13 



CHAPTER IT. 



" For now in our trim boats of Noroway deal, 

 We must dance on the waves with the porpoise and seal; 

 The breeze it shall pipe, so it pipe not too high, 

 And the gull be our 'songstress whene'er she flits by." 



Claud Halcro's Norse ditty. " PIKATE." 



IT was my intention to make a stay of some days, if 

 weather had demanded it, in this town, as I was 

 anxious to make a short incursion against the seals 

 which occasionally frequent the neighbourhood of the 

 sand-banks and shoals which are visible at low water 

 about the mouth of the Firth, and around which the 

 various fish upon which they feed congregate in great 

 numbers in the currents and shallows of the narrow 

 places. These, to my mind, beautiful but peculiar 

 instances of vertebrate animals are yearly becoming 

 more scarce upon the shores of Scotland. 



In days gone by, the Phoca, or seal, was as familiar 

 and well known to every dweller on the coast as their 

 own watchdog or the birds of the air ; and the various 

 time-honoured legends and nursery stories connected 

 with these monsters of the deep, and some of which 

 are so ably interwoven by Sir Walter Scott in his 

 admirable works of fiction, point them out as having 



