Unsegmented source body · Part 8

“In the year 1801, a Mr. George Dennon, from Pictou, carried out two cargoes of emigrants from Fort William to Pictou, consisting of about seven hundred souls. A vessel sailed the same season from Isle Martin with about one hundred passengers, it is believed, for the same place. No more vessels sailed that year; but in 1802, eleven large ships sailed with emigrants to America. Of these, four were from Fort William, one from Knoydart, one from Isle Martin, one from Uist, one from Greenock. Five of these were bound for Canada, four for Pictou, and one for Cape Breton. The only remaining vessel, which took a cargo of people in Skye, sailed for Wilmington, in the United States. In the year 1803, exclusive of Lord Selkirk’s transport, eleven cargoes of emigrants went from the North Highlands. Of these, four were from the Moray Firth, two from Ullapool, three from Stornoway, and two from Fort William. The whole of these cargoes were bound for the British settlements, and most of them were discharged at Pictou.”

Soon after, several other vessels sailed from the North West Highlands with emigrants, the whole of whom were for the British Colonies. In addition to these, Lord Selkirk took out 250 from South Uist in 1802, and in 1803 he sent out to Prince Edward Island about 800 souls, in three different vessels, most of whom were from the Island of Skye, and the remainder from Ross-shire, North Argyll, the interior of the County of Inverness, and the Island of Uist. In 1804, 1805, and 1806, several cargoes of Highlanders left Mull, Skye, and other Western Islands, for Prince Edward Island and other North American Colonies. Altogether, not less than 10,000 souls left the West Highlands and Isles during the first six years of the present century, a fact which will now appear incredible.

THE WIZARD OF THE NORTH.

Sir Walter Scott writes:--“In too many instances the Highlands have been drained, not of their superfluity of population, but of the whole mass of the inhabitants, dispossessed by an unrelenting avarice, which will be one day found to have been as shortsighted as it is unjust and selfish. Meantime, the Highlands may become the fairy ground for romance and poetry, or the subject of experiment for the professors of speculation, political and economical. But if the hour of need should come--and it may not, perhaps, be far distant--the pibroch may sound through the deserted region, but the summons will remain unanswered.”

A CONTINENTAL HISTORIAN.

M. Michelet, the great Continental historian, writes:--“The Scottish Highlanders will ere long disappear from the face of the earth; the mountains are daily depopulating; the great estates have ruined the land of the Gael, as they did ancient Italy. The Highlander will ere long exist only in the romances of Walter Scott. The tartan and the claymore excite surprise in the streets of Edinburgh; the Highlanders disappear--they emigrate--their national airs will ere long be lost, as the music of the Eolian harp when the winds are hushed.”

MR. ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE.

In his work on the Nationalisation of Land, Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, in the chapter on “Landlordism in Scotland,” says to the English people:--

“The facts stated in this chapter will possess, I feel sure, for many Englishmen, an almost startling novelty; the tale of oppression and cruelty they reveal reads like one of those hideous stories peculiar to the dark ages, rather than a simple record of events happening upon our own land and within the memory of the present generation. For a parallel to this monstrous power of the landowner, under which life and property are entirely at his mercy, we must go back to mediæval, or to the days when serfdom not having been abolished, the Russian noble was armed with despotic authority; while the more pitiful results of this landlord tyranny, the wide devastation of cultivated lands, the heartless burning of houses, the reckless creation of pauperism and misery, out of well-being and contentment, could only be expected under the rule of Turkish Sultans or greedy and cruel Pashas. Yet these cruel deeds have been perpetrated in one of the most beautiful portions of our native land. They are not the work of uncultured barbarians or of fanatic Moslems, but of so-called civilised and Christian men; and--worst feature of all--they are not due to any high-handed exercise of power beyond the law, but are strictly legal, are in many cases the acts of members of the Legislature itself, and, notwithstanding that they have been repeatedly made known for at least sixty years past, no steps have been taken, or are even proposed to be taken, by the Legislature to prevent them for the future! Surely it is time that the people of England should declare that such things shall no longer exist--that the rich shall no longer have such legal power to oppress the poor--that the land shall be free for all who are willing to pay a fair value for its use--and, as this is not possible under landlordism, that landlordism shall be abolished....

“The general results of the system of modern landlordism in Scotland are not less painful than the hardship and misery brought upon individual sufferers. The earlier improvers, who drove the peasants from their sheltered valleys to the exposed sea-coast, in order to make room for sheep and sheep farmers, pleaded erroneously the public benefit as the justification of their conduct. They maintained that more food and clothing would be produced by the new system, and that the people themselves would have the advantage of the produce of the sea as well as that of the land for their support. The result, however, proved them to be mistaken, for henceforth the cry of Highland destitution began to be heard, culminating at intervals into actual famines, like that of 1836-37, when £70,000 were distributed to keep the Highlanders from death by starvation. ... just as in Ireland, there was abundance of land capable of cultivation, but the people were driven to the coast and to the towns to make way for sheep, and cattle, and lowland farmers; and when the barren and inhospitable tracts allotted to them became overcrowded, they were told to emigrate. As the Rev. J. Macleod says:--“By the clearances one part is depopulation and the other overpopulated; the people are gathered into villages where there is no steady employment for them, where idleness has its baneful influence and lands them in penury and want.

“The actual effect of this system of eviction and emigration--of banishing the native of the soil and giving it to the stranger--is shown in the steady increase of poverty indicated by the amount spent for the relief of the poor having increased from less than £300,000 in 1846 to more than £900,000 now; while in the same period the population has only increased from 2,770,000 to 3,627,000, so that pauperism has grown about nine times faster than population!... The fact that a whole population could be driven from their homes like cattle at the will of a landlord, and that the Government which taxed them, and for whom they freely shed their blood on the battle-field, neither would nor could protect them from cruel interference with their personal liberty, is surely the most convincing and most absolute demonstration of the incompatibility of landlordism with the elementary rights of a free people.

“As if, however, to prove this still more clearly, and to show how absolutely incompatible with the well-being of the community is modern landlordism, the great lords of the soil in Scotland have for the last twenty years or more been systematically laying waste enormous areas of land for purposes of sport, just as the Norman Conqueror laid waste the area of the New Forest for similar purposes. At the present time, more than two million acres of Scottish soil are devoted to the preservation of deer alone--an area larger than the entire Counties of Kent and Surrey combined. Glen Tilt Forest includes 100,000 acres; the Black Mount is sixty miles in circumference; and Ben Alder Forest is fifteen miles long by seven broad. On many of these forests there is the finest pasture in Scotland, while the valleys would support a considerable population of small farmers, yet all this land is devoted to the sport of the wealthy, farms being destroyed, houses pulled down, and men, sheep, and cattle all banished to create a wilderness for the deer-stalkers! At the same time the whole people of England are shut out from many of the grandest and most interesting scenes of their native land, gamekeepers and watchers forbidding the tourist or naturalist to trespass on some of the wildest Scotch mountains.

