3009. What was the quality of the goods at Mouats' store?-They were of a very inferior quality to what we could purchase anywhere else in the island.
3010. Are you speaking just now from your own knowledge, or from the common understanding of the people about?-I am speaking from nothing else but my own knowledge.
3011. But are you a good judge of the quality of goods?-I cannot say that I am a very good judge, only I know well enough a bad article from a good one.
3012. What particular thing are you speaking of just now?-Say cottons, moleskins, and cloth.
3013. And what as to the provisions?-They were of inferior quality as well. We had meal from his store which he called his second flour. It was as dear, if not dearer, than we could purchase it anywhere else, and it was of such a quality that it could not be eaten by human beings.
3014. Then you did not eat it?-It had to be eaten for the support of life, while it existed; but had it not been for the provisions that came from other stores, and from people who had them to sell, Mouat's tenantry could not have been alive now, and I among the rest.
3015. How could they get provisions from other stores if they had no money to purchase them with?-They made a statement of how they were situated under Mouat, and how they could not receive any meal at all, and that they had to give all their fish to him; and the other shopkeepers felt such sympathy for them, that they gave them supplies to save their own lives and the lives of their families, and to put the men to the fishing. At the same time, when they gave them these supplies, they had no expectation whatever of receiving anything for them from a good many, because they were so poor that they could not give it.
3016. Do you think the storekeepers gave the fisher [Page 67] men credit, without any expectation of being repaid?-One of the shopkeepers told me so himself.
3017. Who was that?-James Smith, Hill Cottage, Sandwick parish.
Lerwick, January 6, 1872, WILLIAM MANSON, examined.