Nothing could kill Elgin. It might well take for its motto, “iterum,”--again. The “Garden of Scotland,” with its fine climate, cheap living, and good schools, rose into prosperity, especially since many of her former sons have been generous to their mother. In 1903, Mr. G. A. Cooper presented his native town with a public park of forty-two acres containing lakes, which represent, on a miniature scale, the British Isles. The public library occupies what was once the mansion of the Grant family. There is a church at Birnie, not far away to the southwest, built in 1150, which is believed to be the oldest house of public worship still in use in Scotland. Here is preserved an old Celtic altar bell of hammered iron. Such is the odor of sanctity of this ancient edifice that there is a local saying that “To be thrice prayed for in the kirk of Birnie will either mend or end you.” CHAPTER XIX THE ORKNEYS AND THE SHETLANDS In the days of the great world-war of 1914–16, the Orkneys rose into fresh notice, especially because here the British cruisers, that had intercepted the neutral steamers to Holland, Scandinavia, and Denmark, took their semi-prizes and detained mails and passengers, causing much exasperation. Here, too, was the western terminal of the line of blockade, with ships and steel netting, by which passage into Germany was made nearly impossible. During this period many Americans were involuntary and not over-happy visitors to these islands, which to them were, literally, the Bleak House of the British Empire. “Orcades” was the name the Romans gave to this northern extremity of their world. Their existence had been unknown, nor was it suspected that Britain was an island, until the time of Agricola in A.D. 78. Then the fleet of triremes ploughed the waves, unveiling the contour of the country, centuries later called Scotland. [Illustration: THE HARBOR OF KIRKWALL, ORKNEY ISLANDS] To-day the two archipelagoes, Orkney and Shetland, form one British county, with a representative in Parliament. Of the sixty-seven Orkney Islands, seven are inhabited by fewer than thirty thousand persons. Populated once by the Picts, whose rude memorials are seen almost everywhere, these islands became part of Norway and Denmark, and constituted no portion of the Scottish realm, until America was discovered. It was when James III--as in our time Edward VII--wed the “sea-king’s daughter from over the sea,” that the Danish sovereign, by bestowing these storm-swept isles as the marriage portion of his daughter, made them part of Scotland. James III was son of the Dutch Queen, Mary of Gelderland. He married Margaret of Denmark, in 1469. Pomona is the largest island and Kirkwall its chief town, with which not a few involuntary American tourists have made themselves acquainted in the war years.