We Saw
Them Disappearing, One After Another, In The Hollows, Or Over The Dark
Bare Hill-Tops.
With a population of less than three thousand souls,
Lerwick has four places of worship - a church of the Establishment, a Free
church, a church for the Seceders, and one for the Methodists.
The road we
took commanded a fine view of the harbor, surrounded and sheltered by
hills. Within it lay a numerous group of idle fishing-vessels, with one
great steamer in the midst; and more formidable in appearance, a Dutch
man-of-war, sent to protect the Dutch fisheries, with the flag of Holland
flying at the mast-head. Above the town, on tall poles, were floating the
flags of four or five different nations, to mark the habitation of their
consuls.
On the side opposite to the harbor, lay the small fresh-water lake of
Cleikimin, with the remains of a Pictish castle in the midst; one of those
circular buildings of unhewn, uncemented stone, skillfully laid, forming
apartments and galleries of such small dimensions as to lead Sir Walter
Scott to infer that the Picts were a people of a stature considerably
below the ordinary standard of the human race. A deep Sabbath silence
reigned over the scene, except the sound of the wind, which here never
ceases to blow from one quarter or another, as it swept the herbage and
beat against the stone walls surrounding the fields. The ground under our
feet was thick with daisies and the blossoms of the crow-foot and other
flowers; for in the brief summer of these islands, nature, which has no
groves to embellish, makes amends by pranking the ground, particularly in
the uncultivated parts, with a great profusion and variety of flowers.
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