RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 459 



could the population of a parish be chased from off its bare 

 moors, at his instance, by the constable or the sheriff-officer, 

 to worship God agreeably to their consciences amid the mire 

 of a cross road, or on the bare sea-beach uncovered by the 

 ebb of the tide. The smaller properties of the country, too, 

 served admirably as stepping-stones, by which the proprie- 

 tors or their children, when possessed of energy and intellect, 

 could mount to a higher walk of society. Here beside me, 

 for instance, was my friend Mr Garson, a useful and much- 

 esteemed minister of religion in his native district ; while 

 his brother, a medical man of superior parts, was fast rising 

 into extensive practice in the neighbouring town. They had 

 been prepared for their respective professions by a classical 

 education ; and yet the stepping-stone to positions in society 

 at once so important and so respectable was simply one of 

 the smaller holdings of Orkney, derived to them as the de- 

 scendants of one of the old Scandinavian Udallers, and which 

 fell short, I was informed, of a hundred a-year. 



Mr Garson's dwelling, to which I was welcomed with much 

 hospitality by his mother and sisters, occupies the middle of 

 an inclined hollow or basin, so entirely surrounded by low, 

 moory hills, that at no point, though the radius of the pro- 

 spect averages from four to six miles, does it command a 

 view of the sea. I scarce expected being introduced in Ork- 

 ney to a scene in which the traveller could so thoroughly 

 forget that he was on an island. Of the parish of Harray, 

 which borders on Mr Garson's property, no part touches the 

 sea-coast ; and the people of the parish are represented by 

 their neighbours, who pride themselves upon their skill as 

 sailors and boatmen, as a race of lubberly landsmen, unac- 

 quainted with nautical matters, and ignorant of the ocean 

 and its productions. A Harray man is represented, in one 

 of their stories, as entering into a compact of mutual for- 

 bearance with a lobster, to him a monster of unknown 



