2 THE LAKE OF STENNIS. 



country, in cliallenging for it a standing independent of the 

 " Land of Cakes," — a " Land of Fish ;" and, were the trade 

 once fairly opened up, could supply with ichthyolites, by the 

 ton and the ship-load, the museums of the world. Its va- 

 rious deposits, with all their strange organisms, have been 

 uptilted from the bottom against a granitic axis, rather more 

 than six miles in length by about a mile in breadth, which 

 forms the great backbone of the western district of Pomona; 

 and on this granitic axis — fast jammed in between a steep 

 hill and the sea — stands the town of Stromness. Situated 

 thus at the bottom of the upturned deposits of the island, it 

 occupies exactly such a point of observation as that which 

 the curious eastern traveller would select, in front of some 

 huge pyramid or hieroglyphic-covered obelisk, as a proper site 

 for his tent. It presents, besides, not a few facilities for 

 studying, with the geologic phenomena, various interesting 

 points in physical science of a cognate character. Resting 

 on its granitic base, in front of the strangely sculptured pyra- 

 mid of three broad tiers — red, black, and gray — which the 

 Old Red Sandstone of these islands may be regarded as form- 

 ing, it is but a short half-mile from the Great Conglomerate 

 of the formation, and scarcely a quarter of a mile more from 

 the beds of its flagstone deposit ; while an hour's sail on the 

 one hand opens to the explorer the overlying arenaceous de- 

 posit of Hoy, and an hour's walk on the other introduces him 

 to the Loch of Stennis, with its curiously mixed flora and 

 fauna. But of the Loch of Stennis and its productions more 

 anon. 



The day was far spent when I reached Stromness ; but as 

 I had a fine bright evening still before me, longer by some 

 three or four degrees of north latitude than the midsummer 

 evenings of the south of Scotland, I set out, hammer in hand, 

 to examine the junction of the granite and the Great Con- 

 glomerate, where it has been laid bare by the sea along the 



