E K N E Y. 



CHAPTER I. 



SCENERY OF THE GROUP. 



islands of Orkney and Shetland are so little 

 known that many persons, in other respects well 

 informed, seem to look upon them as a collection of 

 rocks either uninhabitable or inhabited by a race of men 

 almost as untamed as the seals which play upon their 

 shores, and with intellects little more developed ; a race 

 with whom the civilised world has no communion, living 

 on fish, dressing in sealskin, gloriously ignorant of civili- 

 zation, destitute of education. But these northern 

 islands and their inhabitants are in reality very interest- 

 ing, and it is in the hope of making them better known 

 and appreciated that I now attempt to give some account 

 of the nearer group the Orkneys. 



Separated from the mainland by the Pentland Frith? 



