38 FIELD AND FERN. 



/ 



land. It is, however, only of later years that there 

 has been a regular winter post. In 1848 the local 

 inspector for the Drainage Loan Commissioners found 

 three official letters in his bag one morning. No. 1 

 directed a survey and a report ; No. 2 asked why it was 

 not sent in; and No. 3 was in the shape of a sort of 

 peremptory mandamus to him, to defer no longer 

 answering No. 1 and No. 2. The reply was to the 

 effect that winter correspondence with the Orkneys 

 always required a six weeks' margin, seeing that they 

 were sometimes twenty-one days without a mail. 

 During the summer, letters posted in London on 

 Saturday night are nearly always delivered at Kirk- 

 wall on Tuesday ; but in winter there are still ter- 

 rible correspondence gaps. 



Prom Bowscarth to Stromness was a weary begin- 

 ning on the saddle; and there was a most vivid 

 realization of the Orkney phrase, " he blaws and she 

 wettens." When we did get there, under every dis- 

 couragement, considerably before the time appointed 

 for shipment, we were told on the pier that they had 

 " been waiting half an hour for a fellow with a horse." 

 Well might a fellow-passenger subsequently confide 

 to us, on fresh provocation, " They don't keep no 

 clocks here they ought to be put in the papers. 33 

 Stromness, with its lonely ash-tree and its zig- 

 zag outline of house and jetty, looked like a city of 

 the dead, as dawn grew into day. A strange 

 steamer was moored in the harbour, and as quick as 

 thought its boat was lowered and at our side. " Re- 



