"And how many years
before wheat again?" he asked; but this question we could not answer, as
we were not sufficiently advanced in agricultural knowledge to undergo a
very serious examination from one who was evidently inclined to dive
deeply into the subject. As we walked along, we noticed a stone on the
slope of a mountain like those we had seen at Stenness in the Orkneys,
but no halo of interest could be thrown around it by our friend, who
simply said it had been there "since the world began." Near Lybster we
had a good view of the Ord of Caithness, a black-looking ridge of
mountains terminating in the Maiden's Paps, which were later to be
associated with one of the most difficult and dangerous traverses we
ever experienced.
The night was now coming on, and we hurried onwards, passing two old
castles, one to the left and the other to the right of our road, and we
noticed a gate, the posts of which had been formed from the rib-bones of
a monster whale, forming an arch ornamented in the centre by a portion
of the backbone of the same creature. In the dark the only objects we
could distinguish were the rocks on the right and the lights of two
lighthouses, one across Dornoch Firth and the other across Moray Firth.
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