CHAPTER XXXIX.
ORKNEY AND SHETLAND.
I took my family to these Northern Isles of the Sea in 1859, sailing from Aberdeen in a once-a-week steamer; some of our passengers were notable, as Dasent of the Norse Tales (since Sir George) and his sons, Day the Oxonian in Norway, Ellicott, now Bishop of Bristol, Biot Edmondstone, and some others, inclusive of our noble selves.

It was a dark night and a dense fog, and we had perilously to thread our careful way through the herring-fleet, fog-horns blowing all night, whilst our distinguished party bivouacked on deck, every cabin having been secured by folks crowding to the Kirkwall fair; and so we enjoyed a seagoing experience which, however cold and dark, was warmed and brightened by the conversation of clever friends all night through.
Next day, jumping into a boat on the top of a wave (it was very rough weather), I and a few others landed at Wick, and witnessed the extraordinary scene of a herring harvest being cured.

Much as at Cincinnati they say pigs walk in, and come out at the other end of a long gallery salted and smoked,--live herrings are within some three minutes killed, cleaned, pickled, and tubbed by the fishermen's wives and daughters in their brightest caps and jewellery, for the whole scene is a fair and a festival.
In due time we arrived at Kirkwall, where we stayed a fortnight, in the course of which we were soon invited to Mr.Balfour's castle at Shapinshay.

I call to mind in that mediaeval-looking stronghold (but it is a modern structure) his splendid banqueting-room, lighted by the illuminated points of twelve stags' heads, each having twelve tynes, thus 144 of them, ranged on the sides of that baronial hall: the castle, of grey granite in the Norman style, having its own gasometer, all the light was gas; this struck me as a remarkable feature inside: on the outside was one quite as memorable.

Those sterile-looking isles of the North Sea are so swept by stormy winds 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.