“Now, when we remember that the right to a property in these unenclosed mountains was most unjustly given to the representatives of the Highland chiefs little more than a century ago, and that they and their successors have grossly abused their power ever since, it is surely time to assert those fundamental maxims of jurisprudence which state that--“No man can have a vested right in the misfortunes and woes of his country,” and that “the Sovereign ought not to allow either communities or private individuals to acquire large tracts of land in order to leave it uncultivated.” If the oft-repeated maxim that “property has its duties as well as its rights” is not altogether a mockery, then we maintain that in this case the _total_ neglect of all the duties devolving on the owners of these vast tracts of land affords ample reason why the State should take possession of them for the public benefit. A landlord government will, of course, never do this till the people declare unmistakably that it must be done. To such a government the rights of property are _sacred_, while those of their fellow-citizens are of comparatively little moment; but we feel sure that when the people fully know and understand the doings of the landlords of Scotland, the reckless destruction of homesteads, and the silent sufferings of the brave Highlanders, they will make their will known, and, when they do so, that _will_ must soon be embodied into law.”

After quoting the opinion of the Rev. Dr. John Kennedy of Dingwall, given at length on other pages, Mr. Wallace next quotes from an article in the _Westminster Review_, in 1868. “The Gaels,” this writer says, “rooted from the dawn of history on the slopes of the northern mountains, have been thinned out and thrown away like young turnips too thickly planted. Noble gentlemen and noble ladies have shown a flintiness of heart and a meanness of detail in carrying out their clearings, upon which it is revolting to dwell; and after all, are the evils of over-population cured? Does not the disease still spring up under the very torture of the knife? Are not the crofts slowly and silently taken at every opportunity out of the hands of the peasantry? When a Highlander has to leave his hut there is now no resting-place for him save the cellars or attics of the closes of Glasgow, or some other large centre of employment; it has been noticed that the poor Gael is even more liable than the Irishman to sink under the debasement in which he is then immersed.”

The same writer holds:--“No error could be grosser than that of reviewing the chiefs as unlimited proprietors not only of the land, but of the whole territory of the mountain, lake, river, and sea-shore, held and won during hundreds of years by the broad swords of the clansmen. Could any Maclean admit, even in a dream, that his chief could clear Mull of all the Macleans and replace them with Campbells; or the Mackintosh people his lands with Macdonalds, and drive away his own race, any more than Louis Napoleon could evict all the population of France and supply their place with English and German colonists?” Yet this very power and right the English Government, in its aristocratic selfishness, bestowed upon the chiefs, when, after the great rebellion of 1745, it took away their privileges of war and criminal jurisdiction, and endeavoured to assimilate them to the nobles and great landowners of England. The rights of the clansmen were left entirely out of consideration.[28]

[28] _Land Nationalisation, its Necessities and Aims; being a Comparison of the System of Landlord and Tenant with that of Occupying Ownership, in their influence on the well-being of the People_, by Alfred Russel Wallace, author of “The Malay Archipelago,” “Island Life,” &c. London: Trübner & Co., 1882.

A FRENCH ECONOMIST.

The following remarks by the celebrated French economist, M. de Lavaleye, will prove interesting. There is no greater living authority on land tenure than this writer, and being a foreigner, his opinions are not open--as the opinions of our own countrymen may be--to the suspicion of political bias or partisanship on a question which is of universal interest all over the world. Referring to land tenure in this country, he says:--

“The dispossession of the old proprietors, transformed by time into new tenants, was effected on a larger scale by the “clearing of estates.” When a lord of the manor, for his own profit, wanted to turn the small holdings into large farms, or into pasturage, the small cultivators were of no use. The proprietors adopted a simple means of getting rid of them; and, by destroying their dwellings, forced them into exile. The classical land of this system is Ireland, or more particularly the Highlands of Scotland.

“It is now clearly established that in Scotland, just as in Ireland, the soil was once the property of the clan or sept. The chiefs of the clan had certain rights over the communal domain; but they were even further from being proprietors than was Louis XIV. from being proprietor of the territory of France. By successive encroachments, however, they transformed their authority of suzerain into a right of private ownership, without even recognising in their old co-proprietors a right of hereditary possession. In a similar way the Zemindars and Talugdars in India were, by the Act of the British Government, transformed into absolute proprietors. Until modern days the chiefs of the clan were interested in retaining a large number of vassals, as their power, and often their security, were only guaranteed by their arms. But when the order was established, and the chiefs--or lords, as they now were--began to reside in the towns, and required large revenues rather than numerous retainers, they endeavoured to introduce large farms and pasturage.

“We may follow the first phases of this revolution, which commences after the last rising under the Pretender, in the works of James Anderson, and James Stuart. The latter tells us that in his time--in the last third of the 18th century--the Highlands of Scotland still presented a miniature picture of the Europe of four hundred years ago. The rent (so he misnames the tribute paid to the chief of the clan) of these lands is very little in comparison with their extent, but if it is regarded relatively to the number of mouths which the farm supports, it will be seen that land in the Scotch Highlands supports perhaps twice as many persons as land of the same value in a fertile province. When, in the last thirty years of the 18th century, they began to expel the Gaels, they at the same time forbade them to emigrate to a foreign country, so as to compel them by these means to congregate in Glasgow and other manufacturing towns.

“In his observations on Smith’s _Wealth of Nations_, published in 1814, David Buchanan gives us an idea of the progress made by the clearing of estates. ‘In the Highlands,’ he says, ‘the landed proprietor, without regard to the hereditary tenants’ (he wrongly applies this term to the clansmen who were joint proprietors of the soil), ‘offers the land to the highest bidder, who, if he wishes to improve the cultivation, is anxious for nothing but the introduction of a new system. The soil, dotted with small peasant proprietors, was formerly well populated in proportion to its natural fertility. The new system of improved agriculture and increased rents demands the greatest net profit with the least possible outlay, and with this object the cultivators are got rid of as being of no further use. Thus cast from their native soil, they go to seek their living in the manufacturing towns.’

“George Ensor, in a work published in 1818, says:--They (the landed proprietors of Scotland) dispossessed families as they would grub up coppice-wood, and they treated the villages and their people as Indians harassed with wild beasts do in their vengeance a jungle with tigers.... Is it credible, that in the 18th century, in this missionary age, in this Christian era, man shall be bartered for a fleece or a carcase of mutton--nay, held cheaper?... Why, how much worse is it than the intention of the Moguls, who, when they had broken into the northern provinces of China, proposed in Council to exterminate the inhabitants, and convert the land into pasture? This proposal many Highland proprietors have effected in their own country against their own countrymen.

“M. de Sismondi has rendered celebrated on the Continent the famous clearing executed between 1814 and 1820 by the Duchess of Sutherland. More than three thousand families were driven out; and 800,000 acres of land, which formerly belonged to the clan, were transformed into seignorial domain. Men were driven out to make room for sheep. The sheep are now replaced by deer, and the pastures converted into deer forests, which are treeless solitudes. The _Economist_ of June 2, 1866, said on this subject:--Feudal instincts have as full career now as in the time when the Conqueror destroyed thirty-six villages to make the New Forest. Two millions of acres, comprising most fertile land, have been changed into desert. The natural herbage in Glen Tilt was known as the most succulent in Perth; the deer forest of Ben Alder was the best natural meadow of Badenoch; the forest of Black Mount was the best pasturage in Scotland for black-woolled sheep. The soil thus sacrificed for the pleasures of the chase extends over an area larger than the county of Perth. The land in the new Ben Alder forest supported 15,000 sheep; and this is but the thirtieth part of the territory sacrificed, and thus rendered as unproductive as if it were buried in the depths of the sea.

