A WINTER DAY IN CAITHNESS 43 



Wrath, we call it, but the Norsemen named it Hvarf, 

 which means the ' turning-point'; for it was here their 

 black hjuls turned southward in sailing to the Sudrey 

 the southern isles now called the Hebrides. 1 

 After all, perhaps the most reasonable explanation 

 of Thurso may be that the river was named after a 

 harmless fisherman called Thor. 



XVI 



There is no word to describe the climate to-day 



so fitly as the Scottish one 'snell.' Man 



A Winter 



and beast must be cowering under the day in 



Caithness 



humble roofs dotting the wayside and 



the fields, for we have driven three miles along the 

 dreary road to Westerdale without encountering 

 either. A string of wild geese passes overhead with 

 much clangour, hardly out of gunshot: of half 



1 The histories of some names are curious. This one Sudrey, 

 the southern isles has disappeared from our maps, where Suther- 

 land, originally conferred by these same invaders from the north, 

 still remains ; but to this day we continue to talk of the diocese 

 of Sodor and Man, by reason that it once consisted of Man and 

 the Hebrides. The name Hebrides took its rise from a copyist's 

 blunder. Ptolemy and the earliest geographers wrote it Ebudse 

 or Haebudae. The character carried no dot till the eleventh 

 century, so there was some excuse for the copyist, who mistook 

 u for ri. Hsebudae was, therefore, written Hebrides in a manu- 

 script from which an early edition of Pliny was printed ; the 

 name took root with us in that form, and was carried by Captain 

 Cook to the southern hemisphere. 



