Leading Articles on Various Subjects

by Hugh Miller

Their acquittal was followed by scenes of a similar 422 character with the scene described, and of even greater atrocity. But we must borrow the description of one of these from the historian of the clearing of Sutherland,––Donald M’Leod, a native of the county, and himself a sufferer in the experimental process to which it was subjected:––

‘The work of devastation was begun by setting fire to the houses of the small tenants in extensive districts––Farr, Rogart, Golspie, and the whole parish of Kildonan. I was an eye-witness of the scene. The calamity came on the people quite unexpectedly. Strong parties for each district, furnished with faggots and other combustibles, rushed on the dwellings of the devoted people, and immediately commenced setting fire to them, proceeding in their work with the greatest rapidity, till about three hundred houses were in flames. Little or no time was given for the removal of persons or property––the consternation and confusion were extreme––the people striving to remove the sick and helpless before the fire should reach them––next struggling to save the most valuable of their effects––the cries of the women and children––the roaring of the affrighted cattle, hunted by the dogs of the shepherds amid the smoke and the fire––altogether composed a scene that completely baffles description. A dense cloud of smoke enveloped the whole country by day, and even extended far on the sea. At night, an awfully grand but terrific scene presented itself––all the houses in an extensive district in flames at once. I myself ascended a height about eleven o’clock in the evening, and counted two hundred and fifty blazing houses, many of the owners of which were my relations, and all of whom I personally knew, but whose present condition I could not tell. The conflagration lasted six days, till the whole of the dwellings were reduced to ashes or smoking ruins. During one of these days, a boat lost her way in the dense smoke as she approached the shore, but at night she 423 was enabled to reach a landing-place by the light of the flames.’

But, to employ the language of Southey,

‘Things such as these, we know, must be
At every famous victory.’

And in this instance the victory of the lord of the soil over the children of the soil was signal and complete. In little more than nine years a population of fifteen thousand individuals were removed from the interior of Sutherland to its sea-coasts, or had emigrated to America. The inland districts were converted into deserts, through which the traveller may take a long day’s journey, amid ruins that still bear the scathe of fire, and grassy patches betraying, when the evening sun casts aslant its long deep shadows, the half-effaced lines of the plough. The writer of the singularly striking passage we have just quoted, revisited his native place (Kildonan) in the year 1828, and attended divine service in the parish church. A numerous and devout congregation had once worshipped there: the congregation now consisted of eight shepherds and their dogs. In a neighbouring district––the barony of Strathnaver, a portion of the parish of Farr––the church, no longer found necessary, was razed to the ground. The timber was carried away to be used in the erection of an inn, and the minister’s house converted into the dwelling of a fox-hunter. ‘A woman well known in the parish,’ says M’Leod, ‘happening to traverse the Strath the year after the burning, was asked, on her return, What news? “Oh,” said she, “sgeul bronach, sgeul bronach! sad news, sad news! I have seen the timber of our kirk covering the inn at Altnaharran; I have seen the kirkyard, where our friends are mouldering, filled with tarry sheep, and Mr. Sage’s study-room a kennel for Robert Gun’s dogs.’” 424

CHAPTER V.

Let us follow, for a little, the poor Highlanders of Sutherland to the sea-coast. It would be easy dwelling on the terrors of their expulsion, and multiplying facts of horror; but had there been no permanent deterioration effected in their condition, these, all harrowing and repulsive as they were, would have mattered less. Sutherland would have soon recovered the burning up of a few hundred hamlets, or the loss of a few bedridden old people, who would have died as certainly under cover, though perhaps a few months later, as when exposed to the elements in the open air. Nay, had it lost a thousand of its best men in the way in which it lost so many at the storming of New Orleans, the blank ere now would have been completely filled up. The calamities of fire or of decimation even, however distressing in themselves, never yet ruined a country: no calamity ruins a country that leaves the surviving inhabitants to develope, in their old circumstances, their old character and resources.

In one of the eastern eclogues of Collins, where two shepherds are described as flying for their lives before the troops of a ruthless invader, we see with how much of the terrible the imagination of a poet could invest the evils of war, when aggravated by pitiless barbarity. Fertile as that imagination was, however, there might be found new circumstances to heighten the horrors of the scene––circumstances beyond the reach of invention––in the retreat of the Sutherland Highlanders from the smoking ruins of their cottages to their allotments on the coast. We have heard of one man, named M’Kay, whose family, at the time of 425 the greater conflagration referred to by M’Leod, were all lying ill of fever, who had to carry two of his sick children on his back a distance of twenty-five miles. We have heard of the famished people blackening the shores, like the crew of some vessel wrecked on an inhospitable coast, that they might sustain life by the shell-fish and sea-weed laid bare by the ebb. Many of their allotments, especially on the western coast, were barren in the extreme––unsheltered by bush or tree, and exposed to the sweeping sea-winds, and, in time of tempest, to the blighting spray; and it was found a matter of the extremest difficulty to keep the few cattle which they had retained, from wandering, especially in the night-time, into the better sheltered and more fertile interior. The poor animals were intelligent enough to read a practical comment on the nature of the change effected; and, from the harshness of the shepherds to whom the care of the interior had been entrusted, they served materially to add to the distress of their unhappy masters. They were getting continually impounded; and vexatious fines, in the form of trespass-money, came thus to be wrung from the already impoverished Highlanders. Many who had no money to give were obliged to relieve them by depositing some of their few portable articles of value, such as bed or body clothes, or, more distressing still, watches and rings and pins––the only relics, in not a few instances, of brave men whose bones were mouldering under the fatal rampart at New Orleans, or in the arid sands of Egypt––on that spot of proud recollection, where the invincibles of Napoleon went down before the Highland bayonet. Their first efforts as fishermen were what might be expected from a rural people unaccustomed to the sea. The shores of Sutherland, for immense tracts together, are iron-bound, and much exposed––open on the eastern coast to the waves of the German Ocean, and on the north and west to the long roll of the Atlantic. There could not be more 426 perilous seas for the unpractised boatman to take his first lessons on; but though the casualties were numerous, and the loss of life great, many of the younger Highlanders became expert fishermen. The experiment was harsh in the extreme, but so far, at least, it succeeded. It lies open, however, to other objections than those which have been urged against it on the score of its inhumanity.

