We next have three or four very rare and exceptionable varieties. The first of these is a cylindrical and apparently water-shaped stone, well worn at each end, as if it had been used as a pestle in crushing corn, or for some such domestic purpose (Fig. 5); the second a “flat, four-sided stone, 5 inches long, 3 inches wide, and 1½ inches thick,” with a groove on each of the long sides, so as to give it a constricted appearance; and the third a piece of sandstone, or some such stone, with an oval cup-like hollow in it.
These curious implements, thus briefly enumerated, have been found in various districts of Shetland, notably in the parishes of Sandsting, Walls, Dunrossness, and Unst. It is interesting to note the different positions in which they have been found—e.g., (1.) On the surface of the ground; (2.) in curious subterranean structures; (3.) in the heart of a large tumulus; (4.) on the outside of stone coffins with urns in them; and (5.) in the inside of a Kistvaen with a skeleton and a well-polished celt.[336]
Most of them are composed of sandstone, but a few of clay slate, or of micaceous schist. They apparently have been shaped chiefly by flaking, but in some instances also by picking.
In connection with these archaic implements, three questions naturally arise: By whom, when, and for what purpose were they formed? Were I able, this is not the place to discuss such difficult and important questions. On excavating “burghs” and opening tumuli, such pre-historic remains as fragments of rude pottery, pieces of charred wood, and teeth and broken pieces of bones of animals, are frequently discovered.
Lerwick, Zetland, 24th March 1873.
CHAPTER II.
THE LANDFALL—FISHING FLEET—TO REYKJAVIK.
After this interlude of Hysteron-proteron, we return to the steamer “Queen,” which has pertinaceously bored through
“The Pentland, where the furious tide,
Runs white for many a mile.”
After sighting Cape Wrath, she bade adieu to “Earth’s proudest Isle,” and dashed north-west into the Deucalidian or Deucalidonian Ocean, the Mare Pigrum of the classics, the sea which Adam of Bremen terms jecoreum et pulmoneum, because it has a heavy motion like those troubled with asthma, in the same sense as Plautus speaks of asthmatic legs—“pedibus pulmoneis mihi advenisti.” The Germans called it Libersê (Adam Bremensis) and complained that the abnormal quantity of salt made it a Mare Mortuum. Hence Hoffman von Fallersleben sings: