90 AMERICAN CATTLE. 



" The different islands of the Hebrides contain about one hun- 

 dred and fifty thousand of these cattle, of which it is calculated 

 that one-fifth are sent annually to the main land, principally 

 through Jura, or across from the ferry of the Isle of Skye. 

 * * * * Cattle, therefore, constitute the staple commodity 

 of the Hebrides. Three thousand five hundred are annually 

 exported from the island of Islay alone. 



"Mr. Moorhouse, from Craven, in Yorkshire, in 1763, was 

 the first Englishman who came into the Hebrides to buy cattle. 

 In the absence of her husband, Mr. M'Donald, of Kingsburgh, 

 he was kindly entertained by Flora M'Donald, who made up for 

 him the same bed that, seventeen years before, had received the 

 unfortunate Prince Charles. 



" From Skye, Mr. Moorhouse went to Raasay, whither in three 

 days, Kingsburgh folio-wed him; and, during a walk in the 

 garden, on a fine harvest evening, they bargained for one thou- 

 sand cattle, at two guineas a head, to be delivered free of ex- 

 pense at Falkirk. Two days before, he had bought six hundred 

 from Mr. M'Leod, of Waterside. 



"Forty years ago, (from 1763, the time at which Mr. Moor- 

 house dates back, say in 1723,) the treatment of cattle was, 

 with very few exceptions, absurd and ruinous, to a strange degree, 

 through the whole of the Hebrides. With the exception of the 

 milk cows, and not even of the calves, they were all wintered 

 in the field; if they were scantily fed with hay, it was coarse, 

 and withered, and half-rotten ; or if they got a little straw, they 

 were thought to be well taken care of. The majority got little 

 more than sea- weed, heather, and rushes. One-fifth of the cattle, 

 on an average, used to perish every winter from starvation. 

 When the cold had been unusually severe, and the snow had 

 lain long on the ground, one-half of the stock has been lost, and 

 the remainder have afterwards been thinned by the diseases 

 which poverty had engendered. 



