In an early chapter of this volume we have given a rapid survey of the state of Scotland about the middle of last century. We found a country without roads, fields lying uncultivated, mines unexplored, and all branches of industry languishing, in the midst of an idle, miserable, and haggard population. Fifty years passed, and the state of the Lowlands had become completely changed. Roads had been made, canals dug, coal-mines opened up, ironworks established; manufactures were extending in all directions; and Scotch agriculture, instead of being the worst, was admitted to be the best in the island.
"I have been perfectly astonished," wrote Romilly from Stirling, in 1793, "at the richness and high cultivation of all the tract of this calumniated country through which I have passed, and which extends quite from Edinburgh to the mountains where I now am. It is true, however; that almost everything which one sees to admire in the way of cultivation is due to modem improvements; and now and then one observes a few acres of brown moss, contrasting admirably with the corn-fieids to which they are contiguous, and affording a specimen of the dreariness and desolation which, only half a century ago, overspread a country now highly cultivated, and become a most copious source of human happiness."*[1] It must, however, be admitted that the industrial progress thus described was confined almost entirely to the Lowlands, and had scarcely penetrated the mountainous regions lying towards the north-west. The rugged nature of that part of the country interposed a formidable barrier to improvement, and the district still remained very imperfectly opened up. The only practicable roads were those which had been made by the soldiery after the rebellions of 1715 and '45, through counties which before had been inaccessible except by dangerous footpaths across high and rugged mountains. An old epigram in vogue at the end of last century ran thus:
"Had you seen these roads before they were made,
You'd lift up your hands and bless General Wade!"
Being constructed by soldiers for military purposes, they were first known as "military roads." One was formed along the Great Glen of Scotland, in the line of the present Caledonian Canal, connected with the Lowlands by the road through Glencoe by Tyndrum down the western banks of Loch Lomond; another, more northerly, connected Fort Augustus with Dunkeld by Blair Athol; while a third, still further to the north and east, connected Fort George with Cupar-in-Angus by Badenoch and Braemar.
The military roads were about eight hundred miles in extent, and maintained at the public expense. But they were laid out for purposes of military occupation rather than for the convenience of the districts which they traversed. Hence they were comparatively little used, and the Highlanders, in passing from one place to another, for the most part continued to travel by the old cattle tracks along the mountains. But the population were as yet so poor and so spiritless, and industry was in so backward a state all over the Highlands, that the want of more convenient communications was scarcely felt.
Though there was plenty of good timber in certain districts, the bark was the only part that could be sent to market, on the backs of ponies, while the timber itself was left to rot upon the ground. Agriculture was in a surprisingly backward state. In the remoter districts only a little oats or barley was grown, the chief part of which was required for the sustenance of the cattle during winter. The Rev. Mr. Macdougall, minister of the parishes of Lochgoilhead and Kilmorich, in Argyleshire, described the people of that part of the country, about the year 1760, as miserable beyond description. He says, "Indolence was almost the only comfort they enjoyed. There was scarcely any variety of wretchedness with which they were not obliged to struggle, or rather to which they were not obliged to submit. They often felt what it was to want food…. To such an extremity were they frequently reduced, that they were obliged to bleed their cattle, in order to subsist some time on the blood (boiled); and even the inhabitants of the glens and valleys repaired in crowds to the shore, at the distance of three or four miles, to pick up the scanty provision which the shell-fish afforded them."*[2]
The plough had not yet penetrated into the Highlands; an instrument called the cas-chrom*[3]
[Image] The Cas-Chrom.
—literally the "crooked foot"—the use of which had been forgotten for hundreds of years in every other country in Europe, was almost the only tool employed in tillage in those parts of the Highlands which were separated by almost impassable mountains from the rest of the United Kingdom.
The native population were by necessity peaceful. Old feuds were restrained by the strong arm of the law, if indeed the spirit of the clans had not been completely broken by the severe repressive measures which followed the rebellion of Forty-five. But the people had hot yet learnt to bend their backs, like the Sassenach, to the stubborn soil, and they sat gloomily by their turf-fires at home, or wandered away to settle in other lands beyond the seas. It even began to be feared that the country would so on be entirely depopulated; and it became a matter of national concern to devise methods of opening up the district so as to develope its industry and afford improved means of sustenance for its population. The poverty of the inhabitants rendered the attempt to construct roads—even had they desired them—beyond their scanty means; but the ministry of the day entertained the opinion that, by contributing a certain proportion of the necessary expense, the proprietors of Highland estates might be induced to advance the remainder; and on this principle the construction of the new roads in those districts was undertaken.