XXX INTRODUCTION. 



Mr. Malcolm MacCaskill, Kilmuir, Duirinish, who stated 

 that his father had been evicted four times, handed in 

 a long statement, in the course of which he said : " The 

 proprietors hate to see the face of man, as their Clearances 

 of the land show. They have more respect for sheep and 

 cattle ; when a crofter leaves the place or dies, his next 

 neighbour will not get his croft, but it is given to a stranger. 

 There were seven crofters removed about fourteen years 

 ago in order to add their lands to those of the new Hotel 

 at Dunvegan." 



John Mac-Fie, aged 74, after stating that he had been 

 in his present croft for forty-six years, continued : "In 1840, 

 there were seventeen families removed from Feorlick by 

 Mr. Gibbon, the tacksman, who took the land and the 

 people on it. They were placed, some by the sea, some on 

 peat land which had never been cultivated. Some of them 

 did not get a place on earth on which to put a foot. I my- 

 self saw them living under a sail spread on three poles, 

 below high-water mark. One of the crofters, Donald Camp- 

 bell, was warned by the ground-officer for giving refuge to a 

 poor man who had no house. The ground officer came and 

 pulled down the house, .and took a pail of water and threw 

 it on the fire. By the noise made in the extinguishing of 

 the fire and the denseness of the steam, the wife went out 

 of her mind. He never saw one so mad. Mr. Scobie 

 came afterwards, and Macleod of Dunvegan gave us all 

 over to him. He said that it was God who sent him there. 

 Rather than settle on the mossy ground which they were 

 shown, two of them preferred to go to Australia. They 

 died on the passage, and were thrown overboard. When 

 Campbell was put out of his house, not a tenant was allowed 

 to give him shelter. He had nine of a family, and they 

 had to remain on the hillside on a wet night. Scobie took 



