The Fog Cleared Away In The Evening; Our Steamer Was Again In Motion:
We
landed at Kirkwall in the middle of the night, and when I went on deck the
next morning,
We were smoothly passing the shores of Fair Isle - high and
steep rocks, impending over the waters with a covering of green turf.
Before they were out of sight we saw the Shetland coast, the dark rock of
Sumburgh Head, and behind it, half shrouded in mist, the promontory of
Fitfiel Head, - Fitful Head, as it is called by Scott, in his novel of the
Pirate. Beyond, to the east, black rocky promontories came in sight, one
after the other, beetling over the sea. At ten o'clock, we were passing
through a channel between the islands leading to Lerwick, the capital of
Shetland, on the principal island bearing the name of Mainland. Fields,
yellow with flowers, among which stood here and there a cottage, sloped
softly down to the water, and beyond them rose the bare declivities and
summits of the hills, dark with heath, with here and there still darker
spots, of an almost inky hue, where peat had been cut for fuel. Not a
tree, not a shrub was to be seen, and the greater part of the soil
appeared never to have been reduced to cultivation.
About one o'clock we cast anchor before Lerwick, a fishing village, built
on the shore of Bressay Sound, which here forms one of the finest harbors
in the world.
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