CHAPTER XVIII 

 THE INVEREWE POLICIES 



In the year 1862 my mother bought for me the two 

 adjoining estates of Inverewe and Kernsary, on the 

 west coast of Ross-shire. 



Kernsary lay inland, but Inverewe had a good many 

 miles of coast-line, and, after taking about two years 

 to settle where we should make our home, we finally 

 pitched upon the neck of a barren peninsula as the site 

 of the house. The peninsula was a high, rocky bluff, 

 jutting out into the sea. 



The rest of what are in Scotland usually called " the 

 policies " {i.e., the enclosed grounds round about the 

 mansion) consisted mostly of steep braes facing south 

 and west, with the exception of a narrow strip of land 

 down by the shore — ^the only bit where the coast-line was 

 not rocky — and this strip, which was an old sea-beach, 

 was turned into the garden. I may say the peninsula, 

 whose Gaelic name, Am Ploc ard (the High Lump), so 

 aptly describes it, consisted of a mass of Torridon red 

 sandstone. 



This promontory, where the rock was not actually a 

 bare slab, was mostly covered with short heather and 

 still shorter crowberry, and the only soil on it was some 

 black peat, varying from an inch to two or three feet in 

 depth. There had been more peat originally in some of 

 the hollows, but it had been dug out for fuel by the 



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