In the year 1802, the author sailed on his annual voyage to the Northern Light-houses so early as the 14th of April, in the Pharos of Leith, carrying with him a foreman and sixteen artificers, to commence the works of the Start Point Tower. After rather a boisterous passage, the vessel reached Orkney in six days, and, at this advanced period of the season, these Islands were found covered to the depth of six inches with snow. This, at any time, is rather uncommon in Orkney; but such had been the severity of the season in the northern regions, that a flock of wild swans which, in severe winters, visit this country, were still seen in considerable numbers upon the fresh-water lakes of Sanday. These large birds are supposed to migrate from Iceland, but are rarely seen here later than the month of March, so that their appearance in the latter end of the month of April, was considered by the Orcadians as a mark of a very severe and long-continued winter in the higher latitudes. [Sidenote: Quarries at Sanday and Eda.] [Sidenote: Encroachments of the Sea upon the Land.] [Sidenote: Of Ruble Building.] [Sidenote: Houses built with Double walls.] It having been ascertained that there was no workable sandstone on the island of Sanday, where the Beacon was to be erected, permission was granted by Mr Laing, the proprietor of the contiguous island of Eda, to open a quarry at Calf Sound, where sandstone of a pretty good quality was obtained. With a view to render this building substantially water-tight, it had been originally intended to make it wholly of hewn stone, built in regular courses, technically called _ashlar_ or _aisler-work_, a term derived from the aisle of a church, where this sort of masonry predominates; but the quarry of Eda being about fourteen miles distant from the work, the stones had to be brought by sea through rapid tides; and there being but indifferent creeks or havens both at the quarry and at the Start Point, it was found necessary to make only the principal stones of hewn-work, while the body of the work was executed in ruble-building, for which excellent materials were got at the Start Point, the property of the Right Honourable Lord Dundas, consisting of _sandstone-slate_, of a greyish-smoke colour, intermixed with shining particles of mica. The rock here is disposed in strata, from 1 to 8 inches in thickness, and could easily be raised in pieces containing from 15 to 20 square feet. Indeed, the encroachments of the sea had heaped up immense quantities of these schistose stones at high-water mark, all round the Start Point, the shores of which appeared like the ruins of the wall of some large city. These stones, however, were more applicable for the purposes of dike-building, or interior walls, than for external work; for, after having been exposed on the beach for ages to the alternate changes of moisture and dryness, heat and cold, they were found to have many small fissures, or were split horizontally; and although the