The first large valley in Sutherland to the south of this mountain ridge is Helmsdale, which is watered by a river of no mean size. That Helmsdale is a Norwegian name (in the Sagas “Hjalmundsdalr”) is at once evident from the present Gaelic inhabitants calling the valley in pure Gaelic, “Strath Ullie,” or with a strange confusion of language, Strath Helmsdale; for as Strath signifies in Gaelic a valley or dale, the word _dale_ is added both at the beginning and end. It is a similar repetition which we so often hear when the “Orkney Isles” are spoken of, in the original language “Orknö,” but which, translated as now used, is Orknö Öerne (or the “Orkney-islands-islands”). Along Helmsdale River several places are met with whose original Norwegian names are still to be discerned; as, for instance, Eilderabol, Gilaboll, Dviaboll, and Leiraboll. All these have the ending _bol_, which is peculiar to a number of Norwegian names of places in Sutherland and in some of the Hebrides; but which, in Caithness, the Orkneys, and Shetland Isles, as well as in Lewis and several of the Hebrides, appears in the longer form of “bolstaðr.” To the north-west of Helmsdale are the vales of Kildonan, which run up as far as the Vale of Strathmore in Caithness. Here, it is supposed, on the frontiers of Caithness and Sutherland, lay “Eisteinsdalr,” so famed in history as the spot where the Scotch king William encamped in the year 1198. It is, however, very uncertain whether “Easterdale” in Strathmore be in any way connected with the name of Eisteinsdal.