182 MOONLIGHT AND DA YLIGHT. CHAP. xm. 



"Daylight is a sure thing. Moonlight is good, but 

 you never feel certain where you are. There is always 

 a hazy uncertainty about it. You may strain your eye- 

 balls as you will, but you can never get a hold of it. 

 But you lay hold of daylight at once. You always 

 know where you are, even when the most imperfect 

 glimmer breaks through the sky. Does not this tell 

 emphatically that Man is the creature of the Day ? 



" How lovely looked Stroma Isle across the waters ! 

 And all the various islands far and near lying encompassed 

 by the sea without a wave, placid as a lake. Below me 

 lay John o' Groat's. Not without reason did De Groot 

 choose his habitation. I admire his sagacity. Old John 

 must have been a true poet. 



"Most of the existing maps are very faulty. The 

 one, the two, before me are eminently so. Never mind ! 

 The road strikes off to Freswick. We wander over a 

 moss ; the land rises ; and then we wind along the 

 Wart Hill * 



" The last time I walked along this road I observed 

 what I thought looked liked boulder clay, but the moon- 

 light prevented my observing it closely. To-day I had 

 daylight. I found that much red sandstone debris lay 

 thick on this side of the Wart Hill. By and by I came 

 to a stream of water pouring in a torrent over the hill 

 I went off the road into the chasm made by the water, 



* When going from Wick to John o' Groat's the author was driven 

 along the side of Wart Hill. The driver said : " It used to be called 

 the Hill of Curses. It was a Fairies' Hill. But the fairies have all 

 gone away now." 



