Swept by the salt-laden blasts from the ocean, Orkney and Shetland cannot boast of trees. Hedges of elder grow well enough when under the protection of stone walls, but are shorn off obliquely when they rise above them, as if a scythe or bill-hook had cut them across. A group of low trees, sheltered by the houses at Stromness, appears to be the resort of all the birds within a compass of many miles. There is a story of an American traveller who landed at Kirkwall in the dark, and, after a stroll before breakfast next morning, returned to the hotel amazed at the ‘completeness of the clearing’ which he supposed the inhabitants had made of their forests. To the geologist, the antiquary, and the lover of cliff scenery, the Orkney islands offer much of great interest. Though it was in the first of these capacities that I was drawn to the islands, the standing stones, brochs, and mounds, as well as the magnificent coast-precipices, were soon found to have irresistible attractions. [Sidenote: THE SHETLAND ISLES] Shetland, lying more remote from the rest of Britain, has preserved, even more than Orkney, traces of the Scandinavian occupation. One comes now and then upon an old Norse word in the language of the people, and so foreign are the topographical names that, in hearing them pronounced, one might imagine oneself to be among the fjords of Norway. To this day we may hear a Shetlander, who is about to sail for the south, say that he is going to Scotland, as if he regarded his own islands as part of another kingdom. On my first visit to Shetland I spent some time on the mainland, chiefly on geological errands bent, but not without a glance at the scenic and antiquarian interests of the islands. One of my excursions took me to Papa Stour--a small island lying to the west, and exposed to the full fury of the Atlantic storms, which have tunnelled its cliffs with caverns and gullies. Some of these perforations have been continued until they open upward in cauldron-like holes on the surface of the moorland. During gales from the west, the sea is driven into these clefts with a noise like the firing of cannon, and bursts out in sheets of spray from the cauldrons on the moor. On this island, as in so many other parts of Shetland, the want of fuel is a serious evil. The inhabitants have gradually cut away and burnt much of the thin coating of turf which covered the naked rock. Hence over considerable areas there is now no soil,--only sheets of crumbling stone which supports no vegetation and cannot be made to yield a crop of any kind. [Sidenote: IN THE SHETLAND ISLES]