THE ORKNEYS TO THTJRSO. 27 



island at the foot of Rousay, whose fine western head- 

 land of Skeabra stretches boldly towards Eynhalga, 

 or Holy Island. This earliest home of Christianity 

 in the Orkneys still lends its name to the beautiful 

 strait that divides E-ousay from Evie and Kendall, 

 which are full of small fields of arbitrary rotations, 

 like a Dutch concert, of all shades of green. Cottis- 

 carth, Binscarth, and the dark grouse hills round them 

 are memorable in more modern times. Even a 

 Cabinet Minister girded up his loins and fled from 

 them at the news of a summons for poaching ; and 

 it was there that the officers of the fleet roamed law- 

 lessly, five-and-twenty abreast, in search of star- 

 lings and birds of warren. 



There, too, on the more lowly left, are Kirkwall, 

 and its cathedral sacred to St. Magnus, the Mull of 

 Deerness, and Hellersay still guarded by "Thor" 

 with such fidelity and valour. The bit of red bunting 

 hangs listlessly to the mast, as the becalmed letter- 

 packet, inch by inch, drifts home on its evening trip. 

 The Streamlet yacht lies daintily in the Bay of Elwick, 

 where Haco once mustered his fleet, and where a 

 seagull is stepping to meet the tide, with his breast 

 and his toes out, as stately as a Chancellor on the 

 first day of term. The eider-duck haunts these 

 shores ; the tern comes like a spectre in the fog, 

 and lays its three blue eggs in the grass ; and the 

 otter is true to a home, whose family crest is the 

 head of Ottar the Dane, and where its form is 

 carved in stone, as a token, over the castle-gate. Night 