“The destruction of small property is still going on, no longer, however, by encroachment, but by purchase. Whenever land comes into the market it is bought by some rich capitalist, because the expenses of legal inquiry are too great for a small investment. Thus, large properties are consolidated, and fall, so to speak, into mortmain, in consequence of the law of primogeniture and entails. In the 15th century, according to Chancellor Fortescue, England was quoted throughout Europe for its number of proprietors and the comfort of its inhabitants. In 1688, Gregory King estimates that there were 180,000 proprietors, exclusive of 16,560 proprietors of noble rank. In 1786 there were 250,000 proprietors of England. According to the “Domesday Book” of 1876, there were 170,000 rural proprietors in England owning above an acre; 21,000 in Ireland, and 8000 in Scotland. A fifth of the entire country is in the hands of 523 persons. Are you aware, said Mr. Bright, in a speech delivered at Birmingham, August 27, 1866, that one-half of the soil of Scotland belongs to ten or twelve persons? Are you aware of the fact that the monopoly of landed property is continually increasing and becoming more and more exclusive?

“In England, then, as at Rome, large property has swallowed up small property, in consequence of a continuous evolution unchecked from the beginning to the end of the nation’s history; and the social order seems to be threatened just as in the Roman Empire.

“An ardent desire for a more equal division of the produce of labour inflames the labouring classes, and passes from land to land. In England, it arouses agitation among the industrial classes, and is beginning to invade the rural districts. It obviously menaces landed property as constituted in this country. The labourers who till the soil will claim their share in it; and, if they fail to obtain it here, will cross the sea in search of it. To retain a hold on them they must be given a vote; and there is fresh danger in increasing the number of electors while that of proprietors diminishes, and maintaining laws which renders inequality greater and more striking, while ideas of equality are assuming more formidable sway. To make the possession of the soil a closed monopoly and to augment the political powers of the class who are rigidly excluded, is at once to provoke levelling measures and to facilitate them. Accordingly we find that England is the country where the scheme of the nationalisation of the land finds most adherents, and is most widely proclaimed. The country which is furthest from the primitive organisations of property is likewise the one where the social order seems most menaced.”

MR. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN.

In a speech delivered at Inverness, on 18th September, 1885, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain said:--

“The history of the Highland clearances is a black page in the account with private ownership in land, and if it were to form a precedent, if there could be any precedent for wrong-doing, if the sins of the fathers ought to be visited upon the children, we should have an excuse for more drastic legislation than any which the wildest reformer has ever proposed. Thousands of industrious, hard-working, God-fearing people were driven from the lands which had belonged to their ancestors, and which for generations they had cultivated; their houses were unroofed and destroyed, they were turned out homeless and forlorn, exposed to the inclemency of the winter season, left to perish on the hillsides or to swell the full flood of misery and destitution in the cities to which they were driven for refuge. In some cases the cruel kindness of their landlords provided the means of emigration--in some cases they were actually driven abroad. They suffered greatly in foreign countries, being unprovided with the means of sustaining themselves until they could earn a livelihood, but the descendants of those who survived have contributed in no mean degree to the prosperity of the countries in which they finally settled.

Those who remained behind had, I am afraid, little cause to be grateful for the consideration which was shown to them. In the course of years they were deprived of all the advantages which they had previously enjoyed. They had never had legal security of tenure, and they were transferred from their original holdings in the glens and straths, which at one time resounded with their industry, and they were placed out upon barren patches on the sea-shore where it was impossible for the most exacting toil and industry to obtain a subsistence. The picture that I have drawn was no doubt relieved in some cases by the exceptional generosity and kindness of particular proprietors, but, speaking generally, I think it is the fact that the Highland country was to a considerable extent depopulated by those clearances. The general condition of the people suffered, and it has gone on deteriorating until it has become at last a matter of national concern. If I am correct in the statement in which I have endeavoured to summarise what I have read, and learned upon this subject, I ask you whether it is not time that we should submit to careful examination and review a system which places such vast powers for evil in the hands of irresponsible individuals, and which makes the possession of land not a trust but a means of extortion and exaction?”

HARDSHIPS ENDURED BY FIRST EMIGRANTS.

BY Alexander MACKENZIE.

The reader is already acquainted with the misery endured by those evicted from Barra and South Uist by Colonel Gordon, after their arrival in Canada. This was no isolated case. We shall here give a few instances of the unspeakable suffering of those pioneers who left so early as 1773, in the ship _Hector_, for Pictou, Nova Scotia, gathered from trustworthy sources during the writer’s late visit to that country. The _Hector_ was owned by two men, Pagan and Witherspoon, who bought three shares of land in Pictou, and they engaged a Mr. John Ross as their agent, to accompany the vessel to Scotland, to bring out as many colonists as could be induced, by misrepresentation and falsehoods, to leave their homes. They offered a free passage, a farm, and a year’s free provisions to their dupes. On his arrival in Scotland, Ross drew a glowing picture of the land and other manifold advantages of the country to which he was enticing the people.

The Highlanders knew nothing of the difficulties awaiting them in a land covered over with a dense unbroken forest; and, tempted by the prospect of owning splendid farms of their own, they were imposed upon by his promise, and many of them agreed to accompany him across the Atlantic and embraced his proposals. Calling first at Greenock, three families and five single young men joined the vessel at that port. She then sailed to Lochbroom, in Ross-shire, where she received 33 families and 25 single men, the whole of her passengers numbering about 200 souls. This band, in the beginning of July, 1773, bade a final farewell to their native land, not a soul on board having ever crossed the Atlantic except a single sailor and John Ross, the agent. As they were leaving, a piper came on board who had not paid his passage; the captain ordered him ashore, but the strains of the national instrument affected those on board so much that they pleaded to have him allowed to accompany them, and offered to share their own rations with him in exchange for his music during the passage. Their request was granted, and his performances aided in no small degree to cheer the noble band of pioneers in their long voyage of eleven weeks, in a miserable hulk, across the Atlantic.

The pilgrim band kept up their spirits as best they could by song, pipe-music, dancing, wrestling, and other amusements, through the long and painful voyage. The ship was so rotten that the passengers could pick the wood out of her sides with their fingers. They met with a severe gale off the Newfoundland coast, and were driven back by it so far that it took them about fourteen days to get back to the point at which the storm met them. The accommodation was wretched, smallpox and dysentry broke out among the passengers. Eighteen of the children died, and were committed to the deep amidst such anguish and heart-rending agony as only a Highlander can understand. Their stock of provisions became almost exhausted, the water became scarce and bad; the remnant of provisions left consisted mainly of salt meat, which, from the scarcity of water, added greatly to their sufferings. The oatcake carried by them became mouldy, so that much of it had been thrown away before they dreamt of having such a long passage. Fortunately for them, one of the passengers, Hugh Macleod, more prudent than the others, gathered up the despised scraps into a bag, and during the last few days of the voyage his fellows were too glad to join him in devouring this refuse to keep souls and bodies together.

