CRMAPPE RY XV II 
A BITTER DISAPPOINTMENT 
MAN here—one accustomed to the sea, but not 
a Shetlander—had told me that seals come up on 
the rocks as the tide goes out, and are floated off 
them as it comes up again—and this, indeed, I have 
seen. He did not seem to think that they lay on the 
rocks independently of the tides, so, as the tide to- 
day should be out about 5.30, I resolved to go to the 
same place as yesterday—the accustomed haunt of 
seals here—about two, so as to be in good time. I 
arrive accordingly, but what is my astonishment to 
see, on a vast, sloping slab of rock, ending in a minia- 
ture cliff, far above the highest line of moist seaweed, 
and comfortably independent of all tides, twelve seals, 
of varying figures and different degrees of obesity, 
lying, roughly, in two rows, and in all sorts of attitudes 
and depths of repose. Whatasight! What beauti- 
ful, fat, sleepy things! and what a lovely little secret 
creek of the wave-lashed, iron-ribbed coast have they 
found to sleep in! How the waters sleep in it, too ! 
How gently they creep to shores strewn with a wild 
confusion of titanic black boulders heaped about still 
huger fragments of the cliff’s wastage, so huge, some 
of them, that they are dwarfed only by the frowning 
precipices that tower behind! How they lick up upon 
the brown hanging seaweed that drips against the 
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