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These bays and firths are invariably of an immense depth, and sufficiently capacious to shelter the navies of the proudest maritime nations. There is an air of stern and savage grandeur in everything around, which strongly captivates the imagination.
It may not, perhaps, be generally known that there are only three great inlets or estuaries to which the mariner steers when overtaken by easterly storms in the North Sea namely, the Humber, and the firths of Forth and Moray. The mouth of the Thames is too much encumbered by sand-banks to be approached at night or during bad weather.
It may be that he has attained a competence in Canada, and that its fertile soil produces crops which the heathery braes of Scotland would never yield no matter, it is yet his home! it is the land where his fathers sleep it is the land of his birth; his dreams are of the "mountain and the flood" of lonely lochs and mountain-girded firths; and when the purple light on a summer evening streams over the forest, he fancies that the same beams are falling on Morven and the Cuchullins, and that the soft sound pervading the air is the echo of the shepherd's pipe.
There were two vikings called Vigbiod and Vestmar; they were South-islanders, and lay out both winter and summer; they had thirteen ships, and harried mostly in Ireland, and did many an ill deed there till Eyvind the Eastman took the land-wardship; thereafter they got them gone to the South-isles, and harried there and all about the firths of Scotland: against these went Thrand and Onund, and heard that they had sailed to that island, which is called Bute.
There is a third sort of whale, called the broad-nosed whale, which is in many respects like a razor-back, but smaller its length being from 50 to 80 feet. The smallest sort is the beaked whale, which is about 25 feet long. Great numbers of this whale are often caught in the deep bays and firths of Shetland and Orkney.
It were better service to sound the firths with the oars, to revel in plundered wares, to pursue the gold of others for my coffer, to gloat over sea-gotten gains, than to dwell in rough lands and winding woodlands and barren glades."
In mountain regions, where ice-marks are rare or absent, cañons are of great depth and length, apparently because their streams have flowed in the same channels ever since the mountains were raised. But where cañons are marked features, these lakes, firths, and dales of rounded section are very rare, or do not exist.
Leif, though a cripple, went with the Wickings, for he had great skill of the sea. There was not a breath of wind for three days and three nights, as they coasted southward, with the peaks of the Norland on their port, and to starboard the skerries that kept guard on the firths. Through the haze they could now and then see to landward trees and cliffs, but never a human face.
The county of Fife, bounded by two firths on the south and north, and by the sea on the east, and having a number of small seaports, was long famed for maintaining successfully a contraband trade; and, as there were many seafaring men residing there, who had been pirates and buccaneers in their youth, there were not wanting a sufficient number of daring men to carry it on.
This, of course, did not contribute to allay their fears; and it is literally true, that in several of the Gaelic villages, particularly near the firths of Loch Inver and Kyle-Sku, we saw on our departure old folks wring their hands in despair at the thought of the terrible misfortunes which the Danes would now bring on their hitherto peaceful country.
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