62 The SJietlands in the 



imp of hell to death. Such is the emphatical language in 

 which they express action so grateful to their vindictive spirit. 

 They pluck out his eyes, sew his wings together, and send him 

 adrift. . . . They extract the meat out of the shell of his 

 egg and leave that quite empty in the nest. The Gull sits upon 

 it till she pines away." 



From the cliff where we lay down to watch them we 

 could see three little birds offspring of the feathered 

 Cain just out of the egg, lying on the short heather 

 which covered the top of the rock, while the parent 

 birds, whose consciences, perhaps, made cowards of 

 them, hung near enough to watch us, but far enough 

 off to have been well out of gunshot if we had 

 had any murderous designs, which was not the case. 



On the following morning, with a spanking breeze 

 behind us, we sailed across to Mousa. The castle, 

 which stands only a few yards from the shore, on the 

 west side of the island, is probably the oldest 

 building in the British Islands in anything like a 

 complete state, and is of almost startling interest. 



Ruins of squat round towers, known as " brochs," 

 built of stone without mortar the connecting link, 

 according to Sir Walter Scott, between a fox's lair 

 in a cairn and a human habitation of which nothing 

 is known, excepting, perhaps, that when the Vikings 

 made their first descents a thousand years or more 

 ago they found them standing and took possession of 

 them are scattered plentifully on the cliffs of the 

 mainlands and islands of the North of Scotland. 



The Broch of Mousa is the only one in existence 

 which still stands, in all essential particulars, as in all 

 probability it stood when originally occupied. It is a 

 circle of stone wall about forty feet high, shaped like 

 a chess castle with the battlemented top cut off 

 The outside diameter is about fifty feet at the base 



