20 Notes and Sketches. 



the corn produced in the country was raised within 

 five miles of the coast." This may probably be 

 accepted as rather a loose statement, yet cultivation 

 was mainly confined to the lands that lay along the 

 courses of rivers and streams, while in the interior 

 wide areas of unbroken waste land prevailed exten- 

 sively. It was not till near the end of last century that 

 blackfaced sheep were introduced into the Highlands. 

 The only use previously made of the hill pasture, 

 apart from feeding wild animals, was to feed the small 

 black cattle sent thither during the summer months. 



A precise and detailed account of the modes of 

 tillage practised in the north of Scotland toward the 

 close of the seventeenth century occurs in a letter 

 written by Alexander Garden of Troup, and the date 

 of which is 1683.* Mr. Garden, in describing the 

 usual course of husbandry, says " The husbandman 

 keeps in some of his ground constantly under corne 

 and bear, dunging it every thrie years, and, for his 

 pains, if he reap the fourth corne he is satisfied." That 

 is to say, if he has four returns of the seed sown he is 

 satisfied. This, Mr. Garden informs us, was the 

 " intown." " Our outfields," he says, " when they 

 have been grass four or five years, are plowed up, and 

 letting them lie a summer thus ploughed, we plow 

 them over again, and sow them the next spring ; and 

 in our best outfields if we reap the fourth or fifth corn 

 the first year we are satisfied. Yea, the third is very 

 well thought off." Then he tells us that they took at 

 least three corn crops in succession off the outfield, 

 and if the cattle had been folded upon it before being 



the Duke of Cumberland's cavalry were supplied in 1746, when in 

 Aberdeen, on his march to the north, in pursuit of the rebel army. 

 Even this miserable forage was not obtained without much labour ; 

 part of it being furnished from the swamps among the woods of 

 Fetteresso, at the distance of 16 miles, by, at that time, a very bad 

 road. General View of the Agriculture of Kincardineshire ; by 

 George Robertson. 1807. 

 * Spalding Club Collections in the shires of Aberdeen and Banff. 



