472 RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 



ponderous to be moved by any man of the ordinary strength, 

 seems to have served the purpose of a door, lies prostrate be- 

 side the opening in front. And such is the famous Dwarfie 

 Stone of Hoy, as firmly fixed in our literature by the genius 

 of Sir Walter Scott, as in this wild valley by its ponderous 

 weight and breadth of base, and regarding which for it 

 shares in the general obscurity of the other ancient remains 

 of Orkney the antiquary can do little more than repeat, 

 somewhat incredulously, what tradition tells him, viz., that 

 it was the work, many ages ago, of an ugly, malignant gob- 

 lin, half-earth half-air, the Elfin Trolld, a personage, it is 

 said, that, even within the last century, used occasionally to 

 be seen flitting about in its neighbourhood. 



I was fortunate in a fine breezy day, clear and sunshiny, 

 save where the shadows of a few dense piled-up clouds swept 

 dark athwart the landscape. In the secluded recesses of the 

 valley all was hot, heavy, and still ; though now and then a 

 fitful snatch of a breeze, the mere fragment of some broken 

 gust that seemed to have lost its way, tossed for a moment 

 the white cannach of the bogs, or raised spirally into the air, 

 for a few yards, the light beards of some seeding thistle, and 

 straightway let them down again. Suddenly, however, about 

 noon, a shower broke thick and heavy against the dark sides 

 and gray scalp of the "Ward Hill, and came sweeping down 

 the valley. I did what Norna of the Fitful Head had, ac- 

 cording to the novelist, done before me in similar circum- 

 stances, crept for shelter into the larger bed of the cell, 

 which, though rather scant, taken fairly lengthwise, for a man 

 of five feet eleven, I found, by stretching myself diagonally 

 from corner to corner, no very uncomfortable lounging-place 

 in a thunder-shower. Some provident herd-boy had spread 

 it over, apparently months before, with a littering of heath 

 and fern, which now formed a dry, springy couch ; and as I 

 lay wrapped up in my plaid, listening to the rain-drops as 



