The prototype of “Captain Cleveland” in the same novel was John Gow, the son of a Stromness merchant.  This man went to sea, and by some means or other became possessed of a ship named the Revenge, which carried twenty-four guns.  He had all the appearance of a brave young officer, and on the occasions when he came home to see his father he gave dancing-parties to his friends.  Before his true character was known—­for he was afterwards proved to be a pirate—­he engaged the affections of a young lady of fortune, and when he was captured and convicted she hastened to London to see him before he was executed; but, arriving there too late, she begged for permission to see his corpse, and, taking hold of one hand, she vowed to remain true to him, for fear, it was said, of being haunted by his ghost if she bestowed her hand upon another.

It is impossible to visit Stromness without hearing something of that famous geologist Hugh Miller, who was born at Cromarty in the north of Scotland in the year 1802, and began life as a quarry worker, and wrote several learned books on geology.  In one of these, entitled Footprints of the Creator in the Asterolepis of Stromness, he demolished the Darwinian theory that would make a man out to be only a highly developed monkey, and the monkey a highly developed mollusc.  My brother had a very poor opinion of geologists, but his only reason for this seemed to have been formed from the opinion of some workmen in one of our brickfields.  A gentleman who took an interest in geology used to visit them at intervals for about half a year, and persuaded the men when excavating the clay to put the stones they found on one side so that he could inspect them, and after paying many visits he left without either thanking them or giving them the price of a drink!  But my brother was pleased with Hugh Miller’s book, for he had always contended that Darwin was mistaken, and that instead of man having descended from the monkey, it was the monkey that had descended from the man.  I persuaded him to visit the museum, where we saw quite a number of petrified fossils.  As there was no one about to give us any information, we failed to find Hugh Miller’s famous asterolepis, which we heard afterwards had the appearance of a petrified nail, and had formed part of a huge fish whose species were known to have measured from eight to twenty-three feet in length.  It was only about six inches long, and was described as one of the oldest, if not the oldest, vertebrate fossils hitherto discovered.  Stromness ought to be the Mecca, the happy hunting-ground, or the Paradise to geologists, for Hugh Miller has said it could furnish more fossil fish than any other geological system in England, Scotland, and Wales, and could supply ichthyolites by the ton, or a ship load of fossilised fish sufficient to supply the museums of the world.  How came this vast number of fish to be congregated here? and what was the force that overwhelmed them?  It was quite evident from the distorted portions of their skeletons, as seen in the quarried flags, that they had suffered a violent death.  But as we were unable to study geology, and could neither pronounce nor understand the names applied to the fossils, we gave it up in despair, as a deep where all our thoughts were drowned.