The Bishop's Palace at Orkney - Haco the Norwegian - Icelandic Chronicle respecting his Expedition to Scotland His Death- Removal of his Re- mains to Norway -Why Norwegian Invasion ceased Straw-plaiting The Lassies of Orkney Orkney Type of Countenance- Celtic and Scandi- navian An accomplished Antiquary Old Manuscripts An old Tune book - Manuscript Letter of Mary Queen of Scots Letters of General Monck The fearless Covenanter Cave of the Rebels - Why the tragedy of Gustavus Vasa " was prohibited - Quarry of Pickoquoy Its Fossil Shells Journey to Stromness - Scenery-Birth-place of Malcolm, the Poet - His History - One of his Poems His Brother a Free Church Minister Hills of Orkney - Their Geologic Composition - Scene of Scott's "Pirate Stromness Geology of the District — “Seeking beasts"— Conglomerate in contact with Granite - A palæozoic Hudson's Bay -Thickness of Conglom erate of Orkney - Oldest Vertebrate yet discovered in Orkney Its Size.. Figure of a characteristic plate of the Asterolepis - Peculiarity of Old Red Fishes Length of the Asterolepis A rich Ichthyolite Bed - Arrangement of the Layers Queries as to the Cause of it - · Minerals An abandoned Mine - A lost Vessel Kelp for Iodine A dangerous Coast - Incidents of Shipwreck Hospitality - Stromness Museum Diplopterus mistaken for Dipterus Their Resemblances and Differences Visit to a remarkable Stack – Paring the Soil for Fuel, and consequent Barrenness - Description of the Stack-Wave-formed Caves - Height to which the Surf rises. Detached Fossils Remains of the Pterichthys Terminal Bones of the Coccos- teus, etc., preserved - Internal Skeleton of Coccosteus - The shipwrecked Sailor in the Cave Bishop Grahame His Character, as drawn by Baillie — His Successor Ruins of the Bishop's Country-house-Sub-aerial Formation of Sandstone - Formation near New Kaye - Inference from such Formation - Tour resumed Loch of Stennis - Waters of the Loch fresh, brackish, and salt-Vegetation varied accordingly — Change produced in the Flounder by fresh water The Standing Stones, second only to Stonehenge Their Purpose Their Appearance and Situation - Diameter of the Circle - What the Antiquaries say of it Reference to it in the "Pirate " — Dr. Hibbert's On Horseback A pared Moor - Small Landholders - Absorption of small holdings in England and Scotland Division of Land favorable to Civil and Religious Rights - Favorable to social Elevation -An inland Parish - The Landsman and Lobster-Wild Flowers of Orkney-Law of Compensation illustrated by the Tobacco Plant -- Poverty tends to Productiveness Illus- trated in Ireland - Profusion of Ichthyolites - Orkney á land of Defunct Fishes Sandwick — A Collection of Coccostean Flags - A Quarry full of Heads of Dipteri The Bergil, or Striped Wrasse - Its Resemblance to the Dipterus - Poverty of the Flora of the Lower Old Red The Dwarfie Stone of Hoy - Sir Walter Scott's Ac- count of it — Its Associations - Inscription of Names George Buchanan's Consolation -The mythic Carbuncle of the Hill of Hoy No Fossils at Hoy - Striking Profile of Sir Walter Scott on the Hill of Hoy - Sir Walter, and Shetland and Orkney Originals of two Characters in "The Pirate "- Bessie Millie Garden of Gow, the "Pirate"- Childhood's Scene of Byron's "Torquil " ---- The Author's Introduction to his Sister A German Visitor German and Scotch Sabbath-keeping habits contrasted - Mr. Watt's Speci- mens of Fossil Remains - The only new Organism found in Orkney - Back THE CRUISE OF THE BETSEY. CHAPTER I. PREPARATION-Departure-Recent and Ancient Monstrosities—A Free Church Yacht-Down the Clyde-Jura-Prof. Walker's Experiment-Whirlpool near Scarba - Geological Character of the Western Highlands-An Illustration-Different Ages of Outer and Inner Hebrides-Mt. Blanc and the Himalayas mere upstarts"- Esdaile Quarries- Oban A Section through Conglomerate and Slate examined - M'Dougal's Dog-stone-Power of the Ocean to move Rocks - Sound of Mull-The Betsey - The Minister's Cabin Village of Tobermory-The "Florida," a Wreck of the Invincible ArmadaGeologic Exploration and Discovery-At Anchor. THE pleasant month of July had again come round, and for full five weeks I was free. Chisels and hammers, and the bag for specimens, were taken from their corner in the dark closet, and packed up with half a stone weight of a fine soft Conservative Edinburgh newspaper, valuable