Quitting the ruin, I walked on along the shore, tracing the sandstone as I went, as it rises from lower to higher beds; and where it ceases to crop out at the surface, and gravel and the red boulder-clays take the place of rock, I struck up the hill, and, traversing the parishes of Resolis and Cromarty, got home early in the evening. I had seen and done scarcely half what I had intended seeing or doing: alas, that in reference to every walk which I have yet attempted to tread, this special statement should be so invariably true to fact!--alas, that all my full purposes, should be coupled with but half realizations! But I had at least the satisfaction, that though I had accomplished little, I had enjoyed much; and it is something, though not all, nor nearly all, that, since time is passing, it should pass happily. In my next chapter I shall enter on my tour to Orkney. It dates one year earlier (1846) than the tour with which I have already occupied so many chapters; but I have thus inverted the order of _time_, by placing it last, that I may be able so to preserve the order of _space_ as to render the tract travelled over in my narrative continuous from Edinburgh to the northern extremity of Pomona. CHAPTER X. Recovered Health--Journey to the Orkneys--Aboard the Steamer at Wick--Mr. Bremner--Masonry of the Harbor of Wick--The greatest Blunders result from good Rules misapplied--Mr. Bremner's Theory about sea-washed Masonry--Singular Fracture of the Rock near Wick--The Author's mode of accounting for it--"Simple but not obvious" Thinking--Mr. Bremner's mode of making stone Erections under Water--His exploits in raising foundered Vessels--Aspect of the Orkneys--- The ungracious Schoolmaster--In the Frith of Kirkwall--Cathedral of St. Magnus--Appearance of Kirkwall--Its "perished suppers"--Its ancient Palaces--Blunder of the Scotch Aristocracy--The patronate Wedge--Breaking Ground in Orkney--Minute gregarious Coccosteus--True Position of the Coccosteus' Eyes--Ruins of one of Cromwell's Forts--Antiquities of Orkney--The Cathedral--Its Sculptures--The Mysterious Cell--Prospect from the Tower--Its Chimes--Ruins of Castle Patrick.