At last the _Hector_ dropped anchor in the harbour, opposite where the town of Pictou now stands. Though the Highland dress was then proscribed at home, this emigrant band carried theirs along with them, and, in celebration of their arrival, many of the younger men donned their national dress--to which a few of them were able to add the _sgian dubh_ and the claymore--while the piper blew up his pipes with might and main, its thrilling tones, for the first time, startling the denizens of the endless forest, and its echoes resounding through the wild solitude. Scottish emigrants are admitted upon all hands to have given its backbone of moral and religious strength to the Province, and to those brought over from the Highlands in this vessel is due the honour of being in the forefront--the pioneers and vanguard.

But how different was the reality to the expectations of these poor creatures, led by the plausibility of the emigration agent, to expect free estates on their arrival.

The whole scene, as far as the eye could see, was a dense forest. They crowded on the deck to take stock of their future home, and their hearts sank within them. They were landed without the provisions promised, without shelter of any kind, and were only able by the aid of those few before them, to erect camps of the rudest and most primitive description, to shelter their wives and their children from the elements. Their feelings of disappointment were most bitter, when they compared the actual facts with the free farms and the comfort promised them by the lying emigration agent. Many of them sat down in the forest and wept bitterly; hardly any provisions were possessed by the few who were before them, and what there was among them was soon devoured; making all--old and new comers--almost destitute. It was now too late to raise any crops that year. To make matters worse they were sent some three miles into the forest, so that they could not even take advantage with the same ease of any fish that might be caught in the harbour. The whole thing appeared an utter mockery. To unskilled men the work of clearing seemed hopeless; they were naturally afraid of the Red Indian and of the wild beasts of the forest; without roads or paths, they were frightened to move for fear of getting lost.

Can we wonder that, in such circumstances, they refused to settle on the company’s lands? though, in consequence, when provisions arrived, the agents refused to give them any. Ross and the company quarrelled, and he ultimately left the newcomers to their fate. The few of them who had a little money bought what provisions they could from the agents, while others, less fortunate, exchanged their clothes for food; but the greater number had neither money nor clothes to spend or exchange, and they were all soon left quite destitute. Thus driven to extremity, they determined to have the provisions retained by the agents, right or wrong, and two of them went to claim them. They were positively refused, but they determined to take what they could by force. They seized the agents, tied them, took their guns from them, which they hid at a distance; told them that they must have the food for their families, but that they were quite willing and determined to pay for them if ever they were able to do so. They then carefully weighed or measured the various articles, took account of what each man received and left, except one, the latter, a powerful and determined fellow, who was left behind to release the two agents.

This he did, after allowing sufficient time for his friends to get to a safe distance, when he informed the prisoners where they could find their guns. Intelligence was sent to Halifax that the Highlanders were in rebellion, from whence orders were sent to a Captain Archibald in Truro, to march his company of militia to suppress and pacify them; but to his honour be it said, he, point blank, refused, and sent word that he would do no such thing. “I know the Highlanders,” he said, “and if they are fairly treated there will be no trouble with them.” Finally, orders were given to supply them with provisions, and Mr. Paterson, one of the agents, used afterwards to say that the Highlanders who arrived in poverty, and who had been so badly treated, had paid him every farthing with which he had trusted them.

It would be tedious to describe the sufferings which they afterwards endured. Many of them left. Others, fathers, mothers, and children, bound themselves away, as virtual slaves, in other settlements, for mere subsistence. Those who remained lived in small huts, covered only with the bark of branches of trees to shelter them from the bitter winter cold, of the severity of which they had no previous conception. They had to walk some eighty miles, through a trackless forest, in deep snow to Truro, to obtain a few bushels of potatoes, or a little flour in exchange for their labour, dragging these back all the way again on their backs, and endless cases of great suffering from actual want occurred. The remembrance of these terrible days sank deep into the minds of that generation, and long after, even to this day, the narration of the scenes and cruel hardships through which they had to pass beguiled, and now beguiles many a winter’s night as they sit by their now comfortable firesides.

In the following spring they set to work. They cleared some of the forest, and planted a larger crop. They learned to hunt the moose, a kind of large deer. They began to cut timber, and sent a cargo of it from Pictou--the first of a trade very profitably and extensively carried on ever since. The population had, however, grown less than it was before their arrival; for in this year it amounted only to 78 persons. One of the modes of laying up a supply of food for the winter was to dig up a large quantity of clams or large oysters, pile them in large heaps on the sea-shore, and then cover them over with sand, though they were often, in winter, obliged to cut through ice more than a foot thick to get at them. This will give a fair idea of the hardships experienced by the earlier emigrants to these Colonies.

In Prince Edward Island, however, a colony from Lockerbie, in Dumfriesshire, who came out in 1774, seemed to have fared even worse. They commenced operations on the Island with fair prospects of success, when a plague of locusts, or field mice, broke out, and consumed everything, even the potatoes in the ground; and for eighteen months the settlers experienced all the miseries of a famine, having for several months only what lobsters or shell-fish they could gather from the sea-shore. The winter brought them to such a state of weakness that they were unable to convey food a reasonable distance even when they had means to buy it.

In this pitiful position they heard that the Pictou people were making progress that year, and that they had even some provisions to spare. They sent one of their number to make enquiry. An American settler, when he came to Pictou, brought a few slaves with him, and at this time he had just been to Truro to sell one of them, and brought home some provisions with the proceeds of the sale of his negro. The messenger from Prince Edward Island was putting up at this man’s house. He was a bit of a humorist, and continued cheerful in spite of all his troubles. On his return to the Island, the people congregated to hear the news. “What kind of place is Pictou?” enquired one. “Oh, an awful place. Why, I was staying with a man who was just eating the last of his niggers;” and the poor creatures were reduced to such a point themselves that they actually believed the people of Pictou to be in such a condition as to oblige them to live on the flesh of their coloured servants. They were told, however, that matters were not quite so bad as that, and fifteen families left for the earlier settlement, where, for a time, they fared but very little better, but afterwards became prosperous and happy. A few of their children and thousands of their grandchildren are now living in comfort and plenty.

But who can think of these early hardships and cruel existences without condemning--even hating--the memories of the harsh and heartless Highland and Scottish lairds, who made existence at home even almost as miserable for those noble fellows, and who then drove them in thousands out of their native land, not caring one iota whether they sank in the Atlantic, or were starved to death on a strange and uncongenial soil? Retributive justice demands that posterity should execrate the memories of the authors of such misery and horrid cruelty. It may seem uncharitable to write thus of the dead; but it is impossible to forget their inhuman conduct, though, no thanks to them--cruel tigers in human form--it has turned out for the better, for the descendants of those who were banished to what was then infinitely worse than transportation for the worst crimes. Such criminals were looked after and cared for; but those poor fellows, driven out of their homes by the Highland lairds, and sent across there, were left to starve, helpless, and uncared for. Their descendants are now a prosperous and thriving people, and retribution is at hand. The descendants of the evicted from Sutherland, Ross, Inverness-shires, and elsewhere, to Canada, are producing enormous quantities of food, and millions of cattle, to pour them into this country. What will be the consequence? The sheep farmer--the primary and original cause of the evictions--will be the first to suffer. The price of stock in Scotland must inevitably fall. Rents must follow, and the joint authors of the original iniquity will, as a class, then suffer the natural and just penalty of their past misconduct.

AN EVICTING AGENT.