for a quality of preserving old things entire. At noon on St. Swithin's day (Monday the 15th), I was speeding down the Clyde in the Toward Castle steamer, for Tobermory in Mull. In the previous season I had intended passing direct from the Oölitic deposits of the eastern coast of Scotland, to the Oölitic deposits of the Hebrides. But the weeks glided all too quickly away among the ichthyolites of Caithness and Cromarty, and the shells and lignites of Sutherland and Ross. My friend, too, the Rev. Mr. Swanson, of Small Isles, on whose assistance I had reckoned, was in the middle of his troubles at the time, with no longer a home in his parish, and not yet provided with one elsewhere; and I concluded he would have but little heart, at such a season, for breaking into rocks, or for passing from the too pressing monstrosities of an existing state of things, to the old lapidified monstrosities of the past. And so my design on the Hebrides had to be postponed for a twelvemonth. But my friend, now afloat in his Free Church yacht, had got a home on the sea beside his island charge, which, if not very secure when nights were dark and winds loud, and the little vessel tilted high to the long roll of the Atlantic, lay at least beyond the reach of man's intolerance, and not beyond the protecting care of the Almighty. He had written me that he would run down his vessel from Small Isles to meet me at Tobermory, and in consequence of the arrangement I was now on my way to Mull. St. Swithin's day, so important in the calendar of our humbler meteorologists, had in this part of the country its alternate fits of sunshine and shower. We passed gaily along the green banks of the Clyde, with their rich flat fields glittering in moisture, and their lines of stately trees, that, as the light flashed out, threw their shadows over the grass. The river expanded into the estuary, the estuary into the open sea; we left behind us beacon, and obelisk, and rock-perched castle; "Merrily down we drop Below the church, below the tower, Below the light house top;" and, as the evening fell, we were ploughing the outer reaches of the Frith, with the ridgy table-land of Ayrshire stretching away, green, on the one side, and the serrated peaks of Arran rising dark and high on the other. At sunrise next morning our boat lay, unloading a portion of her cargo, in one of the ports of Islay, and we could see the Irish coast resting on the horizon to the south and west, like a long undulating bank of thin blue cloud; with the island of Rachrin- famous for the asylum it had afforded the Bruce when there was no home for him in Scotlandpresenting in front its mass of darker azure. On and away! We swept past Islay, with its low fertile hills of mica-schist and slate; and Jura, with its flat dreary moors, and its farseen gigantic paps, on one of which, in the last age, Professor Walker, of Edinburgh, set water a-boil with six degrees of heat less than he found necessary for the purpose on the plain below. The Professor describes the view from the summit, which includes in its wide circle at once the Isle of Skye and the Isle of Man, as singularly noble and imposing; two such prospects more, he says, would bring under the eye the whole island of Great Britain, from the Pentland Frith to the English Channel. We sped past Jura. Then came the Gulf of Coryvrekin, with the bare mountain island of Scarba overlooking the fierce, far-famed whirlpool, that we could see from the deck, breaking in long lines of foam, and sending out its waves in wide rings on every side, when not a speck of white was visible elsewhere in the expanse of sea around us. And then came an opener space, studded with smaller islands, mere hill-tops rising out of the sea, with here and there insulated groups of pointed rocks, the skeletons of perished hills, amid which the tide chafed and fretted, as if laboring to complete on the broken remains their work of denudation and ruin. The disposition of land and water on this coast suggests the idea that the Western Highlands, from the line in the interior, whence the rivers descend to the Atlantic, with the islands beyond to the outer Hebrides, are all parts of one great mountainous plane, inclined slantways into the sea. First, the long withdrawing valleys of the main land, with their brown mossy streams, change their character as |