now and then a boat later than the rest, was entering from the sea.  The green heights all around the bay were covered with groups of women, sitting or walking, dressed for the most part in caps and white short gowns, waiting for the arrival of the boats manned by their husbands and brothers, or belonging to the families of those who had come to seek occupation as fishermen.  I had seen two or three of the principal streets of Wick that morning, swarming with strapping fellows, in blue highland bonnets, with blue jackets and pantaloons, and coarse blue flannel shirts.  A shopkeeper, standing at his door, instructed me who they were.

“They are men of the Celtic race,” he said—­the term Celtic has grown to be quite fashionable, I find, when applied to the Highlanders.  “They came from the Hebrides and other parts of western Scotland, to get employment in the herring fishery.  These people have travelled perhaps three hundred miles, most of them on foot, to be employed six or seven weeks, for which they will receive about six pounds wages.  Those whom you see are not the best of their class; the more enterprising and industrious have boats of their own, and carry on the fishery on their own account.”

We found the Queen a strong steamboat, with a good cabin and convenient state-rooms, but dirty, and smelling of fish from stem to stern.  It has seemed to me that the further north I went, the more dirt I found.  Our captain was an old Aberdeen seaman, with a stoop in his shoulders, and looked as if he was continually watching for land, an occupation for which the foggy climate of these latitudes gives him full scope.  We left Wick between eleven and twelve o’clock in the forenoon, and glided over a calm sea, with a cloudless sky above us, and a thin haze on the surface of the waters.  The haze thickened to a fog, which grew more and more dense, and finally closed overhead.  After about three hours sail, the captain began to grow uneasy, and was seen walking about on the bridge between the wheel-houses, anxiously peering into the mist, on the look-out for the coast of the Orkneys.  At length he gave up the search, and stopped the engine.  The passengers amused themselves with fishing.  Several coal-fish, a large fish of slender shape, were caught, and one fine cod was hauled up by a gentleman who united in his person, as he gave me to understand, the two capacities of portrait-painter and preacher of the gospel, and who held that the universal church of Christendom had gone sadly astray from the true primitive doctrine, in regard to the time when the millennium is to take place.