CHAPTER XVII.
THE STONES OF STENNIS.
Mrs. Morelle and her party remained many days at the Orkney Islands, and during this time they made a number of excursions, some in a carriage and some on foot. The only carriage, however, which they could obtain was a dog-cart, which was anything but a comfortable vehicle for ladies going out upon an excursion for pleasure. Indeed Florence expressed the opinion, that however well adapted it might be for the conveyance of dogs, it was the worst contrived vehicle for human beings that she ever saw. The only redeeming quality which it possessed was that in case it rained one umbrella would cover the whole company—after a fashion.
In this dog-cart they went to visit the Stones of Stennis. The road was most excellent all the way, being macadamized in a most perfect manner, so that it was as smooth as a gravel walk in a gentleman’s park. The country, however, through which it passed, after a few miles from Kirkwall, was an almost boundless expanse of moorland, wild and desolate. After going on for some miles through this dreary country, the carriage left the main road and passed by a sort of cart track through the fields and over a long causeway between two lakes, till it came to the place where the stones were situated.
The stones could be seen for a distance of many miles, standing like so many gigantic posts on a vast plain. When the party came to the spot, they found that each stone was from twelve to twenty feet high, and about five feet wide and one thick. They were of a somewhat irregular form, being evidently slabs taken from the natural strata in the neighborhood, and set up just as they came from the quarry. They were arranged in an immense circle with the remains of an embankment and ditch all around the circumference. The circle was not complete, the stones being wanting in many places. In some cases they had fallen and still remained upon the ground. In other places where it would seem stones must have stood, the fragments had been taken away, it was supposed, after they had fallen, to be used for buildings or walls, by generations that lived in ages subsequent to that in which the stones were set up, but which have still in their turn long since passed away.
A great many conjectures have been made in respect to these stones, and to the nature of the structure of which they formed a part, but all is uncertainty in respect to them. At the very earliest periods of which there is any account of the country, they stood as they stand now, solitary and in ruin—an inexplicable wonder to all who saw them.
The party went also to Stromness, a town at the western side of the island on which Kirkwall stands, and here, while Mrs. Morelle and Florence remained at the inn, Grimkie and John engaged a sail boat and a man to manage it, and made a cruise of four or five hours along the neighboring shores. There they saw some stupendous cliffs, called the Black Craigs, and great numbers of birds flying about them, and among other birds they saw an eagle perched upon a lofty summit, where he stood silent and solitary, looking far and wide over the sea. Grimkie and John had an excellent view of him through their opera glass.