caithness-1911/05_020

Transcription

INTRODUCTION
TO
INVENTORY OF ANCIENT AND HISTORICAL
MONUMENTS AND CONSTRUCTIONS
IN THE COUNTY OF CAITHNESS.

PART I.

THE County of Caithness occupies the extreme N.E. angle of Scotland,
projecting as a great promontory into the ocean, a feature which
earned for it from the Norsemen the name which, in a modified
form, it bears to-day - the "Ness" or "Nose" of the Catti. Nature
has rendered Caithness singularly inaccessible. High cliffs and
shelving rocks for the most part create a formidable barrier on its
coast line, while along its northern shore the racing tides and
currents of the Pentland Firth must from all times have hindered
navigation. The mountains of Scaraben and Morven on its land-
ward bounds cut it off from the neighbouring county of Suther-
land on the south, while on the west, save along the coast line, a
lonely waste of uninhabitable moorland, now traversed by the railway,
completes its isolation. From these circumstances intercourse with
the outer world in early times must have been difficult and inter-
mittent. The interior of the county, to the north of its southern
mountain range, and eastward from where Ben Dorrery and Ben
Freiceadain stand sentinel towards its western boundary, expands
in a great plain or plateau, varied here and there with a gentle
undulation, until it dips abruptly into the ocean on the north and
east. One small island, Stroma, lying in the Pentland Firth some
two miles distant from the north coast, is included in the county.
The surface is at this day singularly devoid of timber, except
in the south where the hills and valleys afford protection from the
almost incessant winds, or around the residences of the landed
proprietors, where isolated patches of woodland have been sedulously
reared.
The fringe of the coast and the central part of the plain are fertile
and highly cultivated, and there the sites of brochs so frequently
adjacent to the farms indicate an occupation and probable tillage of
the land for a lengthened period. Over the whole of the county,
except where the somewhat boggy moorland had offered no attractions,
there are numerous evidences of human settlement from early times,
and a superstitious yet fortunate belief that disaster would befall