Thursday, January 28, 2010

A Victorian Tourist On Fair Isle

Rising abruptly from the sea, and standing aloof alike from the Orcadian and Shetland groups, there is sublimity in the awful loneliness of the rock-girt Fair Isle.

A Victorian Tourist on Fair Isle

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

A Victorian Tourist in Stromness

In this town, so quaint and quiet, the sea is a domestic institution. It ripples familiarly up the short lanes between rows of houses, and the bows of vessels stretch across second storey windows. Pilots can row up to their own doors in boats. It is doubtless owing to this circumstance that so many of the youth of Stromness take early to the water, and embark on board ship for all quarters of the world. Several of the houses, adjoining the harbour, are provided with little stone jetties, which enable the inmates to step dry-shod from their firesides into fishing-yawls.

A Victorian Tourist in Stromness

A Victorian Tourist on Papa Westray

From Pierowall, as an excursion centre, I next crossed the beautiful land-locked bay to the pleasant little island of Papa Westray, which still commemorates in it name the Irish anchorite fathers. Papa is four miles in length by one in breadth, swelling away up from the shore in an easy slope, and terminating northwards in the bold promontory of the Moul. The green fields dipping down from the clustering dwellings on the central ridge, with the House of Holland conspicuous in their midst, exhibit traces alike of careful cultivation and of considerable fertility.

A Victorian Tourist on Papa Westray