456 RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



WHILE yet lingering ainid the Standing Stones, I was joined 

 by Mr Garson, who had obligingly ridden a good many miles 

 to meet me, and now insisted that I should mount and ride 

 in turn, while he walked by my side, that I might be fresh, 

 he said, for the exploratory ramble of the evening. T could 

 have ventured more readily on taking the command of a ves- 

 sel than of a horse, and with fewer fears of mutiny; but 

 mount I did ; and the horse, a discreet animal, finding he 

 was to have matters very much his own way, got upon honour 

 with me, and exerted himself to such purpose, that we did 

 not fall greatly more than a hundred yards behind Mr Gar- 

 son. We traversed in our journey a long dreary moor, so 

 entirely ruined, like those which I had seen on the previous 

 day, by belonging to everybody in general, as to be no longer 

 of the slightest use to anybody in particular. The soil seems 

 to have been naturally poor ; but it must have taken a good 

 deal of spoiling to render it the sterile, verdureless waste it 

 is now ; for even where it had been poorest, I found that in 

 the island-like appropriated patches by which it is studded, 

 it at least bears, what it has long ceased to bear elsewhere, a 

 continuous covering of green sward. But if disposed to quar- 

 rel with the commons of Orkney, I found in close neighbour- 

 hood with them that with which I could have no quarrel, 



