IN THE HIGHLANDS 15 



and more or less wasted, before the great dairy could be 

 finally locked till evening came round again \" 



In my grandfather's day no colour was considered 

 right for Highland cattle but black. The great thing 

 then was to have a fold of black cows. No one would 

 look at the reds and yellows and cream and duns, which 

 are all the rage nowadays. Though the blacks have 

 since become unpopular, I have been told by the very 

 best old judges of Highland cattle that there is nothing 

 to beat the blacks for hardiness, and that the new strains 

 of fancy-coloured cattle are much softer, and have not 

 the same constitutions. 



The Tigh Dige (pronounced Ty digue), or Moat House, 

 was so called because the original house belonging to us, 

 which was down in the hollow below the present mansion, 

 was surrounded by a moat and a drawbridge. The 

 first Sir Alexander, my grandfather's grandfather, the 

 Tighearna Crubach (the Lame Laird), finding it in- 

 convenient, started building the present house about 

 1738, and as it was the very first instance in all the 

 country round of a slated house, the old name Tigh 

 Dige was continued, with the addition given to it of nam 

 gorm Leac (of the Blue Slabs) . I believe iron nails were 

 used . But I remember the late Dowager Lady Middleton 

 telling me that when they bought Applecross and had 

 to take off a part of the old roof of the house they found 

 that the original slates had been fixed to the sarking 

 with pegs of heather root. She had been told that a 

 man had been employed a whole summer making heather 

 pegs with his knife, right up in Corry Attadale, in the 



