ioo Summer 



DRIVING WHALES 



FOR the late summer tourist there is no more invigor- 

 ating place than the Orkney Islands. The bloom on 

 the heather comes late and lingers long. When the 

 pedestrian has climbed Wideford Hill, and has at his 

 feet Kirkwall, with its quaint stone-roofed houses rest- 

 ing under the shadow of St. Magnus, he is intoxicated 

 by the salt wind blowing from the craggy coast of 

 Caithness across the Pentland Firth, over the low 

 heathery hills of Orcadia, and ruffling the ocean 

 streams that wash the shores of a hundred islands, 

 churning the blue water till it makes a white fringe for 

 low Shapinsay, and rocky Ronaldshay, and Westray, 

 and Egilshay, and sweeping round the Thieves' Holm 

 and the Horse of Copinshay. He feels that here is 

 indeed the home of the mariner and the sea-gull. 

 And when he is satisfied with archaeological study 

 and observation, when he has looked into the grey 

 churches on the sea-coast, and wandered among the 

 Standing Stones of Stennis, and tried to decipher the 

 runes in Maeshowe, he finds that in the present, too, 

 there is much that is fruitful of interest and amuse- 

 ment. 



For instance, on that very Wideford Hill which 

 we suppose him to have climbed, there stands a cairn 

 of white skulls, and by the Peerie Sea there is a set 

 of furnaces. They are connected with what is, now 



