The wages paid to the labouring classes were then very low. Even in East Lothian, which was probably in advance of the other Scotch counties, the ordinary day's wage of a labouring man was only five pence in winter and six pence in summer. Their food was wholly vegetable, and was insufficient in quantity as well as bad in quality. The little butcher's meat consumed by the better class was salted beef and mutton, stored up in Ladner time (between Michaelmas and Martinmas) for the year's consumption. Mr. Buchan Hepburn says the Sheriff of East Lothian informed him that he remembered when not a bullock was slaughtered in Haddington market for a whole year, except at that time; and, when Sir David Kinloch, of Gilmerton sold ten wedders to an Edinburgh butcher, he stipulated for three several terms to take them away, to prevent the Edinburgh market from being overstocked with fresh butcher's meat!*[7]
The rest of Scotland was in no better state: in some parts it was even worse. The rich and fertile county of Ayr, which now glories in the name of "the garden of Scotland," was for the most part a wild and dreary waste, with here and there a poor, miserable, comfortless hut, where the farmer and his family lodged. There were no enclosures of land, except one or two about a proprietor's residence; and black cattle roamed at large over the face of the country. When an attempt was made to enclose the lands for the purposes of agriculture, the fences were levelled by the dispossessed squatters. Famines were frequent among the poorer classes; the western counties not producing food enough for the sustenance of the inhabitants, few though they were in number. This was also the case in Dumfries, where the chief part of the grain required for the population was brought in "tumbling-cars" from the sandbeds of Esk; "and when the waters were high by reason of spates [or floods], and there being no bridges, so that the cars could not come with the meal, the tradesmen's wives might be seen in the streets of Dumfries, crying; because there was no food to be had."*[8]
The misery of the country was enormously aggravated by the wretched state of the roads. There were, indeed, scarcely any made roads throughout the country. Hence the communication between one town and another was always difficult, especially in winter. There were only rough tracks across moors, and when one track became too deep, another alongside of it was chosen, and was in its turn abandoned, until the whole became equally impassable. In wet weather these tracks became "mere sloughs, in which the carts or carriages had to slumper through in a half-swimming state, whilst, in times of drought it was a continual jolting out of one hole into another."*[9]
Such being the state of the highways, it will be obvious that very little communication could exist between one part of the country and another. Single-horse traffickers, called cadgers, plied between the country towns and the villages, supplying the inhabitants with salt, fish, earthenware, and articles of clothing, which they carried in sacks or creels hung across their horses' backs. Even the trade between Edinburgh and Glasgow was carried on in the same primitive way, the principal route being along the high grounds west of Boroughstoness, near which the remains of the old pack-horse road are still to be seen.
It was long before vehicles of any sort could be used on the Scotch roads. Rude sledges and tumbling-cars were employed near towns, and afterwards carts, the wheels of which were first made of boards. It was long before travelling by coach could be introduced in Scotland. When Smollett travelled from Glasgow to Edinburgh on his way to London, in 1739, there was neither coach, cart, nor waggon on the road. He accordingly accompanied the pack-horse carriers as far as Newcastle, "sitting upon a pack-saddle between two baskets, one of which," he says, "contained my goods in a knapsack."
In 1743 an attempt was made by the Town Council of Glasgow to set up a stage-coach or "lando." It was to be drawn by six horses, carry six passengers, and run between Glasgow and Edinburgh, a distance of forty-four miles, once a week in winter, and twice a week in summer. The project, however, seems to have been thought too bold for the time, for the "lando" was never started. It was not until the year 1749 that the first public conveyance, called "The Glasgow and Edinburgh Caravan," was started between the two cities, and it made the journey between the one place and the other in two days. Ten years later another vehicle was started, named "The Fly" because of its unusual speed, and it contrived to make the journey in rather less than a day and a half.
About the same time, a coach with four horses was started between Haddington and Edinburgh, and it took a full winter's day to perform the journey of sixteen miles: the effort being to reach Musselburgh in time for dinner, and go into town in the evening. As late as 1763 there was as only one stage-coach in all Scotland in communication with London, and that set out from Edinburgh only once a month. The journey to London occupied from ten to fifteen days, according to the state of the weather; and those who undertook so dangerous a journey usually took the precaution of making their wills before starting.
When carriers' carts were established, the time occupied by them on the road will now appear almost incredible. Thus the common carrier between Selkirk and Edinburgh, a distance of only thirty-eight miles, took about a fortnight to perform the double journey. Part of the road lay along Gala Water, and in summer time, when the river-bed was dry, the carrier used it as a road. The townsmen of this adventurous individual, on the morning of his way-going, were accustomed to turn out and take leave of him, wishing him a safe return from his perilous journey. In winter the route was simply impracticable, and the communication was suspended until the return of dry weather.
While such was the state of the communications in the immediate neighbourhood of the metropolis of Scotland, matters were, if possible, still worse in the remoter parts of the country. Down to the middle of last century, there were no made roads of any kind in the south-western counties. The only inland trade was in black cattle; the tracks were impracticable for vehicles, of which there were only a few—carts and tumbling-cars—employed in the immediate neighbourhood of the towns. When the Marquis of Downshire attempted to make a journey through Galloway in his coach, about the year 1760, a party of labourers with tools attended him, to lift the vehicle out of the ruts and put on the wheels when it got dismounted. Even with this assistance, however, his Lordship occasionally stuck fast, and when within about three miles of the village of Creetown, near Wigton, he was obliged to send away the attendants, and pass the night in his coach on the Corse of Slakes with his family.
Matters were, of course, still worse in the Highlands, where the rugged character of the country offered formidable difficulties to the formation of practicable roads, and where none existed save those made through the rebel districts by General Wade shortly after the rebellion of 1715. The people were also more lawless and, if possible, more idle, than those of the Lowland districts about the same period. The latter regarded their northern neighbours as the settlers in America did the Red Indians round their borders—like so many savages always ready to burst in upon them, fire their buildings, and carry off their cattle.*[10]