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I realized that I had missed the Shetlands; that I could now do no more than abandon myself to the will of the wind, and trust to falling in with some vessel that might be making for the Faroe Islands or for Iceland.
We travelled full speed all night, and the passage was far from comfortable. Daybreak showed us the coast of the Shetlands our first sight of the British Isles and a few fussy armed trawlers shepherded us into the harbour of Lerwick, where we remained at anchor till dusk. We then set off again at full speed, and sighted the coast of Scotland in the morning.
Pytheas is, however, chiefly known in the history of geography as having referred to the island of Thule, which he described as the most northerly point of the inhabited earth, beyond which the sea became thickened, and of a jelly-like consistency. He does not profess to have visited Thule, and his account probably refers to the existence of drift ice near the Shetlands.
We had hoped, on leaving the Orkneys, to have gone as far north as the Shetlands, but while we were lying off Westray the weather turned wet and chilly, so we settled on going south again, visiting on our way the islands of the outer Hebrides. The first stage of our journey was rougher and more disagreeable than anything we had yet experienced.
They were afterwards described by Agassiz, and the rocks containing them were examined by Sir R. Murchison and Professor Sedgwick, in Caithness, Cromarty, Moray, Nairn, Gamrie in Banff, and the Orkneys and Shetlands, in which great numbers of fossil fish have been found.
I feel like I want to commit murder when a simpering Jane looks at me, snickers and says, 'ain't he cute? I want a ball bat to club every country jake doctor that looks me over and asks about my pituitary gland. Gee, gosh, but I do want to get away from that. I want to exchange these human nitwits for cows, calves, sheep, hosses, broncho hosses, pintos but not little round-bellied shetlands.
His father had always felt himself to be a stranger and an exile in Skye, and in his later years the "homing" instinct for the Shetlands had been a passionate longing, which had communicated itself to David. He had been glad to leave Uig, for he had not a single happy memory of the little hut in which they two had dwelt and suffered together.
In 1892 the whole of this fleet stood to the South to hunt for whales in the vicinity of the South Shetlands. They each brought home with them some fresh piece of information. On board the Balæna was Dr. William S. Bruce. This is the first time we meet with him on his way to the South, but it was not to be the last.
I might have beat about for two or three days, perhaps, without sighting it, and yet I knew not what other land to make for. The wind, which was now blowing east-southeast, was unfavourable in an attempt to make for the Orkneys. The only alternative that I could see, therefore, was to head the schooner round on the port tack and bear northward to the Shetlands.
In 1839 a French expedition under Dumont d'Urville again visited and explored the South Shetlands; while, in the following year, Captain Wilkes, of the United States navy, discovered the land named after him.
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