50 Prof. Geikie—The Old Man of Hoy. 



resembles the surging of rocky rapids. Its surface is one vast slieet 

 of foam and green yeasty waves. Every now and then a huge 

 billow rears itself impatiently above the rest, tossing its sheets of 

 spray in the face of the wind, which scatters them back into the 

 boiling flood. Here and there, owing to the configuration of the 

 bottom, this turmoil waxes so furious that a constant dance of 

 towering breakers is kept up. Such are the terrible "Eoost of 

 Duncansbay," and the broken water grimly termed the " Merry men 

 of Mey." With a great gale from the north-east or south-east, the 

 shelter even of the stone wall on Duncansbay Head would be of 

 little avail. For solid sheets of water rush up the face of the cliffs 

 for more than 100 feet, and pour over the top in such volume, 

 that it is said they have actually been intercepted on the landward 

 side by a dam across a little valley, and have been used to turn a 

 mill. Should the meditative tourist be overtaken by such a gale, 

 he will find shelter in the quaint cottage of the kind-hearted but 

 hard-headed John Gibson, who, perched like a sea-eagle at the head 

 of a tremendous chasm in the cliffs, can spin many a yarn about the 

 tempests of the north. 



No one can see such scenes without realizing, as he probably has 

 never done before, the restless energy of nature. His eyes are opened. 

 He feels how wind and rain, wave and tide, are leagued together, 

 as it were in spite of their apparent antagonism, to batter down the 

 shores. Everywhere he witnesses proofs of their prowess. Tall 

 gaunt stacks rise out of the waves in front of the cliffs of which 

 they once formed a part. Yawning rents run through them from 

 summit to base; their sides are frayed into cusp and pinnacle that 

 seem ready to topple over when the next storm assails them ; their 

 surf-beaten basements are pierced with caverns and tunnels into 

 which the surge is for ever booming. On the solid cliffs behind, the 

 same tale of warfare is inscribed. But the traveller who has seen 

 so much will perforce desire to see more. From his perch on the 

 southern side of the foaming Pentland Firth he looks across to the 

 distant hills of Hoy- — the only hills indeed which are visible from 

 the monotonous moorlands of northern Caithness, save when from 

 some higher eminence one catches the blue outline of Morven on 

 the southern sky-line. The Orkney Islands are otherwise as tame 

 and as flat as Caithness. But in Hoy they certainly make amends 

 for their general featureless surface. Yet even there it is not the 

 interior, hilly though it be, but the western coast-cliffs which 

 redeem the whole of the far north of Scotland from the charge of 

 failure in picturesque and impressive scenery. One looks across 

 the Pentland Firth and marks how the flat islands of the Orkney 

 group rise from its northern side as a long low line until westwards 

 they mount into the rounded heights of Hoy, and how these again 

 plunge in a range of precipices into the Atlantic. Yellow and red 

 in hue, these marvellous cliffs gleam across the water as if the 

 sunlight always bathed them. They brighten a grey day, and grey 

 days are only too common in the northern summer ; on a sunny 

 forenoon, or stiU better on a clear evening, when the sun is sinking 



