon," meaning
Thurso, of course. It was some time before we recovered ourselves,
laughter being contagious, and we could hear roars of it at the rear of
the house as our antiquated basket was being stored there.
After tea we crossed the river which, like the town, is named Thurso,
the word, we were informed, meaning Thor's House. Thor, the god of
thunder, was the second greatest of the Scandinavian deities, while his
father, Odin, the god of war, was the first. We had some difficulty in
crossing the river, as we had to pass over it by no less than
eighty-five stepping-stones, several of which were slightly submerged.
Here we came in sight of Thurso Castle, the residence of the Sinclair
family, one of whom, Sir John Sinclair, was the talented author of the
famous _Statistical Account of Scotland_, and a little farther on stood
Harold's Tower. This tower was erected by John Sinclair over the tomb of
Earl Harold, the possessor at one time of one half of Orkney, Shetland,
and Caithness, who fell in battle against his own namesake, Earl Harold
the Wicked, in 1190. In the opposite direction was Scrabster and its
castle, the scene of the horrible murder of John, Earl of Caithness, in
the twelfth century, "whose tongue was cut from his throat and whose
eyes were put out." We did not go there, but went into the town, and
there witnessed the departure of the stage, or mail coach, which was
just setting out on its journey of eighty miles, for railways had not
yet made their appearance in Caithness, the most northerly county in
Scotland. We then went to buy another hamper, and got a much better one
for less money than we paid at Stromness, for we had agreed that we
would send home two hampers filled with shells instead of one. We also
inquired the best way of getting to John o' Groat's, and were informed
that the Wick coach would take us the first six miles, and then we
should have to walk the remaining fifteen. We were now only one day's
journey to the end and also from the beginning of our journey, and, as
may easily be imagined, we were anxiously looking forward to the morrow.
_Friday, September 15th._
At eight o'clock in the morning we were comfortably seated in the coach
which was bound for Wick, with our luggage and the two hampers safely
secured on the roof above, and after a ride of about six miles we were
left, with our belongings, at the side of the highway where the by-road
leading in the direction of John o' Groat's branched off to the left
across the open country. The object of our walk had become known to our
fellow-passengers, and they all wished us a pleasant journey as the
coach moved slowly away. Two other men who had friends in the coach also
alighted at the same place, and we joined them in waving adieux, which
were acknowledged from the coach, as long as it remained in sight. They
also very kindly assisted us to carry our luggage as far as they were
going on our way, and then they helped us to scheme how best to carry it
ourselves. We had brought some strong cord with us from Thurso, and with
the aid of this they contrived to sling the hampers over our shoulders,
leaving us free to carry the remainder of our luggage in the usual way,
and then, bidding us a friendly farewell, left us to continue on our
lonely way towards John o' Groat's. We must have presented an
extraordinary appearance with these large baskets extending behind our
backs, and we created great curiosity and some amusement amongst the
men, women, and children who were hard at work harvesting in the country
through which we passed.
My brother said it reminded him of Christian in John Bunyan's _Pilgrim's
Progress_, who carried the burden on his back and wanted to get rid of
it; while I thought of Sinbad the Sailor, who, when wrecked on a desert
island, was compelled to carry the Old Man of the Sea on his shoulders,
and he also wanted to get rid of his burden; but we agreed that, like
both of these worthy characters, we should be obliged to carry our
burdens to the end of the journey.
We had a fine view of Dunnet Head, which is said to be the Cape Orcas
mentioned by Diodorus Siculus, the geographer who lived in the time of
Julius Cæsar, and of the lighthouse which had been built on the top of
it in 1832, standing quite near the edge of the cliff.
The light from the lantern, which was 346 feet above the highest spring
tide, could be seen at a distance of 23 miles; but even this was
sometimes obscured by the heavy storms from the west when the enormous
billows from the Atlantic dashed against the rugged face of the cliff
and threw up the spray as high as the lights of the building itself, so
that the stones they contained have been known to break the glass in the
building; such, indeed, was the prodigious combined force of the wind
and sea upon the headland, that the very rock seemed to tremble as if it
were affected by an earthquake.
While on the coach we had passed the hamlets of Murkle and Castlehill.
