2 66 Notes on Sport atid Travel i 



service ; ' they haunt Pole with the extreme of 

 drudgery,' he says himself; and complains bitterly 

 of the misery caused in Scotland by an edict of the 

 French king preventing Scotchmen from enlisting in 

 his Guards. This sort of system continued longer 

 on the estate of the Sutherland family than in those 

 of the other landowners of the country ; as, having 

 other sources of revenue, it was able to spend large 

 sums on the starving population. Lord Reay and 

 others saw early that their only chance of doing 

 any permanent good was to move the people from 

 the hills, where the crops were almost certain to be 

 mildewed, down to the good arable land by the 

 sea-shore, and to devote the hills to sheep ; and they 

 did so. 



I was rather amused the other day by reading a 

 comparison between Lord Reay and the present 

 Duke of Sutherland, containing a half-concealed 

 laudation of the former for leaving his tenants as 

 they were, and keeping up the family regiment, 

 preferring men to sheep ; the real fact being that 

 he moved his people years before anything of the 

 sort was done on the Sutherland estate, and still 

 longer before the Reay country came into the 

 possession of the Duke of Sutherland's father. 

 This lagging behind in the race of improvement 

 caused serious embarrassment when the new system 

 was finally determined on. Hundreds of squatters 

 from the neighbouring parts of Sutherland and Ross 

 had eagerly resorted to a country which permitted 



