These are only a few from among the many typical kelpers whose friendship I am proud to own. But if the types among them are many and various, in one thing they are all alike—their capacity for hard work. That work does not cease with the smoothing over of the smouldering pits. When the kelp has cooled it is broken up and lifted out of the pit in great lumps which look like gray slag, with streaks of white, blue, and brown running through it. Should it be exposed to rain its quality is much deteriorated, and to avoid this danger storehouses are built by the lairds, to which the kelp is carted. The kelp grieve weighs each man’s quantity as it is brought in, and he is paid a fixed sum per ton. When a sufficient quantity is gathered in the store a vessel is chartered, and where there is a pier the kelp is carted alongside. In islands where there is no pier it must be taken off in small boats. The kelpers themselves provide the carriage. Then the sails are spread, and the produce of the year’s work is carried off to chemical works far over sea, where, by processes unknown to me, iodine is extracted from it. The kelper receives about two pounds ten shillings for each ton of kelp he manufactures, and the importance and benefit of the industry to these crofters cannot be overestimated. I have known a man paying a rent of eight pounds receive thirty-four pounds for his kelp in one year. Nor is the actual price he receives the only benefit the crofter derives from kelp. Were it not for the share of the profit falling to the laird, he too often could not, in these days, afford to assist his tenants in improving either their houses or their land. On the whole, then, the kelper’s lot is not an unhappy one. His work lies in pleasant places, and it is eminently healthy, and his days, as a rule, are long in the land and on the sea. DUNCAN J. ROBERTSON. (_“Longman’s Magazine.” By permission._) A WHALE-HUNT IN ORKNEY. “Whales in the bay so soon in the season!” exclaimed the clergyman, starting to his feet. “Come away,” he continued, “you have yet another day before you; we imitate the great of old, who entertained their guests with tournaments.”