Between these two places was a sandy pool on the seashore to which a
curious legend was attached. The story goes that--
a young lad on one occasion discovered a mermaid bathing and by some
means or other got into conversation with her and rendered himself so
agreeable that a regular meeting at the same spot took place between
them. This continued for some time. The young man grew exceedingly
wealthy, and no one could tell how he became possessed of such
riches. He began to cut a dash amongst the lasses, making them
presents of strings of diamonds of vast value, the gifts of the fair
sea nymph. By and by he began to forget the day of his appointment;
and when he did come to see her, money and jewels were his constant
request. The mermaid lectured him pretty sharply on his love of gold,
and, exasperated at his perfidy in bestowing her presents on his
earthly fair ones, enticed him one evening rather farther than usual,
and at length showed him a beautiful boat, in which she said she
would convey him to a cave in Darwick Head, where she had all the
wealth of all the ships that ever were lost in the Pentland Firth and
on the sands of Dunnet. He hesitated at first, but the love of gold
prevailed, and off they set to the cave in question. And here, says
the legend, he is confined with a chain of gold, sufficiently long to
admit of his walking at times on a small piece of sand under the
western side of the Head; and here, too, the fair siren laves herself
in the tiny waves on fine summer evenings, but no consideration will
induce her to loose his fetters of gold, or trust him one hour out of
her sight.
We walked on at a good pace and in high spirits, but, after having
knocked about for nine days and four nights and having travelled seven
or eight hundred miles by land and sea, the weight of our extra burden
began to tell upon us, and we felt rather tired and longed for a rest
both for mind and body in some quiet spot over the week's end,
especially as we had decided to begin our long walk on the Monday
morning.
Visions of a good hotel which we felt sure we should find at John o'
Groat's began to haunt us, and the more hungry we became the brighter
were our anticipations of the good fare that awaited us. But judge of
our surprise and disappointment when a man whom we met on the road told
us there was no hotel there at all! We asked if he thought we could get
lodgings at John o' Groat's House itself, but the sardonic grin that
spread over his features when he told us that that house had vanished
long ago was cruel. The information gave us quite a shock, and our
spirits seemed to fall below zero as we turned our backs on the man
without even thanking him for answering our questions. We felt not too
full, but too empty for words, as we were awfully hungry, and I heard my
brother murmur something that sounded very like "Liar"; but the man's
information turned out to be perfectly correct. Our luggage also began
to feel heavier, and the country gradually became more wild and
desolate. Our spirits revived a little when a fisherman told us of a
small inn that we should reach a mile or two before coming to John o'
Groat's. We thought we had surely come to the end of everywhere when we
reached the "Huna Inn," for it stood some distance from any other house
and at the extreme end of an old lane that terminated at the sea. It was
a small, primitive structure, but it was now our only hope, as far as we
knew, for obtaining lodgings, and we could scarcely restrain our delight
when we were told we could be accommodated there until Monday morning.
It was an intense relief to us to be separated from our cumbersome
luggage, and we must say that Mr. and Mrs. Mackenzie did all in their
power to make us comfortable and happy and to make us feel at home. We
contented ourselves with some light refreshments which to some
non-pedestrians might have appeared decidedly heavy, and then decided to
see all that remained of John o' Groat's House.
Walking along the beach for about a mile and a half, the distance we
were told that separated the ruins from the inn, we failed to find them,
and were about to return when we met a shepherd who said we had already
passed them. We therefore returned with him, as he told us he was going
to the inn, and he showed us a few mounds of earth covered with grass
which marked the site of the foundations of John o' Groat's House, but
the stones had been removed to build a storehouse, or granary, at a
place he pointed out in the distance. We were rather disappointed, as we
expected to find some extensive remains, and, seeing they were so very
scanty, we wondered why, in a land where stones were so plentiful, some
monument or inscribed stone had not been erected to mark the site where
this remarkable house once stood, as, in the absence of some one to
direct them, strangers, like ourselves, might pass and repass these
remains without noticing them. We were not long in reaching the inn, for
the shepherd was a big man and took very long strides, and here we wrote
a few short letters to our friends to advise them of our safe arrival at
John o' Groat's, afterwards walking to the post office about a mile away
to post them, and ordering a high tea to be ready for us on our return.
It was half-past eight when we finished our tea, after which we were
conducted to a little room close to the sea, with two tiny windows in
it, one of them without a blind, and with a peat or turf fire burning
brightly on the hearth. Mrs. Mackenzie then brought us a small candle,
which she lighted, and handed us a book which she said was the "Album,"
and we amused ourselves with looking over this for the remainder of the
evening. It was quite a large volume, dating from the year 1839, and the
following official account of the Groat family, headed with a facsimile
of the "Groat Arms," was pasted inside the cover:
THE CHIEF OF THE RACE OF JOHN O' GROAT IS ALEXANDER G. GROAT, ESQ.,
ADVOCATE, EDINBURGH.