Giving evidence before the Deer Forest Commission of 1892, the late Mr. Æneas R. Macdonell of Camusdarroch, Arisaig, made an interesting statement. After mentioning that he was a member of the Scottish Bar, and had previously been proprietor of Morar, he proceeded:--

I am able to speak generally as to the population there used to be in Arisaig in my young days,--in fact, the whole tract of country seemed to be populated and to have numerous houses on all parts of it; but I want to confine my evidence almost entirely to that portion of the district which is now under deer forest. It is now called Rhu-Arisaig, but 100 years ago it was called Dubh-chamus.

Although I am only seventy-two years of age, I am able to speak of thirty years beyond that, from 1794. My grandfather occupied the various places or townships in Dubh-chamus or Rudha. These were Dubh-chamus, Rhu, Tirnadrish, Torbae, Rhubrec, Tormor, Rhuemoch, Claggan, Portavullid, Bal-ur, Ardgaserie, and Achagarrailt. I am able to speak concerning that period from an old account-book belonging to my grandfather, to which I had access a good many years ago, and it was in connection with a very melancholy occasion in which I was unfortunately implicated, viz., an emigration from the estate of Loch Sheil in Moidart. In that account-book I found thirty-seven names of individuals in the various families who were paying rent, as sub-tenants to my grandfather, Archibald Macdonald, Rudha, Arisaig, who died, I think, in 1828 or 1829. I don’t know where that account-book now is. At that time it was in the possession of my uncle, Macdonald of Loch Sheil; and I may as well mention that it was in connection with Rudha that I came to examine the book.

First I should mention that these people occupied Rhu as cottars, and they had land for which apparently they paid no rent, but worked the land, of which Mr. Macdonald of Rudha cropped a portion. They paid rent for grazing,--a small nominal sum, and he himself paid a very small rent also to the then proprietor, Macdonald of Clanranald. In fact he, as well as Macdonald of Borrodale and Macdonald of Glen Alladale, came into possession of the various lands as being sons of the then Macdonald of Clanranald. They took these lands with the population on them, and occupied them.

The rents were paid to the tenants, to these Macdonalds, at a very small rate, because they themselves were not highly charged.

It so came to pass that in Lord Cranston’s time my uncle, Gregor Macdonald, who then occupied Rudha, had to give a large increase of rent, or be quit of it. Well, he could not under the old system on which he held it afford to give more rent. The consequence was that the farm was taken over him; and the cruel thing was, that he was obliged to remove all the sub-tenants upon it who had been there generations before him or his ancestors. The only thing that he could do was to get his brother Macdonald of Loch Sheil to take the people over to Loch Sheil in Moidart. Times grew black, and the potato famine occurred, and the consequence was that there was a redundant population, for Moidart had previously been well inhabitated, and the addition of so many families from Rudha, Arisaig, quite overwhelmed them when the potato famine occurred.

I was then puzzled to know how many came from Rhu, Arisaig, and I got access in that way to the old books from which I took an extract, and I have here a list of the names of the various people and the portions of Rudha that they occupied. In _Ardgaserich_ there were 12, viz., Lachlan Mackinnon, Donald Roy Macinnes, John Macintyre, John Mackinnon, Patrick Maccormack, Neil Mackinnon, Ronald Macdonald, Mrs. Macdonald, Donald Macvarish, Duncan Macinnes, John Macdonald, and Allan Mackinnon. In _Torbae_ there were 4, viz., Angus Smith, L. Mackinnon, J. Macdonald, John Maciasaac. In _Dubh-chamus_, ten, viz., John Kinnaird, John Macisaac, Finlay Mackellaig, Archibald Macfarlane, James Macdonald, Widow Maceachan, Patrick Grant, Allan Mackinnon, Dugald Macpherson, and Widow Maclean. In _Rudha_, 11, viz., Mrs. Donald Macdonald, Donald Macinnes, Roderick Mackinnon, John Maccormack, Rory Smith, Angus Bain Macdonald, Ewan Mackinnon, Peter Macfarlane, Dugald Gillies, Alexander Macleod, Angus Roy Maceachan. These are in all 37, and they are evidently of different families. The rents were given, and the payments made, and everything in connection with their holdings. The date of this is 1794.

I was going on to explain that these people, or rather the descendants of some of them, had to be removed to Moidart, and in the congested state of the estate it had to be considered what was best to be done. I was then a young man. I had just passed at the Bar, and I and the late respected James Macgregor of Fort William were appointed trustees to do what was best. We could see nothing for it,--it was impossible for the people to subsist,--but to assist them to emigrate, and we were assisted very materially in carrying out the emigration by the resident Catholic clergyman of that time, Rev. Ronald Rankine, who indeed followed them. So many of them went to Australia and a few of them to America. But never shall I forget until my dying day,--it is a source of grief to me that I had anything whatsoever to do with that emigration, although, at the same time, God knows I cannot understand how it could have been averted. Many of the people have succeeded well and are well-to-do, but if they had remained, they would have been impoverished themselves, and they would have impoverished the few that are still on the estate.

AN OCTOGENARIAN GAEL.

In his interesting volume entitled _Reminiscences and Reflections of an Octogenarian Gael_, Mr. Duncan Campbell, for over twenty-six years editor of the _Northern Chronicle_, writes as follows with regard to the Breadalbane Evictions:--

As second Marquis, “the son of his father,” contrary to all prognostications, became, as soon as expiring leases permitted it, an evicting landlord on a large scale, and he continued to pursue the policy of joining farm to farm, and turning out native people, to the end of his twenty-eight years’ reign. But like the first spout of the haggis, his first spout of evicting energy was the hottest. I saw with childish sorrow, impotent wrath, and awful wonder at man’s inhumanity to man, the harsh and sweeping Roro and Morenish clearances, and heard much talk about others which were said to be as bad if not worse. A comparison of the census returns for 1831 with those of 1861 will show how the second Marquis reduced the rural population on his large estates, while the inhabitants of certain villages were allowed, or, as at Aberfeldy, encouraged to increase. When such a loud and long-continued outcry took place about the Sutherland clearances, it seems at first sight strange that such small notice was taken by the Press, authors, and contemporary politicians, of the Breadalbane evictions, and that the only set attack on the Marquis should have been left to the vainglorious, blundering, Dunkeld coal merchant, who added the chief-like word “Dunalastair” to his designation.

One reason--perchance the chief one--for the Marquis’s immunity was the prominent manner in which he associated himself with the Nonintrusionists, and his subsequently becoming an elder and a liberal benefactor of the Free Church. He had a Presbyterian upbringing, and lived in accordance with that upbringing. His Free Church zeal may, therefore, have been as genuine as he wished it to be believed; but whether simply real or partly simulated, it covered as with a saintly cloak his evictions proceedings in the eyes of those who would have been his loud denouncers and scourging critics had he been an Episcopalian or remained in the Church of Scotland. The people he evicted, and all of us, young and old, who were witnesses of the clearances, could not give him much credit for any good in what seemed to us the purely hard and commercial spirit of the policy which he carried out as the owner of a princely Highland property. Such of the witnesses of the clearances as have lived to see the present desolation of rural baronies on the Breadalbane estates can now charitably assume that, had he foreseen what his land-management policy was to lead up to, he would, at least, have gone about his thinning-out business in a more cautious, kindly, and considerate manner, and not rudely cut, as he did, the precious ties of hereditary mutual sympathy and reliance which had long existed between the lords and the native Highland people of Breadalbane.

