Sooner or later we must return to our bicycles, and now we coast rapidly down to the Loch of Swannay, sweep round its northern shore, and, crossing the burn, climb the opposite slope towards the part of Birsay quaintly named, “Abune the Hill,” or “Above the Hill,” as the map-makers have it. Instead of following the road which strikes southward through the centre of the parish, we turn towards the west, and by means of an older road make our way to the Barony of Birsay, where we shall find accommodation for the night. But we have still a long evening before us, and after due rest and refreshment we shall find time to explore our surroundings. The place is full of historical interest. The old name of _Birgisharad_, in which we may trace the names of Birsay and Harray, indicates that here was the chief hunting-ground of the Norse Jarls. The mixture of hill and loch and stream, the valleys being then perhaps furnished with coverts of brushwood where now there is only pasture or crops, made this northern part of the Mainland the best hunting-ground in the county. Birsay may be said to have been the capital of the Earldom at one time. It was the favourite residence of the Earls, and it was also the ecclesiastical centre, and the residence of the first bishop of the islands. When the sainted Earl Magnus was slain, it was in Christ’s Kirk in Birsay that his body first found burial. On the Brough we may still see the ruins of a very ancient chapel dedicated to St. Peter. The Stewart Earls, of dishonoured memory, found Birsay an attractive locality. They raised on the site of its old Norse castle a palace built after the plan of Holyrood in Edinburgh, the ruins of which still form one of the chief features in the landscape. The whole district, in short, is full of those remains which we have called milestones of the past, marking stages in the history of our race. The shore near the Barony is interesting. We may walk to the Brough at low water, but we must take care not to be caught and imprisoned by the returning tide. The cliffs rise to the southward, and in Marwick Head reach a height of nearly three hundred feet. [Illustration: _The Brough of Birsay._] The chief attraction for tourists is the Loch of Boardhouse and its trout fishing. This loch receives the drainage of a wide stretch of country, its chief feeder being the Hillside Burn, which rises in the hills between Rendall and Harray, flows north-west for some five miles to the Loch of Hundland, and under the name of the Burn of Kirbuster reaches the larger loch in about another mile. This drainage basin is next in importance and area to that of the “Great Lakes” of Orkney, the Lochs of Stenness and Harray.