and the people who had sheltered them. Then their rulers
became Norwegian jarls--or earls--and there is no question about
the danger zones into which the Norwegian vikings carried the
Orcadeans--quite in accord with their own desire and liking, no doubt.
And the stirring story of these years--full of delightful dangers
to the men who adventured them--may all be read today in the
blood-stirring, blood-curdling Norwegian Sagas.

In the middle of the fifteenth century, James the Third, King of
Scotland, married Margaret of Denmark, and the Orcades were given to
Scotland as a security for her dowry. The dowry was never paid, and
after a lapse of a century and a half Denmark resigned all her
Orcadean rights to Scotland. The later union of England and Scotland
finally settled their destiny.

But until the last century England cared very little about the
Orcades. Indeed Colonel Balfour, writing of these islands in A. D.
1861, says: "Orkney is a part of a British County, but probably
there is no part of Europe which so few Englishmen visit." Colonel
Balfour, of Balfour and Trenabie, possessed a noble estate on the
little isle of Shapinsay. He enthused the Orcadeans with the modern
spirit of improvement and progress; he introduced a proper system
of agriculture, built mills of all kinds, got laws passed for
reclaiming waste lands, and was in every respect a wise, generous,
faithful father of his country. To Americans Shapinsay has a
peculiar interest. In a little cottage there, called _Quholme_, the
father and mother of Washington Irving lived, and their son
Washington was born on board an American ship on its passage from
Kirkwall to New York.

However, it is only since A. D. 1830, one year before I was born, that
the old Norse life has been changed in Orkney. Up to that date
agriculture could hardly be said to exist. The sheep and cattle of all
towns, or communities, grazed together; but this plan, though it saved
the labour of herding, was at the cost of abandoning the lambs to the
eagles who circled over the flocks and selected their victims at will.
In the late autumn all stock was brought to the "infield," which was
then crowded with horses, cattle and sheep. In A. D. 1830, the
Norwegian system of weights was changed to the standard weights and
measures, and money, instead of barter, began to be used generally.

Then a great Scotch emigration set in, and brought careful methods of
farming with it; and the Orcadean co