Appendix A. 461 



coming in sight of the river, near which his father was born, he raised his arm, XCIX. 



Alexandfc 



and exclaimed ' That is the River of Hough. I know it from my father's descrip- 



' tion. Many a salmon my father killed there.' On meeting his blind old Carmichael. 



uncle, he embraced him affectionately, and granted him and his daughter an 



annuity, and gave to various other relatives sums of money. 



He took potatoes with him from the garden his father's father had, and earth 

 from the floor of the house wherein his father was born. This earth was, by his 

 orders, put into his coffin when he died. He parted with his relatives with 

 many mutual regrets. That was a great day in Houbeag ! 



Eight across the hUls from Houbeag, after a two hour.s' walk, is Corradal, in 

 which is the small cave where Prince Charles lived in hiding, Fo Choill, * under 

 , the wood,' as the people say, for six weeks. The cave is in the face of a rock on 

 the north side of a narrow glen. 



Chambers says that about ninety persons knew that the Prince was in 

 Corradal. He might safely have said nine hundred, yet no one attempted to 

 betray him. The place was full of crofters then, though there are none now 

 within many mQes. The Rev. John Macaulay, grandfather to Lord Macaulay, 

 was minister in the parish at the time. 



Intermediate Eun-Big. 



The low-lying district of locar, ' nether,' is a narrow strip lying across from 

 sea to sea on the extreme north end of South Uist. It is bounded on three sides 

 by the sea, and on the fourth by a large farm. This district comprehends nine 

 townlands, and an aggregate of eighty-eight crofters. Each of these crofters has 

 a distinct croft of his own in his townland, and a share in the arable land common 

 to the whole crofters of the district. 



The crofts of the townlands lie towards the middle of the district. On the 

 east, between the ragged townlands and the Minch, lies a moor interspersed with 

 rocks, bogs, and water. Where the land is not rock it is heath, where not heath 

 it is bog, where not bog it is black peaty shallow lake, and where not lake it 

 is a sinuous arm of the sea, winding, coiling, and trailing its snake-like forms 

 into every inconceivable shape, and meeting you with all its black slimy mud 

 in the most unexpected places. The crofters of the district send cattle here in 

 spring and early summer, if driven by necessity from want of provender, not 

 otherwise. The moss, particularly at one place, contains much Sundew, Drosera 

 rotimdifolia, and this the people affirm causes Red Water — Gaelic, Bun Dearg — 

 in their cattle. The various names the old Highlanders had for this plant indi- 

 cate that they understood its carnivorous nature before Darwin's discovery. 

 The plant was called Lus a Ghadmuin, in reference to its qualities as a hair 

 wash, Lus an Deoghail, from its sucking qualities, and Lus an Dioglain, from its 

 titillating, tickling nature. The crofters themselves cultivate no part of this 

 moor, but numerous squatters sent and settled there do. 



Between the rocky, boggy, water-logged townlands and the Atlantic, is an 

 extensive plain, locally called Machair. This Machair, like the moorland, is held 

 in common by all the crofters of the district. Some portions of the Machair are 

 cultivated, some are under grazing, and much is incapable either of cultivation 

 or grazing, being simply sterile sand. 



For economic purposes, the eighty-eight crofts of the district are divided into 

 four sections of twenty-two each. These sections or wards are presided over by 

 Constables, and the whole district is presided over by a Maor. 



The cultivated parts of the Machair are periodically allotted among the eighty- 



