civilization has, among other things, both sharpened the people’s innate inclination for a maritime life, and increased their coolness towards, not to say ill-will and contempt for, the Gaelic Highlanders. On the whole, however, Scandinavian characteristics are by no means conspicuous among the people. English civilization, and Scotch-English institutions, have been introduced to such a degree into Mainland, and thence into the other islands, that a traveller would not know he was in the chief country of the former mighty Norwegian jarls, unless he were able to decipher the frequently transformed names of places; or, above all, unless he had such a general knowledge of the island’s history and antiquities that he could apprehend, and in some degree interpret, the hints given by silent monuments of the brilliant but long-departed age of heroes. The memory of the warlike life of heathenism is conspicuously preserved in Mainland by the many large barrows, or tumuli, which meet the eye on all sides. It is, indeed, certain that several of these—viz., what are called the “Picts’ houses,” which form in their interior stone chambers, covered by small flag-stones laid over one another—must be ascribed to the older inhabitants of the island; yet enough remain which we may with good reason attribute to the Norwegians and Danes. They are not, like those tumuli, or “cairns,” which are found most frequently in the north of Scotland, a mass of small stones heaped together without any filling-in of earth, but are formed, like our Scandinavian barrows, of earth thrown up to a very considerable height. As in Scandinavia, they are met with mostly on hills, and near the firths or seacoasts, whence there is an uninterrupted view of the sea. To the ancient Northman it was evidently an almost insufferable thought to be buried in a confined or remote corner, where nobody could see his grave or be reminded of his deeds. The greater chief a man was the more did he desire that his “barrow” should lie high and uninclosed, so that it might be visible to all who travelled by land and by sea. United with this desire to live in the memory of posterity, the Viking certainly also indulged the secret belief, that his spirit, or ghost, would at times arise from the barrow to look out upon that beloved sea, and to refresh itself, after the gloomy closeness of the grave, with the cool breezes which play upon its bosom.