Seventeen of these islands are habitable. They are rugged, mountainous, and rocky; the intervening currents deep and rapid; the sea around them turbulent, and at times so much agitated by whirlwinds, that vast quantities of water are forced up into the air, and the fishes contained therein frequently deposited on the tops of the highest mountains. These are equally resistless on land, tearing up trees, stones, and animals, and carrying them to very distant places. Whirlpools, too, are numerous in these seas, and extremely dangerous; that near the island of Suderoe is the most noted. It is occasioned by a crater, sixty-one fathoms deep in the centre, and from fifty to fifty-five on the sides. The water forms four fierce circumgyrations. The point they begin at is on the side of a large bason, where commences a range of rocks running spirally, and terminating at the verge of the crater. This range is extremely rugged, and covered with water from the depth of twelve to eight fathoms only. It forms four equidistant wreaths, with a channel from thirty-five to twenty fathoms in depth between each. On the outside, beyond that depth, the sea suddenly sinks to eighty and ninety. On the south border of the bason, is a lofty rock, called _Sumboe Munk_, noted for the number of birds which frequent it. On one side, the water is only three or four fathoms deep, on the other, fifteen. The danger at most times, especially in storms, is very great. Ships are irresistibly drawn in: the rudder loses its power, and the waves beat as high as the masts, so that an escape is almost miraculous; yet at the reflux, and in very still weather, the inhabitants will venture in boats for the sake of fishing. _Arct. Zool._ 2d edit. vol. i. p. 56. On arriving at these southerly latitudes, the appearance of the moon and stars was, to use the language of Captain Phipps, almost as extraordinary a phenomena as the sun at midnight, when we first got within the Arctic circle. On the 20th, lay becalmed off Fair Isle, a barren spot, about three miles long, situated midway between the Shetland and Orkney Isles, and inhabited by about 170 persons. The shores are high and rugged; greatest depth of the water near it twenty-six fathoms. The tide here runs with great velocity, and forms at the east end a considerable eddy. Some ships belonging to the famous Spanish Armada were lost on this isle. When lying off Fair Isle, we sent the men we had got from Shetland ashore in the row-boats. 22d, Passed North Ronaldshaw light in the Orkneys. The wind being but little, and at S.E. we were drifted by the tide down the Murray Firth, or _Tuum Æstuarium_ of the Romans, as far as Spey Bay. Tacked and stood in for Kinnaird’s Head, the _Taizalum Promontorium_, which, with the north-eastern extremity of Caithness, forms this capacious bay.