'8 THE LAKE OF STENNIS. 



lying bed about a hundred feet higher up, — was there un- 

 equivocal proof of the existence of one of the most colossal 

 of its giants. But not unfrequently in the geologic field ha? 

 the practice of basing positive conclusions on merely nega- 

 tive grounds led to a misreading of the record. From evi- 

 dence of a kind exactly similar to that on which I had built, 

 it was inferred, some two or three years ago, that there had 

 lived no reptiles during the period of the Coal Measures. 



I extended my researches, a few days after, in an easterly 

 direction from the town of Stromness, and walked for several 

 miles along the shores of the Loch of Stennis, — a large lake 

 about fourteen miles in circumference, bare and treeless, like 

 all the other lakes and lochs of Orkney, but picturesque of 

 outline, and divided into an upper and lower sheet of water 

 by two low, long promontories, that jut out from opposite 

 sides, and so nearly meet in the middle as to be connected 

 by a thread-like line of road, half-mound, half-bridge. " The 

 Loch of Stennis," says Mr David Yedder, the sailor-poet of 

 Orkney, " is a beautiful Mediterranean in miniature." It 

 gives admission to the sea by a narrow strait, crossed, like 

 that which separates the two promontories in the middle, by 

 a long rustic bridge ; and, in consequence of this peculiarity, 

 the lower division of the lake is salt in its nether reaches 

 and brackish in its upper ones, while the higher division is 

 merely brackish in its nether reaches, and fresh enough in its 

 upper ones to be potable. Viewed from the east, in one of 

 the long, clear, sunshiny evenings of the Orkney summer, it 

 seems not unworthy the eulogium of Vedder. There are 

 moory hills and a few rude cottages in front ; and in the 

 background, some eight or ten miles away, the bold, steep 

 mountain masses of Hoy ; while on the promontories of the 

 lake, ill the middle distance, conspicuous in the landscape, 

 troni the relief furnished by the blue ground of the sur- 

 rounding waters, stand the tall gray obelisks of Stennis, — 



