i8 94 ] 



THE BRITISH NATURALIST. 



17 



takes close on two and a-half days, which includes calling and stopping 

 for several hours at Oban and Stcrnoway. July and August are of course 

 the best months for visiting the islands. At that period of the year, when 

 pleasant weather generally prevails, the tourist cannot fail to be struck 

 by the beauty of the isles as they repose on the blue waters of the 

 Northern Sea. There is a fine variety in the forms they assume in the 

 picturesque irregularity of outline and shore ; some lie low on the waters, 

 and some dash off the white sparkling foam from bold headlands ; and while 

 others surge up into hills of considerable altitude, there are quiet and 

 secluded bays where the long waves break in silver spray on the sandy 

 shore. Pleasant it is on the long summer nights to wander along these 

 shores listening to the melancholy murmur of the sea, and the plaint of 

 the gulls as they rise and sink above the waves. The air is strong and full 

 of ozone, and one soon feels its invigorating effects, but the long and 

 glorious evenings constitute the great charm of the Orkney summer. On 

 the longest day the sun rises at two minutes past three and sets at twenty- 

 three minutes past nine, and on to midnight there lingers a ruddy gleam 

 along the horizon, and after midnight the light of morn mingles with the 

 yet unfaded light of evening, the richness of which is often very beautiful. 



The early history of the Orkneys, which comprises some 56 islands, 

 holms, and islets, is of as stirring and romantic a character as that of any 

 country owing allegiance to the British Crown ; the bold and daring 

 deeds of the Northern Sea-kings have been chronicled in the songs and 

 sagas of many lands, the numerous acts of cruelty perpetrated by them, 

 their piratical expeditions often ending in foreign conquest when neither 

 age, nor sex, nor rank escaped their ravages, and when neither church 

 nor monastery secured its inmates from destruction, illustrate the 

 character, and give us a vivid notion of the ferocity of the early 

 inhabitants. It is impossible definitely to fix the date at which Orkney 

 was first discovered, but it is believed to be nearly 400 years B.C., and it 

 seems probable that very soon thereafter a colony of Picts settled in some 

 of the larger and more fertile of the islands. About the year 50 a.d. the 

 Roman Emperor Claudius undertook an expedition to Britain, which he 

 conquered as far north as the Orkney Islands, and the only opposition 

 he met with was from a multitude of naked and undisciplined savages, 

 whose only weapons consisted of clubs and stones, so that the whole 

 country was speedily subdued. Of historical records regarding the early 

 inhabitants there are almost none, but scattered up and down throughout 

 the islands are abundant evidences, that in remote times they were 

 peopled by a race similar in manner and habits to that which spread over 

 the entire North of Scotland ; this was the great family of the Picts, a 

 strange race, and though so little is known of them historically, the 

 monuments and remains testify to their having been a bold, hardy, 

 and warlike race. Christianity is believed to have been 



