as to be absolutely treeless:  insomuch that it is jocularly said, that for cutting down a tree at Kirkwall, the penalty is death! simply because no trees exist there.  Well, the wealthy Baron of Shapinshay conquers nature thus; he has dug round the castle vast hollow gardens (not a continuous moat) in which flourishes a profusion of flowers and shrubs and even trees,—­till arboriculture is cut shear off, if it dares to look over the mounds.  I put it thus:—­

    “When to the storm-historic Orcades
      The wanderer comes, he marvels to find there
      A stately palace, towering new and fair,
    Bedded in flowers, though unbanked by trees,
    A feudal dream uprisen from the seas: 
      And when his wonder asks,—­Whose magic rare
    Hath wrought this bright creation?—­men reply,
      Balfour’s of Balfour:  large in mind and heart,
      Not only doth his duteous care reclaim
    All Shapinshay to new fertility,
      But to his brother men a brother’s part
      Doing, in always doing good,—­his fame
    Is to have raised an Orcade Arcady,
      Rich in gems of Nature as of Art.”

At Kirkwall we could not help noticing what a fine race of men and women, blue-eyed and yellow-haired, many of these Northerners are; at St. Magnus Cathedral they trooped in looking like giants, seeming taller perhaps because the pews are on a dead level with the floor.  Of course we duly did all the sights of the place, in the way of the ruinous bishop’s palace and so forth, and received hearty welcomes from both high and low, the isolation of those parts conducing to the popularity of strangers; to say less of any greed for the cash of tourists.

I made there good acquaintance also with Aytoun, the poet of Dundee and Montrose, of whom it is rememberable that he used to read all through Scott’s novels every year.  I thought it a marvellous feat, but at any rate he told me so.  He was sheriff of all those northern regions; and writer, amongst other things, of “Hints for Authors” in Blackwood, which for their wit and sense ought to be reprinted:  but when I urged it in Princes Street, I found such a booklet was not to be—­nor “Firmilian” either—­which is a pity, as both are admirable for humour.  He was a zealous florist and fruitist; the white currants trained by him upon walls were as large as grapes.

Among these Isles of Thule palpable evidences of the Gulf Stream are frequent; besides that it warms the northern seas so well that snow and ice are not too common there as in much lower latitudes they are with us—­it is the fact that most of the seafaring men have for snuff-boxes the large brown circular beans from Mexico floated on tropical seaweed, full of hand coral, and found on the island beaches westwardly.  Another notable matter in these Orcades is the strange disproportion between the sexes, eleven women to one man, as Mr. Hayes, the Lerwick banker, told me; this