Sketches of old times and distant places Author:John Sinclair Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: an extensive, barren moor, which he was bringing into cultivation. He boasted that the profit amounted to a hundred per cent. I looked incredulous, but he procee... more »ded : " The upper soil consists of two or three inches of light sand and gravel; there is a stiff cold clay below. I formed the waste into fields with cheap, rough dykes of dry stone ; I then trenched it so as to mix the soil and subsoil together: I added a quantity of manure, and sowed my new fields with oats. You see my first crop, which alone will repay the whole of my expenses. This I call one hundred per cent, profit." While the Sheriff and I were discussing the prospects of husbandry in the north, we drew near an almost perpendicular islet, rising several hundred feet out of the deep water. " That rock," he said, " is the famous Horse of Copinsha, so called from its supposed resemblance to that quadruped. Ask the skipper, and he will tell you that in a storm, the fish that swarm in these seas are often dashed against the Horse's sides, and landed upon his back." An old sailor looked incredulous, and seemed to say " I should like to see the man that mounted the Horse and saw the fish." The Sheriff then directed my attention to the innumerable sea-fowl that occupied every nook and cranny, every ledge and shelf on which it was possible for them to find standing room, as well as to the vast flocks of birds that might be seen over the expanse of ocean as far as the eye could reach. What must be the fecundity of the fish that supply the food of these innumerable birds ! The light wind continued fair, and we proceeded on our course slowly northward till midnight, when we dropped anchor off Elsness in the Isle of Sanda. The Sheriff and I landed next morning, and at once took possession of Elsness House, the comforta...« less