The reader must be acquainted with Goldsmith’s remarks on the herring fishery of his days. ‘A few years ago,’ he says, ‘the herring fishing employed all Grub Street; it was the topic in every coffee-house, and the burden of every ballad. We were to drag up oceans of gold from the bottom of the sea; we were to supply all Europe with herrings upon our own terms. At present, however, we hear no more of all this; we have fished up very little gold that I can learn; nor do we furnish the world with herrings, as was expected.’ We have, in this brief passage, a history of all the more sanguine expectations which have been founded on herring fisheries. There is no branch of industry so calculated to awaken the hopes of the speculator, or so suited to disappoint them. So entirely is this the case, that were we desirous to reduce an industrious people to the lowest stage of wretchedness compatible with industry, we would remove them to some barren district, and there throw them on the resources of this fishery exclusively. The employments of the herring fisher have all the uncertainty of the ventures of the gambler. He has first to lay down, if we may so speak, a considerable stake, for his drift of nets and his boat involve a very considerable outlay of capital; and if successful, and if in general the fishery be not successful, the take of a single week may more than remunerate him. A single cast of his nets may bring him in thirty guineas and more. The die turns up in his favour, and he sweeps the board. And hence those golden dreams of the speculator so happily described by Goldsmith. But year after year may pass, and 427 the run of luck be against the fisherman. A fishing generally good at all the stations gluts the market, necessarily limited in its demands to an average supply, and, from the bulk and weight of the commodity, not easily extended to distant parts: and the herring merchant first, and the fisherman next, find that they have been labouring hard to little purpose. Again, a fishing under average, from the eccentric character of the fish, is found almost always to benefit a few, and to ruin a great many. The average deficiency is never equally spread over the fishermen; one sweeps the board––another loses all. Nor are the cases few in which the accustomed shoal wholly deserts a tract of coast for years together; and thus the lottery, precarious at all times, becomes a lottery in which there are only blanks to be drawn. The wealthy speculator might perhaps watch such changes, and by supplementing the deficiency of one year by the abundance of another, give to the whole a character of average; but alas for the poor labouring man placed in such circumstances! The yearly disbursements of our Scottish Fishery Board, in the way of assistance to poverty-struck fishermen, unable even to repair their boats, testify all too tangibly that they cannot regulate their long runs of ill luck by their temporary successes! And if such be the case among our hereditary fishermen of the north, who derive more than half their sustenance from the white fishery, how much more must it affect those fishermen of Sutherland, who, having no market for their white fish in the depopulated interior, and no merchants settled among them to find markets farther away, have to depend exclusively on their herring fishing! The experiment which precipitated the population of the country on its barer skirts, as some diseases precipitate the humours on the extremities, would have been emphatically a disastrous one, so far at least as the people were concerned, even did it involve no large amount of human suffering, and no deterioration of character. 428

One of the first writers, of unquestioned respectability, who acquainted the public with the true character of the revolution which had been effected in Sutherland, was the late General Stewart of Garth. He was, we believe, the first man––and the fact says something for his shrewdness––who saw a coming poor-law looming through the clearing of Sutherland. His statements are exceedingly valuable; his inferences almost always just. The General––a man of probity and nice honour––had such an ability of estimating the value of moral excellence in a people, as the originators of the revolution had of estimating the antagonist merits of double pounds of mutton and single pounds of beef. He had seen printed representations on the subject––tissues of hollow falsehood, that have since been repeated in newspapers and reviews; and though unacquainted with the facts at the time, he saw sufficient reason to question their general correctness, from the circumstance that he found in them the character of the people, with which no man could be better acquainted, vilified and traduced. The General saw one leviathan falsehood running through the whole, and, on the strength of the old adage, naturally suspected the company in which he found it. And so, making minute and faithful inquiry, he published the results at which he arrived. He refers to the mode of ejectment by the torch. He next goes on to show how some of the ejected tenants were allowed small allotments of moor on the coast side, of from half an acre to two acres in extent, which it was their task to break into corn land; and how that, because many patches of green appear in this way, where all was russet before, the change has been much eulogized as improvement. We find him remarking further, with considerable point and shrewdness, that ‘many persons are, however, inclined to doubt the advantages of improvements which call for such frequent apologies,’ and that, ‘if the advantage to the people were so evident, or if more lenient measures 429 had been pursued, vindication could not have been necessary.’ The General knew how to pass from the green spots themselves to the condition of those who tilled them. The following passage must strike all acquainted with the Highlanders of Sutherland as a true representation of the circumstances to which they have been reduced: