we cheerfully ordered the stipulated bottle for them. [Sidenote: ORKNEY BOATMEN] Subsequently on crossing over into the Orkney group, I had soon occasion to note the difference between the boatmen there and those with whom I was familiar in the west of Scotland. More adventurous and skilful than their Celtic fellow-countrymen, they generally possess larger and stronger boats, which they keep in better trim. Some of their smaller boats are built with sharp sterns, and exactly resemble the common type one sees in Norway. In the eighteenth century, as Boswell mentions, the people in the Inner Hebrides sometimes obtained their boats from Norway. The Orcadians, among other traces of their Scandinavian descent, seem to take to the water as naturally as the seals which they shoot. On several occasions my Orkney boatmen piloted me along the base of cliffs and among rocks against which the heavy Atlantic swell was breaking, where no Skye boatmen I ever met with would have ventured. No one can fully realize the grandeur of the great cliff of Hoy unless he can look up at it from below, as well as from the crest above. Its warm tints of bright yellow and red make it seem aglow with light even in dull weather, and from a distance it looks as if it caught sunbeams which are falling on no other part of the scene. Viewed from its upper edge, this cliff presents a wonderful picture of decay. The horizontal beds of sandstone have been split by the weather into long deep vertical chasms, and etched out into fantastic cusps and cupolas, alcoves and recesses. From the edge of the precipice, which rises a thousand feet above the sea, one looks down on the long Atlantic rollers, seemingly diminished to mere ripples, and their heavy breakers to streaks of foam, while the surge, though it thunders against the rocks, ‘cannot be heard so high.’ The Old Man of Hoy, which has been left standing as an isolated column in front of this great cliff, is the grandest natural obelisk in the British Islands, for it rises to a height of 450 feet above the waves that beat against its base.