32 ORNITHOLOGICAL RAMBLES. 



here in the winter months ; and there are times when 

 the little boat is quite unable to cross. After 

 ploughing through the billows for another hour and a 

 half, we coasted along the lofty crags of Orkney, com- 

 posed of thin and nearly horizontal layers of brown 

 clay slate, towering upwards to an immense height, 

 and stretching far away on either hand in rigid hard- 

 developed outline. As our tiny vessel steamed proudly 

 beneath these stupendous cliffs, I felt as though I was 

 sailing upon some vast lake, instead of an arm of the 

 mighty ocean ; the witness of this still unchanging 

 grandeur, and navigated only by the porpoise and the 

 whale, ages before the first tree had nodded to its fall, 

 or weak, short lived man had taught the giants of the 

 forest 



" To cleave the unsettled bosom of the deep, 

 Or shape his course upon the trackless wave." 



Uncrumbled and unstained by time, these mighty 

 monuments have stood a staunch impenetrable barrier 

 against old father Neptune's impetuous advances. 

 There is something extremely dignified in their dusky, 

 dark gamboge hue, fading in the distance into purple 

 indistinctness, and the endless movements of many an 

 ocean bird either descending to the wave on quivering 

 wing, or feathering upward to their final roost, infused 

 a life into the background of the picture. 



Like some weird spectre from an earlier world, 



