36 A HUNDEED YEAES 



about a dog running after a lamb. How could the poor 

 teacher instruct intelligently when the little pupils 

 did not understand what dog and lamb meant ? I had 

 to come to the rescue and tell them that dog meant cw, 

 and lamb meant imn. Now, this sort of thing would 

 never have happened in my good mother's day, when 

 all teachers were bilingual. 



And now for some more about those delightful nine 

 years of my life spent in the old Tigh Dige. The house 

 used to be full up every summer and autumn. My uncle, 

 John Mackenzie, who was factor for the estate, with his 

 wife, two sons, and five daughters, were often there, 

 and lots of Hanbury relations from the south also came. 

 We were such a merry party. On one or two occasions 

 when Gairloch was let my mother and I resided at 

 Poolewe, either at Pool House or in Inveran Lodge, 

 and that gave me the opportunity of acquiring a wider 

 knowledge of the enormous Gairloch property and its 

 population. I saw comparatively little of my mother 

 for some years at Gairloch, owing to her being away on 

 horseback from Monday morning to Saturday night 

 superintending the making of those miles of road I 

 have spoken of. She was also engaged in abolishing the 

 old runrig system, under which the wretched hovels 

 of some five hundred crofters had been built in clusters 

 or end on to each other like a kind of street, so that 

 when typhus or smallpox broke out there was no escape. 

 All the new houses had to be built each one in the 

 centre of the four-acre croft. 



There had never been a doctor in Gairloch, and my 

 mother doctored the whole parish for over three years — 



