(yfthe Shetland Islands. ^49 
numerous sheep continually feed, pleasingly harmonizes, on a 
calm day, with the glassy surface of the wide Atlantic ; nor is 
the pleasure less perfect, when the smooth coating of so luxu- 
riant a green turf is contrasted with the naked red crags that 
form the precipice below, whitened with the spray of the break- 
ers which continually dash against them with angry roaring. 
The rich surface of pasture that thus gradually shelves from 
the elevated ridge of the coast, bears the name of the Villians of 
Ure ; — and well might we apply to this favoured spot of Thule, 
the compliment that has been often paid to some rich vale of 
England,— “ Fairies joy in its soil” After a distance of three 
miles, this gladdening prospect of fertility is suddenly closed 
with the harsher features that Hialtland usually wears. Near 
the mountain lake of Houland, where a burgh, built on a holm 
close to its shore, displays its mouldering walls, the coast re- 
sumes its wild, aspect. 
A large cavernous aperture, ninety feet wide, shows the com- 
mencement of two contiguous immense perforations, named the 
Holes of Scraada, where, in one of them that runs 250 feet in- 
to the land, the sea flows to its utmost extremity. Each has an 
opening at a distance from die ocean, by which the light of the 
sun is partially admitted. Farther north, other ravages of the 
ocean are displayed. A mass of rock, the average dimensions 
of which may perhaps be rated at twelve or thirteen feet square, 
and four and a half or five feet in thickness, was first moved 
from its bed, about fifty years ago, to a distance of thirty feet, 
and has since been twice turned over. But the most sublime 
scene is w^here a mural pile of porphyry, escaping the process 
of disintegration that is devastating the coast, appears to have 
been left as a sort of rampart against the inroads of the ocean ; 
— ^the Atlantic, when provoked by wintry gales, batters against 
it with all the force of real artillery,— the waves having in their 
repeated assaults forced for themselves an entrance. This 
breach, named the Grind of the Navir, is widened every win- 
ter by the overwhelming surge, that, finding a passage through 
it, separates large stones from its side, and forces them to a dis- 
tance of no less than 180 feet. In two or three spots, the frag- 
ments which have been detached are brought together in im- 
