Their climate, inhospitable as it seems, is healthy, and they live to a good old age.  A native of the island, a baronet, who has a great white house on a bare field in sight of Lerwick, and was a passenger on board the steamer in which we made our passage to the island, remarked that if it was not the healthiest climate in the world, the extremely dirty habits of the peasantry would engender disease, which, however, was not the case.  “It is, probably, the effect of the saline particles in the air,” he added.  His opinion seemed to be that the dirt was salted by the sea-winds, and preserved from further decomposition.  I was somewhat amused, in hearing him boast of the climate of Shetland in winter.  “Have you never observed” said he, turning to the old Scotch clergyman of whom I have already spoken, “how much larger the proportion of sunny days is in our islands than at the south?” “I have never observed it,” was the dry answer of the minister.

The people of Shetland speak a kind of Scottish, but not with the Scottish accent.  Four hundred years ago, when the islands were transferred from Norway to the British crown, their language was Norse, but that tongue, although some of its words have been preserved in the present dialect, has become extinct.  “I have heard,” said an intelligent Shetlander to me, “that there are yet, perhaps, half a dozen persons in one of our remotest neighborhoods, who are able to speak it, but I never met with one who could.”

In returning from Lerwick to the Orkneys, we had a sample of the weather which is often encountered in these latitudes.  The wind blew a gale in the night, and our steamer was tossed about on the waves like an egg-shell, much to the discomfort of the passengers.  We had on board a cargo of ponies, the smallest of which were from the Shetlands, some of them not much larger than sheep, and nearly as shaggy; the others, of larger size, had been brought from the Faro Isles.  In the morning, when the gale had blown itself to rest, I went on deck and saw one of the Faro Island ponies, which had given out during the night, stretched dead upon the deck.  I inquired if the body was to be committed to the deep.  “It is to be skinned first,” was the answer.

We stopped at Kirkwall in the Orkneys, long enough to allow us to look at the old cathedral of St. Magnus, built early in the twelfth century—­a venerable pile, in perfect preservation, and the finest specimen of the architecture once called Saxon, then Norman, and lately Romanesque, that I have ever seen.  The round arch is everywhere used, except in two or three windows of later addition.  The nave is narrow, and the central groined arches are lofty; so that an idea of vast extent is given, though the cathedral is small, compared with the great minsters in England.  The work of completing certain parts of the building which were left unfinished, is now going on at the expense of the government.  All the old flooring, and the pews, which made it a parish church, have been taken away, and the original proportions and symmetry of the building are seen as they ought to be.  The general effect of the building is wonderfully grand and solemn.