ith generally in these
islands, and the stones are very suitable for building dykes
(_Anglice_, walls), yet instances occur of the land being enclosed,
even to a considerable extent, with ship-timbers. The author has
actually seen a park (_Anglice_, meadow) paled round chiefly with
cedar-wood and mahogany from the wreck of a Honduras-built ship; and
in one island, after the wreck of a ship laden with wine, the
inhabitants have been known to take claret to their barley-meal
porridge. On complaining to one of the pilots of the badness of his
boat's sails, he replied to the author with some degree of
pleasantry, 'Had it been His will that you camena' here wi' your
lights, we might a' had better sails to our boats, and more o' other
things.' It may further be mentioned that when some of Lord Dundas's
farms are to be let in these islands a competition takes place for
the lease, and it is _bona fide_ understood that a much higher rent
is paid than the lands would otherwise give were it not for the
chance of making considerably by the agency and advantages attending
shipwrecks on the shores of the respective farms."

The people of North Ronaldsay still spoke Norse, or, rather, mixed it
with their English. The walls of their huts were built to a great
thickness of rounded stones from the sea-beach; the roof flagged, loaded
with earth, and perforated by a single hole for the escape of smoke. The
grass grew beautifully green on the flat house-top, where the family
would assemble with their dogs and cats, as on a pastoral lawn; there
were no windows, and in my grandfather's expression, "there was really
no demonstration of a house unless it were the diminutive door." He once
landed on Ronaldsay with two friends. "The inhabitants crowded and
pressed so much upon the strangers that the bailiff, or resident factor
of the island, blew with his ox-horn, calling out to the natives to
stand off and let the gentlemen come forward to the laird; upon which
one of the islanders, as spokesman, called out, 'God ha'e us, man! thou
needsna mak' sic a noise. It's no' every day we ha'e _three hatted men_
on our isle.'" When the Surveyor of Taxes came (for the first time,
perhaps) to Sanday, and began in the King's name to complain of the
unconscionable swarms of dogs, and to menace the inhabitants with
taxation, it chanced that my grandfather and his friend, Dr. Patrick
Neill, were received by an