It is quite true that in 1834 the population on the Breadalbane estate needed thinning. The old Marquis had made a great mistake in dividing holdings which were too small before, in order to make room for Fencible soldiers who were not, as eldest sons, heirs to existing holdings. In twenty years, congestion to an alarming extent was the natural result of the old man’s mistaken kindness. There was indeed a good deal of congestion before that mistake was committed, although migration and emigration helped to keep it within some limits. Emigration would have proceeded briskly from 1760 onwards had it not been discouraged by landlords who found the fighting manhood on their estates a valuable asset; and when not positively prohibited, emigration was impeded in various ways by the Government, now alive to the value of Highlands and Isles as a nursery of soldiers and sailors. Although discouraged and impeded, emigration was never wholly stopped, and after Waterloo Glenlyon, Fortingall, and Breadalbane, Rannoch, Strathearn and Balquhidder, sent off swarms to Canada, the United States, and the West Indies. A large swarm from Breadalbane, Lochearnhead, and Balquhidder went off to Nova Scotia about 1828, and got Gaelic-speaking ministers to follow them.

In 1829 a great number of Skyemen from Lord Macdonald’s estate went to Cape Breton, where Gaelic is the language of the people and pulpit to this day. The second Marquis of Breadalbane would have won for himself lasting glory and honour, and done his race and country valuable service, if he had chosen to place himself at the head of an emigration scheme for his surplus people, instead of merely driving them away, and further trampling on their feelings by letting the big farms he made by clearing out the native population to strangers in race, language, and sympathies. He was rich, childless, and gifted, and he utterly missed his vocation, or grand chance for gaining lasting fame among the children of the Gael.

At a later period of my life than this of which I am now writing, I looked into many kirk session books, and found that those of the parishes of Kenmore and Killin indicated a worse state of matters in Breadalbane than existed in any of the neighbouring parishes. Pauperism was increasing at a rapid rate, although it was a notorious fact that rents there were lower than on other Highland estates. The old Marquis was never a rack-renter. Other proprietors, when leases terminated, took more advantage than he did of a chance to raise rents, and when once raised they strove ever afterwards to keep them up. But I do not wonder that his son thought that if things were allowed to go on as he found them on succeeding to titles and estates, a general bankruptcy would soon be the result. Without ceasing to regret and detest his methods, I learned to see the reasonableness of the second Marquis’s view of the alarming situation. The population had simply outgrown the means of decent subsistence from the carefully cultivated small holdings which were the general rule.

Had it not been for the frugality and self-helpfulness of the people, the crisis of general poverty would have come when the inflated war prices ceased, or at least in the short-crop year of 1826, when the corn raised in Breadalbane, although the hillsides were cultivated as far up as any cereal crop could be expected to ripen in the most favourable season, did not supply meal enough for two-thirds of the people. But the “calanas” of the women, especially as long as flax-spinning continued in a flourishing condition, brought in a good deal of money; and for many years “Calum a Mhuilin” (Calum of the Mill), otherwise Malcolm Campbell, road contractor, Killin, led out a host of young men to make roads in various parts of the country, and these returned with their earnings to spend the winter at home. These sources of profit were beginning to dry up when the old Marquis died.

What came of the dispersed? The least adventurous or poorest of them slipped away into the nearest manufacturing town, or mining districts where there was a demand for unskilled labourers. There some of them flourished, but not a few of them foundered. The larger portion of them emigrated to Canada, mainly to the London district of Ontario, where they cleared forest farms, cherished their Gaelic language and traditions, prospered, and hated the Marquis more, perhaps, than he rightly deserved when things were looked at from his own hard political-economy point of view.

_STATISTICAL STATEMENT._

POPULATION IN 1831, 1841, 1851, 1881, AND 1911, OF ALL THE PARISHES IN WHOLE OR IN PART IN THE COUNTY OF PERTHSHIRE.

1831 1841 1851 1881 1911

Aberdalgie 434 360 343 297 278 Aberfoyle 660 543 514 465 1102 Abernethy 1915 1920 2026 1714 1297 Abernyte 254 280 275 275 209 Arngask 712 750 685 547 652 Auchterarder 3182 3434 4160 3648 3175 Auchtergaven 3417 3366 3232 2195 1250 Balquhidder 1049 871 874 627 734 Bendochy 780 783 773 715 502 Blackford 1897 1782 2012 1595 1374 Blair-Athol 2495 2231 2084 1742 1342 Blairgowrie 2644 3471 2497 5162 ... Callander 1909 1665 1716 2167 1977 Caputh 2303 2317 2037 2096 1565 Cargill 1628 1642 1629 1348 1329 Clunie 944 763 723 582 474 Collace 730 702 581 409 324 Culross 1484 1444 1487 1130 1499 Comrie 2622 2471 2463 1858 1447 Dron 464 441 394 335 256 Dull 4590 3811 3342 2565 ... Dunbarney 1162 1104 1066 756 862 Dunkeld 2032 1752 1662 791 628 Dunning 2045 2128 2206 1639 1145 Errol 2992 2832 2796 2421 2083 Findo-Gask 428 436 405 364 357 Forgandenny 913 796 828 617 565 Forteviot 624 638 638 618 524 Fortingall 3067 2740 2486 1690 ... Fossoway and Tulliebole 1576 1724 1621 1267 805 Foulis-Wester 1681 1609 1483 412 704 Glendevon 620 157 128 147 111 Inchture 878 769 745 650 545 Kenmore 3126 2539 2257 1508 686 Killin 2002 1702 1608 1277 913 Kilmadock 3752 4055 3659 3012 2272 Kilspindie 760 709 684 693 498 Kincardine 2455 2232 1993 1351 ...

Kinclaven 890 880 881 588 468 Kinfauns 732 720 650 583 558 Kinnaird 461 458 370 260 172 Kinnoull 2957 2879 3134 3461 4076 Kirkmichael 1568 1412 1280 849 421 Lethendy and Kinloch 708 662 556 404 327 Little Dunkeld 2867 2718 2155 2175 1945 Logierait 3138 2959 2875 2323 1371 Longforgan 1638 1660 1787 1854 1997 Madderty 713 634 593 527 438 Meigle 873 728 686 696 856 Methven 2714 2446 2454 1910 1843 Moneydie 300 315 321 233 232 Monzie 1195 1261 1199 753 428 Monievaird and Strowan 926 853 790 700 438 Moulin 2022 2019 2022 2066 2518 Muckhart 617 706 685 601 528 Muthill 3297 3067 2972 1702 1431 Redgorton 1866 1929 2047 1452 1086 Rhynd 400 402 338 297 205 St. Madoes 327 327 288 316 258 St. Martins 1135 1071 983 741 630 Scone 2268 2422 2381 2402 2389 Tibbermore 1223 1661 1495 1883 2443 Trinity-Gask 620 620 597 396 360 Tulliallan 3550 3196 3043 2207 2091 Weem 1209 890 740 474 391

POPULATION IN 1831, 1841, 1851, 1881, AND 1911, OF ALL THE PARISHES IN WHOLE OR IN PART IN THE COUNTY OF ARGYLL.

