In No Part Of The British Islands Have
I Seen The Larks So Numerous Or So Merry, As In The Shetlands.
We waited awhile at the wharf by the minister's house in Bressay, for Jim
Sinclair, who at length appeared in his boat to convey us to Lerwick.
"He
is a noisy fallow," said our good landlady, and truly we found him voluble
enough, but quite amusing. As he rowed us to town he gave us a sample of
his historical knowledge, talking of Sir Walter Raleigh and the
settlement of North America, and told us that his greatest pleasure was to
read historical books in the long winter nights. His children, he said,
could all read and write. We dined on a leg of Shetland mutton, with a
tart made "of the only fruit of the Island" as a Scotchman called it, the
stalks of the rhubarb plant, and went on board of our steamer about six
o'clock in the afternoon. It was matter of some regret to us that we were
obliged to leave Shetland so soon. Two or three days more might have been
pleasantly passed among its grand precipices, its winding straits, its
remains of a remote and rude antiquity, its little horses, little cows,
and little sheep, its sea-fowl, its larks, its flowers, and its hardy and
active people. There was an amusing novelty also in going to bed, as we
did, by daylight, for at this season of the year, the daylight is never
out of the sky, and the flush of early sunset only passes along the
horizon from the northwest to the northeast, where it brightens into
sunrise.
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