390 RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 



"We had just light enough to show us, on landing, that the 

 main thoroughfare of the place, very narrow and very crook- 

 ed, had been laid out, ere the country beyond had got high- 

 ways, or the proprietors carts and carriages, with an exclu- 

 sive eye to the necessities of the foot-passenger, that many 

 of the older houses presented, as is common in our northern 

 towns, their gables to the street, and had narrow slips of 

 closes running down along their fronts, and that as we 

 receded from the harbour, a goodly portion of their number 

 bore about them an air of respectability, long maintained, but 

 now apparently touched by decay. I saw, in advance of one 

 of the buildings, several vigorous-looking planes, about forty 

 feet in height, which, fenced by tall houses in front and rear, 

 and flanked by the tortuosities of the street, had apparently 

 forgotten that they were in Orkney, and had grown quite as 

 well as the planes of public thoroughfares grow elsewhere. 

 After an abortive attempt or two made in other quarters, I 

 was successful in procuring lodgings for a few days in the 

 house of a respectable widow lady of the place, where I found 

 comfort and quiet on very moderate terms. The cast of faded 

 gentility which attached to so many of the older houses of 

 Kirkwall, remnants of a time when the wealthier TJdallers 

 of the Orkneys used to repair to their capital at the close of 

 autumn, to while away in each other's society their dreary 

 winters, reminded me of the poet Malcolm's "Sketch of 

 the Borough," a portrait for which Kirkwall is known to 

 have sat, and of the great revolution effected in its evening 

 parties, when " tea and turn-out" yielded its place to " tea 

 and turn-in." But the churchyard of the place, which I had 

 seen, as I passed along, glimmering with all its tombstones 

 in the uncertain light, was all that remained to represent 

 those " great men of the burgh," who, according to the poet, 

 used to "pop in on its card and dancing assemblies, about 

 the eleventh hour, resplendent in top-boots and scarlet vests," 