Ardchattan and Muckairn 2420 2264 2313 2005 2047 Ardnamurchan 5669 5581 5446 4105 3172 Campbeltown 9472 9539 9381 9755 9497 Craignish 892 970 873 451 325 Dunoon and Kilmun 2416 2853 4518 8002 6107 Gigha and Cara 534 550 547 382 326 Glassary 4054 5369 4711 4348 ... Glenorchy and Inishail 1806 831 1450 1705 931 Inveraray 2233 2277 2229 946 919 Inverchaolain 596 699 474 407 371 Jura and Colonsay 2205 2291 1901 1343 843 Kilbrandon and Kilchattan 2833 2602 2375 1767 1370 Kilcalmonell and Kilberry 3488 2460 2859 2304 815 Kilchoman 4822 4505 4142 2547 1459 Kilchrenan and Dalavich 1096 894 776 504 357 Kildalton 3065 3315 3310 2271 1471 Kilfinan 2004 1816 1695 2153 928 Kilfinichen and Kilviceuen 3819 4102 3054 1982 1403 Killarrow and Kilmeny 7105 7341 4882 2756 2552 Killean and Kilchenzie 2866 2401 2219 1386 1019 Kilmartin 1475 1213 1144 811 582 Kilmodan 648 578 500 323 264 Kilmore and Kilbride 2836 4327 3131 5142 7154 Kilninian and Kilmore 4830 4322 3954 2540 1811 Kilniver and Kilmelford 1072 970 714 405 392 Knapdale, North 2583 2170 1666 927 656 Knapdale, South 2137 1537 2178 2536 2100 Lismore and Appin 4365 4193 4097 3433 3279 Lochgoilhead and Kilmorich 1196 1100 834 870 1023 Morvern 2036 1781 1547 828 635 Saddell and Skipness 2152 1798 1504 1163 964 Small Isles 1015 993 916 550 396 Southend 2120 1598 1406 955 767 Strachur and Stralachan 1083 1086 915 932 700 Tiree and Coll 5769 6096 4818 3376 2214 Torosay 1889 1616 1361 1102 959

POPULATION IN 1831, 1841, 1851, 1881, AND 1911, OF ALL THE PARISHES IN WHOLE OR IN PART IN THE COUNTY OF INVERNESS.

Abernethy 2092 1920 1871 1530 1228 Alvie 1092 972 914 707 564 Ardersier 1268 1475 1241[29] 2086 1913 Ardnamurchan 5669 5581 5446 4105 3172 Boleskin and Abertarff 1829 1876 2006 1448 1791 Cawdor 1187 1150 1202 1070 859 Cromdale 3234 3561 3990 3642 1920 Croy 1664 1684 1770 1709 1384 Daviot and Dunlichity 1641 1681 1857 1252 907 Dores 1736 1745 1650 1148 794 Duthil 1920 1759 1788 1664 1345 Glenelg 2874 2729 2470 1601 1638 Inverness 14324 15418 16496 21725 25669 Kilmallie 4210 5397 5235 4157 3704 Kilmonivaig 2869 2791 2583 1928 1234 Kilmorach (including Beauly) 2709 2694 3007 2618 1811 Kiltarlity 2715 2896 2965 2134 1523 Kingussie and Insh 2080 2047 2201 1987 2199 Kirkhill 1715 1829 1730 1480 1237 Laggan 1196 1201 1223 917 754 Moy and Dalarossie 1098 967 1018 822 696 Petty 1836 1749 1784 1531 1263 Urquhart and Glenmoriston 2942 3104 3280 2438 1675 Urray 2768 2716 2621 2478 1848 _Insular_-- Barra 2097 2363 1873 2161 2620 Bracadale 1769 1824 1597 929 805 Duirinish 4765 4983 5330 4391 3093 Harris 3900 4429 4250 4814 4944 Kilmuir 3415 3629 3177 2562 1964 North Uist 4603 4428 3918 4264 4096 Portree 3441 3574 3557 3191 2431 Sleat 2756 2706 2531 2060 1385 Small Isles 1015 993 916 550 396 Snizort 3487 3220 3101 2120 1694 South Uist 6890 7333 6173 6078 5469 Strath 2962 3150 3243 2616 1947

[29] Including 948 military and militia in Fort-George in 1881.

POPULATION IN 1831, 1841, 1851, 1881, AND 1911, OF ALL THE PARISHES IN WHOLE OR IN PART IN THE COUNTIES OF ROSS AND CROMARTY.

Alness 1437 1269 1240 1033 898 Applecross 2892 2861 2709 2239 2498 Avoch 1956 1931 2029 1691 1782 Contin 2023 1770 1562 1422 957 Cromarty 2900 2662 2727 2009 5637 Dingwall 1159 2100 2364 2220 2942 Edderton 1023 975 890 431 545 Fearn 1695 1914 2122 2135 1785 Fodderty 2232 2437 2342 2047 1648 Gairloch 4445 4880 5186 4594 3328 Glenshiel 715 745 573 424 339 Killearnan 1479 1643 1794 1059 741 Kilmuir-Easter 1556 1486 1437 1146 887 Kiltearn 1605 1436 1538 1182 1138 Kincardine 1887 2108 1896 1472 1025 Kintail 1240 1186 1009 688 ... Knockbain 2139 2565 3005 1866 1397 Lochalsh 2433 2597 2299 2050 1761 Lochbroom 4615 4799 4813 4191 2794 Lochcarron 2136 1960 1612 1456 982 Logie-Easter 934 1015 965 827 700 Nigg 1404 1426 1457 1000 827 Resolis or Kirkmichael 1470 1549 1551 1424 954 Rosemarkie 1799 1719 1776 1357 726 Rosskeen 2916 3222 3699 3773 3362 Tain 3078 3128 3574 3009 2507 Tarbat 1809 1826 2151 1878 1224 Urquhart and Logie-Wester 2864 2997 3153 2525 2006 Urray 2768 2716 2621 2474 1848 _Insular_-- Barvas 3011 3850 4189 5325 6040 Lochs 3067 3653 4256 6248 6689 Stornoway 5491 6218 8057 10389 13438 Uig 3041 3316 3209 3489 3436

POPULATION IN 1831, 1841, 1851, 1881, AND 1911, OF ALL THE PARISHES IN WHOLE OR IN PART IN THE COUNTY OF CAITHNESS.

1831 1841 1851 1881 1911 Bower 1615 1689 1658 1608 1393 Canisbay 2364 2306 2437 2626 1866 Dunnet 1906 1880 1868 1607 1147 Halkirk 2847 2963 2918 2705 2041 Latheron 7030 7637 8224 6675 4512 Olrig 1146 1584 1873 2002 1450 [31]Reay 2881 2811 2506 2191 1811 Thurso 4679 4881 5096 6217 4732 Watten 1234 1966 1351 1406 1079 Wick 9850 10393 11851 12822 12772

POPULATION IN 1801, 1811, 1821, 1831, 1841, 1851, 1871, 1881, AND 1911, OF ALL THE PARISHES IN WHOLE OR IN PART IN THE COUNTY OF SUTHERLAND.

