RAMBLES OP A GEOLOGIST. 481 



pulled down several years ago of the patrimony of Grow the 

 " Pirate ;" and is not a little interesting, as having formed 

 the central nucleus rouDd which, like those bits of tnread 

 or wire on which the richly saturated fluids of the chemist 

 solidify and crystallize, the entire fiction of the novelist ag- 

 gregated and condensed under the influence of forces opera- 

 tive only in minds of genius. A white, tall, old-fashioned 

 house, conspicuous on the hill-side, looks out across the bay 

 towards the square inclosure,. which it directly fronts. And 

 it is surely a curious coincidence that, while in one of these 

 two erections, only a few hundred yards apart, one of the 

 heroes of Scott saw the light, the other should have proved 

 the scene of the childhood of one of the heroes of Byron, 



" Torquil, the nursling of the northern seas." 



The reader will remember, that in Byron's poem of " The 

 Island," one of the younger leaders of the mutineers is de- 

 scribed as a native of these northern isles. He is drawn by 

 the poet, amid the wild luxuriance of an island of the Paci- 

 fic, as 



" The blue-eyed northern child, 

 Of isles more known to man, but scarce less wild, 

 The fair-haired offspring of the Orcades, 

 "Where roars the Pentland with his whirling seas, 

 Rocked in his cradle by the roaring wind, 

 The tempest- born in body and in mind, 

 His young eyes, opening on the ocean foam, 

 Had from that moment deemed the deep his home." 



Judging from what I learned of his real history, which is 

 well known in Stromness, I found reason to conclude that he 

 had been a hapless young man, of a kindly, genial nature ; 

 and greatly " more sinned against than sinning," in the unfor- 

 tunate affair of the mutiny with which his name is now as- 

 sociated, and for his presumed share in which, untried and 

 unconvicted, he was cruelly left to perish in chains amid the 

 horrors of a shipwreck. I had the honour of being intro- 

 duced on the following day to his sister, a lady far advanced 



2 H 



