He is going in a Government vessel to inspect the lighthouses on the North of Scotland, and on the Orkney and Shetland Islands--and, having noticed how worn and ill my poor boy looks, he most kindly invites George to be his guest on the voyage.
The 'Guide to Scotland' says the coast is rugged; and there is a wild sea between the north shore and the Orkney Islands.
They have done with the north coast and they have crossed the wild sea to the Orkneys. Wonderful weather has favored them so far; and George is in better health and spirits.
This, at such an hour of the night, surprised me greatly; but I was too ignorant to draw the true conclusion -- that we were going north-about round Scotland, and were now on the high sea between the
Orkney and Shetland Islands, having avoided the dangerous currents of the Pentland Firth.
On the 15th of March we were in the latitude of New Shetland and South
Orkney. The Captain told me that formerly numerous tribes of seals inhabited them; but that English and American whalers, in their rage for destruction, massacred both old and young; thus, where there was once life and animation, they had left silence and death.
With this resolution I traversed the northern highlands and fixed on one of the remotest of the
Orkneys as the scene of my labours.
He went to the Gallapagos, a horrid dry place on the Equator, where he was nearly baked to death; he went to the Georgia Islands, the
Orkneys, Emerald Island, Little Nightingale Island, Gough's Island, Bouvet's Island, the Crossets, and even to a little speck of an island south of the Cape of Good Hope.
An eco-friendly gin distillery in
Orkney may end up running on hydrogen as part of a PS390 million UK Government investment to reduce carbon emissions from industry.
A PS6m-plus scheme to eradicate alien stoats from
Orkney has begun.
Release date- 15082019 - A Royal Bank of Scotland employee who has flown almost 12,000 trips around the
Orkney islands is celebrating retirement after 31 years as the UK's only full-time 'flying banker'.
It is the historic capital of
Orkney, a safe haven for seafarers that once harboured Vikings but has since reinvented itself as a leading hub for cruise ships.