EXPLORATIONS OF THE ISLAND OF UNST, ETC.

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and the result of this correspondence was an offer on the part of the Earl of Zetland to give fifty pounds towards the expenses, if the Anthropological Society of London would appoint some one to carry out the explorations. The Council asked Mr. Roberts to undertake a visit to Zetland, but that gentleman being unable to comply, I was myself induced to superintend the investigations. Perceiving the desirability, and indeed necessity, of an efficient coadjutor, the society consented to pay the expenses of some gentleman to accompany me. The Council appointed Mr. Ralph Tate, F.G.S., F.A.S.L., for that purpose.

We started from London on June 21st, and arrived at our destination in the Island of Unst on the 28th. We were received by Mr. Edmonston with the greatest hospitality. That gentleman had taken the trouble to make many inquiries into the antiquities of the island; and also to secure, from the superintendent of the Cromartie Iron-works the services of men employed there for the excavations that would be necessary. We were especially indebted to Mr. Edmonston for his hospitality, as the absence of inns on the island would have rendered our proposed work a matter of great difficulty without that kindness. Mr. Edmonston being unfortunately an invalid, was unable to accompany us, but he provided us with an excellent guide in Mr. William Mowatt, whose local knowledge of the Island of Unst is, perhaps, unequalled.

On the first day, we took workmen to the Muckle Heog to continue the excavations of which we had received accounts in

Mr. Roberts's paper. The discovery of the skulls found on the Muckle Heog had been made whilst digging a place for the erection of a flagstaff at the top of the hill. The workmen employed for this purpose came on some human remains which have already been described by Mr. Carter Blake.* At the time of our visit, however, nothing remained on this spot but débris of what had been valuable antiquarian remains. Pieces of steatite urns, and portions of human and animal bones, lay in all directions. The rubbish thrown out in

Memoirs of the Anthropological Society of London, vol. i, p. 299.

digging the hole for the flagstaff contained, also, a quantity of broken bones and urns. We explored one side of the cairn, which remained apparently undisturbed, but found nothing of importance, and I soon became convinced that however interesting this spot had been, it was now quite destroyed, and useless for any purpose of throwing light upon the original objects of the structure. Leaving, therefore, the Muckle Heog, we examined the remains of a large cairn of stones at the foot of the hill called the Muckle Heog. In it we found the remains of three short kists and one long one, all of which had long since been rifled of their contents.

A few hundred yards distant, on the road towards a village called Haroldswick, are the remains of what was once a large stone cairn called "Harold's Grave." There now seems to be some doubt in the minds of the people of Unst as to which was Harold's grave, some putting it at the foot of the Muckle Heog, while others (and this is the more general belief) place it in the road from the Muckle Heog to Haroldswick. In Mr. Edmonstone's History of Zetland, p. 119, this Harold's grave is described as "the largest tumulus in the island." Now, however, only a little heap of stones remains to mark the spot. In the museum at Lerwick there are two beautiful bronze ornaments which, common report says, came from Harold's grave.

The remainder of my stay in Unst was devoted to travelling from place to place in search of further objects of interest, but wherever we went we found we had been anticipated. It is a remarkable fact that in the Island of Unst, large as is the number of cairns, scarcely any remain which have not been opened. At the top of nearly every hill we found distinct traces of stone cairns. We had, at the same time, the somewhat bitter satisfaction of hearing the details of the opening of each of these from the lips of a Mr. James Hay, a zealous local Wesleyan preacher, who had been more successful as a "revivalist" than (to judge by the results of his self-imposed labours) as a scientific investigator. For the last thirty years, Mr. Hay has been working on his own account, and during this time he has collected a large number of antiquities, which

are now distributed he knows not where; some he sold to a "Swiss gentleman," others went "to a gentleman in England who is now dead." This is all we could learn from Mr. James Hay, who seemed perfectly astonished when he heard that we considered these relics of such importance as to come specially nearly a thousand miles to look for them, and he pleaded in justification of his vandalism, that "no one in the island cared about these things but himself, and that he had not got enough to pay for his labour." Mr. James Hay also told us that he had examined every relic in the Island of Unst, and in some of the neighbouring islands, but latterly his researches had been useless. If he now found a kist that had not been opened, it generally contained only some "greasy sort of ashes."

The second highest hill in the Zetland Islands is Saxiforth Hill, situated at the northern extremity of the Island of Unst. Here we found remains of a large stone cairn. On Scotties Wart there was evidence to show that two stone kists had been opened. The word wart is understood by the people to mean a peak or heap of stones, but Jamieson, in his Dictionary, says a "wart” means a mark. The origin of this word is interesting and important. We visited, for instance, the ruins of a very large stone cairn on a hill called the Galla Hill, or the Gallows Hill. In this cairn we found the remains of a human skeleton, with some limpet shells. A part of an under jaw is all that I thought it worth while to bring away. Report says, that a few years ago several skulls were taken from this cairn by Dr. Spence's sons, and that they had been subsequently replaced, but had either been again removed or entirely destroyed by the action of the elements.

Mr. Edmonston was greatly surprised to learn that the cairns on Saxiforth Hill and the Galla Hill had both been explored, as it was from these monuments that he anticipated the chief reward of our labours, by finding in situ skeletons and urns like those found on the Muckle Heog. In three days we had visited all the chief known antiquarian relics, but without any satisfactory results; for, as I before stated, in each case we found that we had been anticipated. On leaving London,