150 Notes and Sketches. 



by the machinery of the mill, they must pay another 

 multure, or carry their shealing out of doors to he win- 

 no wed by the wind. In short," he adds, " what with 

 want of water at one time and want of wind at another, 

 I have known instances of three persons being obliged 

 to go to the distance of three miles to the mill three 

 or four times over, and be employed nearly a whole 

 week for the grinding of half a dozen bolls of meal." 

 Weary work enough, surely, but Dr. Anderson has 

 scarcely reached his climax even yet. After declaring 

 that " there is not in this island such a compleat re- 

 main of feudal despotism as in the practice respecting 

 mills in Aberdeenshire," he adds that " the millers, in 

 many cases, exercise their power with the most wanton 

 insolence, these men being too often supported by all 

 the weight of the landlord's influence, so that I have 

 myself seen poor farmers, by vexation and despair, 

 reduced to tears to supplicate what they ought to have 

 commanded from him." 



In 1757, the season being one of scarcity, the Aber- 

 deenshire county gentlemen appointed a committee " to 

 consider the state of the victual and what improvements 

 might be made upon corn mills and the manufacture 

 of grain to make it yield more and of better quality." 

 They had had it represented to them that John Wright, 

 a soldier in Captain Wood's regiment, " presently lying 

 in North Britain," was a man of skill and experience 

 in the making and improvement of the machinery of 

 corn mills, and would be inclined to settle in the north 

 country; and the committee were recommended to apply 

 to Lord George Beauclerk, commander of the Forces in 

 Scotland, to know if he would oblige them by giving 

 Wright his discharge, on a sufficient man being fur- 

 nished as his substitute ; or at least give him a long 

 furlough with a view to his contributing to the im- 

 provement of the mills. The facts enable us to realise 

 somewhat distinctly how utterly destitute of mechanical 

 skill the county must have been when it was deemed 



