the command of Sir James Sinclair of Sandy. Lord Sin- Antiquities. clair, Baron of Roslin, and the Earl of Caithness, were sent with a party of men to quell the rebels, but the islanders defeated them; and, as already mentioned, the Earl, with his sons, and William More Sutherland, who accompanied them, were killed. The Caithness men who survived carried back the Earl of Caithness' head to be interred in his Lordship's burial-place in Caithness. In the parish of Falkirk, in the western part of the county, are several remains of the ancient fortresses or dwellings of the chiefs of this district. The tower or cas- Castle of Braal. tle of Braal stands on an eminence, at a small distance from the river of Thurso. It is completely square, of a very large area, wonderfully thick in the walls, which are partly built with clay and mortar mixed, and in some parts with mortar altogether. The stairs and conveyances to the several stories are through the heart of the walls. These stories were all of them floored and vaulted with stones prodigiously large, as are indeed most of the stones of the whole fabric. A great part of it still remains; is as upright and firm as ever, and seems, from its structure, to have been very high and stately; and, what is strange, the highest stones seem to be larger than those below. It surely cost immense labour to get some of them up to such a height, especially in those days, when it is to be supposed they had no proper machinery for the purpose. The plummet and rule were undoubtedly well applied in the progress of the work; but there is not the least impression of block, or chissel, which shows the great antiquity of it. It was manifestly a place of strength as well as of habitation. A deep large well-contrived ditch secures it from the north. The next piece of antiquity worthy of notice is Dirlet Dirlet Cas Castle. It stands in a very beautiful romantic spot in the tle. Antiquities. Highlands called Dirlet, on a round high rock, very steep, almost perpendicular on all sides. The rock and castle hang over a very deep dark pool on the river Thurso, which runs close by its side. On each side of the river and the castle, and very near them, are two other rocks, much higher, looking down over the castle with a stately and towering majesty, and fencing it on these sides. By appearance, as well as by accounts, it was a place of strength in the days of rapine and plunder. For further security, it had the river on one hand, and a ditch on the other, through which the water was conveyed with a drawbridge. The last inhabitant was a descendant of the noble family of Sutherland. He was called in Erse the Pinder Derg, that is, the Red Knight. Lechmere The next in course is Lochmere Castle, about eight miles above Dirlet. It stood just on the bank of the loch, hanging over the first current of the river out of it. In that place the river is very narrow and very deep, and withal very rapid. It is said by report to have been built and inhabited by a personage called Morrar na Shean, that is, "the lord of the game or venison," because he delighted in these rural sports. It is said, also, that there was a chest, or some kind of machine, fixed in the mouth of the stream below the castle, for catching salmon in their ingress into the loch, or their egress out of it; and that immediately when a fish was entangled in the machine, the capture was announced to the whole family by the ringing of a bell, which the motions and struggles of the fish set a-going, by means of a fine cord that was fixed at one end to the bell in the middle of an upper room, and at the the other end to the machine in the stream below. The principal proprietors in this county are, the Earl of Caithness, Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster, Sir Benjamin Dunbar of Hempriggs, and Sinclair of Freswick; all of whom possess elegant mansion-houses, though their vici- Population. nity is necessarily bleak and naked during a great part of the year, in consequence of the impractibility of adorning them with plantations. .. 1287 1592 705 867 880 135 557 1572 49 1571 1986 II 229 1089 2545 1366 58 119 3612 332 66 729 1127 37 463 1541) Bower. Olrick Reay Wattin Wick ... .... .... 572 2012 3628 29 523 1246 Total..22215 24802 10183 12426 13263 2201 714522609 Among the hills or high country on the borders of Language. Sutherland the Erse language is spoken; but in the rest of the county the language of the people has always been the same with that of the south of Scotland, unless in so far as distinguished, in a trifling degree, by a provincial The names of places seem to be derived from the Norwegian language. Ster, which in that language signifies" an estate," is the terminating syllable of a great number of places, such as, Ulbster, Stempster, accent. Language. Bindster, Scrabster, Bilbster, and a great variety of o thers. The names usually consist of two syllables, of which the first was perhaps the name of some early or distinguished possessor. Where wick is the terminating syllable, there is always in its vicinity an opening of the coast larger than a creek, but smaller than a bay, whose two containing sides form an angle similar to that of the lips terminating in the cheek, which in the Scottish dialect is termed "the wick of the mouth." In Orkney there are a great number of places whose terminating syllable is wick; and in Caithness, too, they are all upon the coast, and characterised by an opening in the rocks of the figure now described. Freswick in Caithness is the green wick, from frish signifying green, and the figure of the coast in its vicinity. ORKNEY ISLANDS. THE HE Orkney and Shetland Isles form together one coun- General dety, which sends a representative to the British parliament, scription. We shall consider first the Orkneys, and afterwards the more northern group of islands called the Shetland Isles. The islands that compose the group known to the ancients by the name of Orcades, and styled by the moderns the Orkney Isles, are situated in the Northern Ocean, between the coast of Caithness and Shetland; from the former of which they are distant only about four, and from the latter nearly twenty leagues. From observations that have been taken with sufficient skill and accuracy, the latitude of Kirkwall, the centre, has been found to be 59° 9' north, and the longitude 2o 30' west from the meridian of Greenwich. Of those that are inhabited some are so small as not to exceed a mile in length; whereas the mainland or principal island extends to nearly thirty. They are separated from one another by portions of water denominated sounds, friths, or ferries; some of which are only a mile broad, and others more than five. Though thus closely connected together, the whole of them are of considerable extent; for from the south-west to the north-east, the points farthest removed from each other, the distance is not less than seventy miles, and they are upwards of forty in the other direction. The islands are sixty-seven in number, twenty-eight of Number which are inhabited; the remaining thirty-nine, known isles |