ARGYLLSHIRE. 377 



Earl of Caithness), and Castletown. HalkirJc is the only village in the interior of 

 the county. 



The Orkneys and Shetland Isles (see p. 346) jointly form one county, whose 

 chief town, KirkivaU, lies on Pomona, the " mainland " of the Orkneys. It is not 

 a town of great population, but in its cathedral of St. Magnus, founded in the 

 twelfth century, it possesses a unique specimen of Scandinavian architecture 

 not unlike the cathedral of Trondhjem, in l^orway. Stromness, on the western 

 side of the Mainland, where its scenery is most beautiful, has a natural-history 

 museum of some importance. St. Marr/arcfs Hope is the principal villao-e on 

 South Ronaldsha. 



Lcnvick, the capital of the Shetland Islands, has an excellent harbour, but its 

 trade is less than that of Kirkwall. Amongst its exports figure articles of 

 hosiery and various woollen stuffs, which the women make in the long M-inter 

 nights. 



Akgyllshire, the most southern of the Highland counties, and the only one 

 which lies wholly upon the western slope of the island, consists of a number of penin- 

 sulas and almost insulated land masses, separated by lochs and glens. Ardnamur- 

 chan advances its bold basaltic foreland far into the waves of the Atlantic to the 

 north of Loch Sunart. Along the western side of Loch Linnhe lie Ardgower and 

 Morven, almost severed by the deep Glen Tarbert, and separated by a narrow arm 

 of the sea from the lofty island of Mull. On the eastern side lies the district of 

 Lome, pierced by Loch Etive, which receives the emissary of the inland Loch 

 Awe, escaping through a succession of gorges. Loch Levin is farther north. 

 Ballachulish, on its southern shore, is famed for its slate quarries ; but far more 

 attractive is the wild and gloomy Pass of Glencoe, which leads up from it into one 

 of the most savage parts of the Highlands, and rendered infamous by the treacherous 

 murder of the MacDonalds at the instigation of a Campbell (1692). Oban, to the 

 south of Loch Etive, is one of the great tourist head-quarters of Scotland. The 

 district of Argyll lies to the east of Loch Awe, along the western shore of Loch 

 Fyne, near whose head stand the village of Invcrary and the Gothic mansion of the 

 Duke. The claw-shaped peninsula of Cowal stretches south between Lochs Fyne 

 and Long, and has on its eastern side, opposite to the mouth of the Clyde, the 

 watering-town of Diawon. 



Far away to the southward extends the narrow peninsula formed by the districts 

 of Knapdale and Kintyre, the neck of which is cut across by the Crinan Canal — near 

 whose eastern extremity are the villages of Lochgilphead and Ardrishaig — and which 

 is almost sundered in its centre, where the two Lochs of Tarbert approach within a 

 few hundred yards of each other. Near the southern extremity of this peninsula, 

 in a district extensively peopled by Lowland farmers, stands Camphcltown, the 

 largest town of the shire, famous above all other things for its whiskey. 



On the islands of Argyllshire — Pum, Coll, and Tiree in the north-west ; Mull 

 and Colonsay in the centre ; Jura and Islay in the south-west — there is no place even 

 deserving the name of a village, Tohermory in Mull being merely a fishing station, 

 with an inn for tourists. 



