THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE. 



NEW SERIES. DECADE II. VOL. V. 



No. II.— FEBRUARY, 1878. 



OS-XG-IIsrJLXj J^S,TIOnL3i]S. 



I. — The Old Man of Hoy. 

 By Prof. Archibald Geikie, LL.D., F.E.S., 

 Director of the Geological Survey of Scotland. 

 (PLATE II.) 

 rpHE tidal wave of travellers which, thanks to railroads and 

 X steamboats, pours northward over the country every summer, 

 even as far as John o' Groat's, has hardly as yet risen much beyond 

 that utmost shore. The tourist stops short at the Pentland Firth • 

 indeed, when he reaches its bare ti'eeless coast, and finds that there is 

 really no traditional house at John o' Groat's (though a good inn, 

 with careful host and kindly hostess, should tempt him to rest there 

 a while), he is in a hurry to get back by daylight to the busy hum 

 of men in the hyperborean city of Wick or Thurso, and as eager 

 to flit southwards again next morning. He makes a fatal mistake, 

 however ; for he misses the very points which it would have been 

 worth his while to make the whole of his long journey to see. Let 

 him, for instance, take up his quarters for a day or two by the side 

 of the Pentland Firth, and sitting or lying on one of its grim cliffs, 

 let him spend his hours watching the race of its tideway. Nowhere 

 else round the British Islands can he look down on such a sea. It 

 seems to rush and roar past him like a vast river, but with a flow 

 some three times swifter than our most rapid rivers. Such a broad 

 bi'east of rolling eddying foaming water ! Even when there is no 

 wind, the tide ebbs and flows in this way, pouring now eastwards 

 now westwards, as the tidal wave rises and falls. But if he should 

 be lucky enough to come in for a gale of wind (and they are not 

 unknown there in summer, as he will probably learn), let him by no 

 means fail to take up his station on Duncausbay Head, or at the 

 Point of Mey. The shelter of a flagstone " dyke " and a water- 

 proof will save him from any ulterior consequences of the exposure, 

 or should he be under some misgivings on this point, when he gets 

 back to the shelter of the inn at John o' Groat's, mine host has 

 sundry specifics of well-tried potency, at the very sight and taste of 

 which rheums, catarrhs and the rest of that tribe of ailments at 

 once decamp. Ensconced in his " neuk," he can quietly try to fix in 

 his mind a picture of what he sees. He will choose if he can a 

 time when the tide is coming up against the wind. The water no 

 longer looks like the eddying current of a mighty river. It rather 



DECADE II. TOL. T. — NO. II. 4 



