Balfour Castle in Shapinsay, the residence of Colonel W. E. L. Balfour of Balfour and Trenabie, is one of the finest specimens of Scottish Baronial architecture in the north of Scotland. Erected in 1847 from designs of the late David Bryce, R.S.A., Balfour Castle is effective as a whole without being conspicuous in detail. The house is surrounded by fine gardens and plantations. [Illustration: Tankerness House, Kirkwall] Melsetter House in Walls, as it existed down to 1898, is an excellent example of the older Orcadian country houses, few of which now survive. The older part of the building, as it appears on page 32, dates from the later seventeenth century. The house was originally a country residence of the Bishops of Orkney, a fact which may account for its roughly cruciform construction. The place was twice sacked by Jacobites in 1746, during the absence of the owner, Captain Benjamin Moodie, with the Royal army. The gardens and grounds are exceptionally fine for those northern latitudes. Two other interesting old Scoto-Orcadian mansions are Skaill House in Sandwick, and Carrick House in Eday, the latter erected in the seventeenth century by John, brother of Earl Patrick Stewart, who was himself created Earl of Carrick by King Charles I. At a later date the house was the property of James Fea of Clestrain, who in 1725 captured in the neighbourhood the celebrated pirate John Gow. In the towns and villages of Orkney and Shetland, where the main street usually runs parallel to the shore, many of the houses stand with one gable towards the street and the other closely overlooking the sea, a feature which gives a distinctly foreign aspect to Lerwick and Stromness in particular. It is sober fact that in many houses in Stromness, granted a taste for fish, and a high tide at the appropriate hour, one can catch one’s breakfast from the gable windows before getting out of bed. 18. Communications, Past and Present Before the days of steam communication there were two ferries across the Pentland Firth to Huna in Caithness, one from Walls and the other from South Ronaldshay. Edinburgh was the usual objective of Orcadians using this route, and Shanks’ nag the common means of locomotion, save for persons of quality, who rode horses. The only other means of reaching the Scottish capital, the sole place out of the Islands which old-world Orcadians considered of much account, and a place where all the well-to-do among them had relations, cronies, and “gude-gangin’ pleas,” was by occasional sailing packets from Kirkwall to Leith.