leaning; others had fallen, and some had disappeared altogether.  The storms of many centuries had swept over them, and “they stood like relics of the past, with lichens waving from their worn surfaces like grizzly beards, or when in flower mantling them with brilliant orange hues,” while the areas enclosed by them were covered with mosses, the beautiful stag-head variety being the most prominent.  One of the poets has described them: 

  The heavy rocks of giant size
  That o’er the land in circles rise. 
  Of which tradition may not tell,
  Fit circles for the Wizard spell;
  Seen far amidst the scowling storm
  Seem each a tall and phantom form,
  As hurrying vapours o’er them flee
  Frowning in grim security,
  While like a dread voice from the past
  Around them moans the autumnal blast!

These lichened “Standing Stones of Stenness,” with the famous Stone of Odin about 150 yards to the north, are second only to Stonehenge, one measuring 18 feet in length, 5 feet 4 inches in breadth, and 18 inches in thickness.  The Stone of Odin had a hole in it to which it was supposed that sacrificial victims were fastened in ancient times, but in later times lovers met and joined hands through the hole in the stone, and the pledge of love then given was almost as sacred as a marriage vow.  An antiquarian description of this reads as follows:  “When the parties agreed to marry, they repaired to the Temple of the Moon, where the woman in the presence of the man fell down on her knees and prayed to the God Wodin that he would enable her to perform, all the promises and obligations she had made, and was to make, to the young man present, after which they both went to the Temple of the Sun, where the man prayed in like manner before the woman.  They then went to the Stone of Odin, and the man being on one side and the woman on the other, they took hold of each other’s right hand through the hole and there swore to be constant and faithful to each other.”  The hole in the stone was about five feet from the ground, but some ignorant farmer had destroyed the stone, with others, some years before our visit.

There were many other stones in addition to the circles, probably the remains of Cromlechs, and there were numerous grass mounds, or barrows, both conoid and bowl-shaped, but these were of a later date than the circles.  It was hard to realise that this deserted and boggarty-looking place was once the Holy Ground of the ancient Orcadeans, and we were glad to get away from it.  We recrossed the Bridge of Brogar and proceeded rapidly towards Stromness, obtaining a fine prospective view of that town, with the huge mountain masses of the Island of Hoy as a background, on our way.  These rise to a great height, and terminate abruptly near where that strange isolated rock called the “Old Man of Hoy” rises straight from the sea as if to guard the islands in the rear.  The shades of evening were falling