34 THE EIVEE OF THOR 



purple Welsh slate. The ploughed land is brown too, 

 and the wan pastures nearer pale brown than green. 

 Through the great plain winds a sullen river, the 

 Thurso, whose waters, though snow-fed, are brown 

 also. Its course is silent, save where, at long intervals, 

 brown barriers of rock oppose and work it into sudden 

 short-lived roar of wrath. Else there is no sound but 

 that of the wind, rising from sigh to shriek, and falling 

 back again to sigh and sob. Eows of rust-coloured 

 Caithness flags, square and smooth as tombstones, 

 separate the fields, so that it seems as if this were in 

 truth a land of the dead, set with unending graveyards. 

 Where the crofts have made way for large farms, 

 leagues of barbed wire intersect and divide the hold- 

 ings, a form of barrier even more forbidding than the 

 tombstones. Then, afar on the southern horizon, 

 Morven, landmark for all Caithness, lifts his lonely 

 peak, marking ' the high light ' with snowy cone. 

 Only in the north, where the cloud lowers darkest, 

 the headlong precipices of Hoy, southmost of the 

 Orkneys, refresh the eye with deep, rich blue. 



What can it have been that induced the Norsemen, 

 for centuries lords of this shore, to name this river 

 after their most vengeful deity ? Thurso that is, 

 Thor's a the river of Thor should be something 

 majestic or appallingly destructive, one would say ; 

 but this stream, though dark and deep, is insignificant 

 in volume compared to the rivers of Scandinavia, and 

 even when in full flood is not to be feared like the 

 Spey or the Findhorn. Perhaps their imaginations 



