The Kelp Industry in the Highlands 



On Tiree the fronds are burnt in long strips from twelve 

 to fifteen feet long and two feet wide. The burnt products 

 from the "barr dearg " take at first the form of molten 

 liquid, and care must be used to prevent this liquid from 

 spreading over the surrounding ground. This is effected 

 by burning the fronds in a slight hollow, and along the side 

 of the strip is placed a layer of the wet fronds to keep the 

 liquid within bounds. On cooling, the ash assumes the form 

 of a hard cake, and when broken up reveals many-coloured 

 crystals of great beauty. It is this substance, and not, 

 properly, the ash of the tangle stems, that is known to the 

 workers as kelp. 



The ash, then, of both "stamh " and "barr dearg " having 

 been collected and put into sacks, which are provided by 

 the company buying the ash, awaits the coming of the 

 steamer. This vessel is generally a "puffer," which has 

 arrived at the island with a cargo of coal, for "puffers," on 

 account of their construction, are able to put into almost any 

 bay and lie on almost any beach; and such a boat, having 

 discharged its coals, may visit several parts of the island in 

 turn, receiving the cargo of ash from each district. 



It is an interesting fact that the industry of kelp-making 

 from the bladder-wrack or "kelp-wrack," as it is sometimes 

 called, has disappeared entirely at the present time in Scot- 

 land, though still persisting along the west coast of Ireland. 

 For instance, the hundred tons of kelp which were at one 

 time produced on Ulva were extracted almost entirely from 

 the bladder-wrack ; now the industry is a memory only. 

 The same thing applies to many of the sea lochs and 

 sheltered sounds of Argyll. Here the laminarian weed 

 grows sparingly, and the swell is never sufficiently heavy 

 to cast it up on the shore, so that the kelp ash 

 formerly made was produced entirely from the bladder-wrack. 

 In the Craignish district, for example, a considerable amount 

 of the kelp-wrack ash was formerly produced, and also on 

 some of the more land-locked lochs of Mull, as, for instance, 



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