1801 1811 1821 1831 1841 1851 1871 1881 1911 Assynt 2419 2479 2803 3161 3178 2989 3006 2781 2111 Clyne 1643 1639 1874 1711 1765 1933 1733 1812 1749 Creich 1974 1969 2354 2562 2852 2714 2524 2223 1713 Dornoch 2362 2681 3100 3380 2714 2981 2764 2525 2724 Durness 1208 1155 1004 1153 1109 1152 1049 987 830 Eddrachillis 1253 1147 1229 1965 1699 1576 1530 1525 1259 Farr 2408 2408 1994 2073 2217 2403 2019 1930 1673 Golspie 1616 1391 1049 1149 1214 1529 1804 1556 1685 Kildonan 1440 1574 565 257 256 [30]2288 1916 1942 1786 Lairg 1209 1354 1094 1045 913 1162 978 1335 995 Loth 1374 1330 2008 2234 2526 [30]640 583 584 367 [31]Reay 2406 2317 2758 2881 2811 2506 2331 2191 1581 Rogart 2022 2148 1986 1805 1501 1535 1341 1227 892 Tongue 1348 1493 1736 2030 2041 2018 2051 1929 1609

[30] The lands of Helmsdale and others previously in the parish of Loth were, about this time, added to Kildonan, which accounts for this large increase. It also accounts for the decrease in Loth.

[31] Note that Reay is given both in Caithness and Sutherland records same figures. The parish lies one half in each county.

_APPENDICES._

NOTE A. (See Page 115.)

The following pertinent observations appeared in the _Dundee Advertiser_, of 10th January, 1914. They are from the pen of a notable Dundee lawyer, Mr. John Walker, who has made a special study of the legal aspects of the Highland Clearances:--

At the time of Patrick Sellar’s trial the ruthless evictions carried out by the Stafford family had been so long in process of execution that no one had the slightest doubt of the facts of these taking place. The question tried was not whether they took place, but whether they were carried out, in one particular instance, in such a way as to directly cause the death of Donald M’Beath and Janet M’Kay, two helpless, old, bedridden people. The trial took place at Inverness. Of the 15 jurors 8 were landed proprietors, and the rest were mostly either factors or those interested in factors. The most of the witnesses for the prosecution were evidently terrified to say one word against the accused. When Sellar was arrested, he emitted a declaration which was put in evidence at the trial, and, to be strictly fair, I shall confine myself to that. The gist of it is as follows:--In December, 1813, the crofting lands were advertised to let, and at the set, where apparently the lands were disposed of to sheep farmers, a paper was read that the removed tenants would get allotments “in the lower part of the county.”

“That Lord and Lady Stafford directed the declarant (Sellar) to offer at the set for any farm he chose a few pounds beyond the highest offerer; and they directed Mr. Young on his so offering to prefer him.” That thus Sellar got possession of the farms of Rhiloisk and Rossal. That in April, 1814, decrees of removing were got against all the tenants on these farms. That the ejections were carried out in June, 1814, and “that his directions to the officers were that they should lawfully eject the tenants, and that after ejecting ... they should remove the roof of every house in Rhimsdale excepting those occupied by families, wherein sickness was mentioned to have been.” That he was present at the first part of the ejections (of the towns of Garvault, Ravigill, Rhiphail, and Rhiloisk), but after they had ejected from a few houses and had unroofed these the tenants of the others “in the neighbourhood yielded obedience to the warrant, and removed themselves.” “Interrogated. If the declarant’s orders to the officer and party were not to throw down the couples and timber of the different dwelling-houses, barns, kilns, and sheep cots?

Declares that the declarant directed the officers ... to remove the tenants’ property and effects from the premises; and thereafter to unroof the huts to prevent them from retaking possession after the declarant should leave that part of the county.” Sellar himself admitted burning only in one case. The proceedings from a judicial aspect were largely a farce, as can be judged from the fact that the first evidence adduced for the defence consisted of written certificates from three landed proprietors, who did not appear, as to “Mr. Sellar’s character for humanity,” and that these certificates, although not evidence, were founded on in Lord Pitmilly’s charge to the jury. But the important thing is that Sellar’s declaration implicates Lord and Lady Stafford as being by their own instructions the direct instruments of putting this tyrannical under-factor in the position of rendering homeless some hundreds of their helpless tenants. The little crofts were made into large sheep farms, which were advertised to let to the highest offerer, and the exposure was a farce, because the Sutherland family had personally arranged that Sellar was to be allowed to cap the highest offer. One would require a double-power microscope to see the noble philanthropy of that transaction! I have extracted the above summary from the report of the trial, which was prepared and circulated by Sellar’s own junior counsel.

On the other hand, the stories yet told in Sutherland represent a much harsher state of matters. I personally have talked with men whose fathers were as young children turned out on the hillside to see their little cottages burned to the ground, and I have had pointed out to me the sites of these same cottages and crofts, where now there is nothing but miles and miles of dreary waste; and this did not happen in one or two instances, but in the whole of Strathnaver, Strathbrora, and many other places in all parts of the county.

NOTE B. (See Page 218.)

The following interesting letter has been handed to the Editor by Mr. J. Stewart Bannatyne, solicitor, Glasgow:

“CASTLEBAY, BARRA.

“_September 21st, 1912._

“Dear Sir,

“In reply to your letter of the 6th inst., and after consulting the older inhabitants, I beg to inform you that it was John Bannatyne who rescued Mrs. J. M’Kinnon, her sister and another woman, from compulsory emigration, but it was John Crawford who rescued John M’Lean. I know the women and M’Lean as well as I know my two fingers, and heard the whole story from their own lips different times.

“Both my father and mother were eye-witnesses of people being chased like wild cattle over the hills, not in Barra, but in North and South Uists. People can hardly believe now what took place then, and what my mother, who died in my arms at the fall of last year, told me it would be enough to make the devil himself desperate, if I am not using too strong an expression.

“There is a man still living at Mallaig, Inverness-shire, named Ewen M’Dugald, who sailed with John Bannatyne.

“People nowadays are trying to deny that such brutalities were carried out by landlords, but they need not attempt such nonsense. I have no doubt but the descendants of the perpetrators of those acts are ashamed of the deeds--and no wonder.

“Yours faithfully, “DON. M’AULAY.

“JOHN STEWART BANNATYNE, Esq., “Solicitor, Glasgow.”

NOTE C. (See page 234.)

In the _Inverness Courier_ for 11th October, 1837, appears the following:--

A large body of emigrants sailed from Tobermory, on the 27th September, for New South Wales. The vessel was the “Brilliant,” and its size and splendid fittings were greatly admired. “The people to be conveyed by this vessel are decidedly the most valuable that have ever left the shores of Great Britain. They are of excellent moral character, and, from their knowledge of agriculture, and management of sheep and cattle, must prove a most valuable acquisition to a colony like New South Wales.” The Rev. Mr. Macpherson, of Tobermory, preached a farewell sermon before the party sailed. The total number of emigrants was 322, made up as follows:--From Ardnamurchan and Strontian, 105; from Coll and Tiree, 104; from Mull and Iona, 56; from Morven, 25; and from Dunoon, 28. There were two teachers and two surgeons. A visitor from New South Wales presented as many of the party as he met with letters of introduction, and expressed himself highly gratified with the prospect of having so valuable an addition to the colony. A Government agent superintended the embarkation.