into mist. I had meant to see the fulmar petrels again before returning, but by the time I get to the top of the path leading down to them it is nearly six, the drizzle increasing, and the mist on the hills thickening. The hut stands sufficiently high for it to be always enshrouded when a mist comes on, and it may then be difficult to strike. However, from the round house where the signals are shown, each morning, to the lighthouse on the great stack opposite, by a man who walks up from the village at the foot of the ness, there winds a foot-track with posts stuck at long intervals beside it. When one gets near to the fifth post one should see the hut if the mist is not very thick, and even if it is, one has then a good chance of striking it. The signal-house, or rather shed, one may strike by going constantly upwards till the highest point is reached; but it is possible to miss it, and also the track between post and post. As the gulls and the two kinds of skuas have each their separate breeding-place upon the ness—thus, as it were, mapping it out—they, too, are of some assistance in finding one's way. Still, the possibility of a night out at the end of any day is not a pleasant thing to think of, and I am always very glad when I see the hut through the mists, and still gladder when there are no mists to see it through.
It seems wonderful that any corner of the United Kingdom can hold a summer like this—little as I mistake the United Kingdom for paradise. It is like a bad November in England, but with more of the
