The scenery is bleak and dreary, consisting of treeless and barren tracts rich in peat and boulders. The summer is almost nightless, print being legible at midnight; but in winter the days are only six hours long, though the nights are frequently illuminated with brilliant displays of the aurora borealis. As for visitors, the whales, of various species, are perhaps more numerous than human outsiders, being from time to time captured in the bays and sounds. The natives are daring cragsmen, and hunt the waterfowl, which live in immense variety and numbers on the cliffs. In one place is Gallows Hill, where they used to hang witches and criminals. It was probably in this region, so long subject to the incursions of the Danes and Norsemen, that the story of the thistle, now the national emblem, arose. A Danish army was moving at night to surprise the Scots, when one of the invaders in his bare feet stepped on a thistle and felt something not pleasant. His howl of pain awakened the sleeping host and the Scots, seizing their weapons, drove off the enemy. Later the emblem was stamped on coins and the Order of the Thistle, or Order of St. Andrew, was established. The Shetlanders are famous for their skill with both needles and looms. It is interesting to note that knitting is quite a modern invention; yet what an addition to the resources of civilization and what an asset of the sedentary life it has become! How handsomely it supplemented the æon-old art of weaving! In the Shetlands knitting has helped notably to enrich life and supplement industry in a region where existence is hard. To these islands the gift came from Spain, the original country of Santa Claus, in which many of our air castles lie. It was through Holland that the red robe and ecclesiastical associations of St. Nicholas came first to us, but it was by way of Norway that his fur-trimmed cap and coat, somewhat shortened, and his reindeers, arrived later in America; but to the Shetlands the Spaniards came in a ship direct. From the survivors of a vessel in the Armada of Philip II, which went ashore in 1588, the Shetlanders are said to have acquired the art of knitting the colored hosiery for which they are noted. The shipwrecked Spanish sailors taught the people how to prepare dyes from the plants and lichens, and many of the patterns still show signs of Moorish origin. Shetland’s starting-point of chronology was this year, 1588, when the Spanish admiral, commanding the Duke of Medina, Sidonia’s flagship, was wrecked on this iron shore. About two hundred of the would-be invaders of Britain were rescued and lived, with the hardy islanders of Fair Island, on shell fish and wild fowl, until the monotony and sparseness of such unusual diet drove them to the “mainland.” There they were kindly received and were subsequently sent to Scotland. This name “Fair” comes from the Norse “faar,” a sheep, which is also the meaning in the name of Faroe Islands, which belong to Denmark.