INTRODUCTION. xliii 



these can only be surpassed by the misfortunes of those who 

 had been forcibly driven from their native land altogether ; 

 though that unfortunate class are usually left out of 

 account when the more drastic and complete forms of 

 eviction are written or spoken o There is also another 

 class who were, and are being, deprived of their hill pasture 

 and left to comparative starvation, with their cattle, on 

 wretchedly small and unprofitable arable patches among 

 the barren rocks on the sea-shore. And all this misery and 

 agony to gratify the inhuman selfishness of some two or 

 three persons who, by the mere accident of birth, enjoy a 

 power which they could never have secured for themselves ! 

 One of the results brought out by the evidence submitted 

 to the Royal Commission in Skye is, that nearly all the meal 

 mills that used, in great numbers, to be constantly employed 

 twenty to fifty years ago, have fallen into decay or are lying 

 completely idle in consequence of the evictions and of the 

 best portions of the Island having been laid waste to make 

 room for large sheep farms. These silent and dilapidated 

 buildings now proclaim the sad truth respecting the 

 once prosperous inhabitants of the famous and soldier- 

 producing Island more eloquently than pen can possibly 

 record. 



RENT OF BEN LEE PAID. 



In reference to the correspondence published at pp. roi- 

 106, and the settlement of the dispute between the Braes 

 Crofters and Lord Macdonald, described at page 114, it 

 may be right to state that Mr. Malcolm Mackenzie, while 

 not admitting any claim whatever upon him, after Lord 

 Macdonald's refusal of his generous offer to pay two years' 

 rent for the Braes Crofters, on the conditions set forth in 

 his published letters, already referred to, decided upon 



