RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 423 



that jut out from opposite sides, and so nearly meet as to be 

 connected by a thread-like line of road, half-mound half- 

 bridge, occupies the middle distance. There are moory hills 

 and a few rude cottages in front ; and on the promontories, 

 conspicuous in the landscape, from the relief furnished by 

 the blue ground of the surrounding waters, stand the tall 

 stones of Stennis, one group on the northern promontory, 

 the other on the south. A gray old-fashioned house, of no 

 very imposing appearance, rises between the road and the 

 lake. It is the house of Stennis or Turmister, in which 

 Scott places some of the concluding scenes of the " Pirate,'' 

 and from which he makes Cleveland and his fantastic admirer 

 Jack Bunce witness the final engagement, in the bay of Strom- 

 ness, between the Halcyon sloop of war and the savage Goffe. 

 Nor does it matter anything that neither sea nor vessels can 

 be seen from the house of Turmister : the fact which would 

 be so fatal to a dishonest historian tells with no effect against 

 the honest " maker" responsible for but the management of 

 his tale. 



I got on to Stromness ; and finding, after making myself 

 comfortable in my inn, that I had a fine bright evening still 

 before me, longer by some three or four degrees of north la- 

 titude than the July evenings of Edinburgh, I set out, ham- 

 mer in hand, to explore. Stromness is a long, narrow, irre- 

 gular strip of a town, fairly thrust by a steep hill into the sea, 

 on which it encroaches in a broken line of wharf-like bul- 

 warks, along which, at high water, vessels of a hundred tons 

 burden float so immediately beside the houses, that their pen- 

 nants on gala days wave over the chimney-tops. The steep 

 hill forms part of a granitic axis, about six miles in length 

 by a mile in breadth, which forms the backbone of the dis- 

 trict, and against which the Great Conglomerate and lower 

 schists of the Old Red are upturned at a rather high angle. 

 It is wrapped round in some places by a thin caul of the 



