I A Gossip 071 a Sutherland Hill-side 263 



This system continued, more or less modified, 

 until the Highland family regiments were incorporated 

 into the Line and recruited for in the usual way, — a 

 woful change for the men who had been accustomed 

 to return home on half-pay, take a farm, and pay 

 the rent and support themselves by making bond- 

 slaves of the cotters, forcing them to return meal 

 and eggs and hens, and an indefinite quantity of work, 

 as rent for their miserable crops. I once saw a 

 * rent-roll,' if I may call it so, of a farm under the 

 old system, as late as 1 8 1 1 ; and it is certainly a 

 most wonderful document. By no means the least 

 curious part of it is the number of hens to be 

 furnished to the tacksman ; and that gave me the 

 key to the old story of the Highland laird, who gave 

 his guests ' ilka ane a hen boiled in broth,' that we 

 have all heard of. Money there was little or none ; 

 a few hundred half-starved stots were sent south 

 every year, and kelp was manufactured to some 

 extent ; and at one time a ' coal-heugh ' was worked 

 at Brora, and salt made ; but the coal was a mere 

 small oolitic basin, and soon became exhausted. 

 These were the only sources of revenue of the whole 

 country sixty or seventy years ago. The cattle 

 never did well : they were too heavy-hoofed to cross 

 the deep morasses to gain the best mountain 

 pasturage, and had they succeeded in doing so, would 

 have been impounded by the enraged forester to a 

 dead certainty ; there was no winter food for them, 

 and the Sutherland people had as much idea of 



