268 Notes on Sport and Travel i 



hills and the wilder straths down to the productive 

 borders of the sea, where they not only had good 

 land, but fish at their doors, enough both for their 

 own support, for sale, and even for manure. Each 

 person who was removed had long warning given ; 

 every one had a plot of ground allotted to him 

 before he removed, and received a sum of money 

 sufficient to start him in his new position, and he 

 was even paid for the miserable sticks which 

 supported his turf roof, which the Highlanders 

 were in the habit of carrying about with them 

 whenever they shifted their bothies, and which, from 

 the difficulty of procuring them, they regarded with 

 a species of veneration. That the poor people, 

 nursed in sloth and idleness, and profoundly ignorant 

 and superstitious, looked with horror at the projected 

 change, and used every art which semi-savage and 

 illiterate cunning could invent, to prevent their 

 removal, is most true ; and wild was the lament 

 and intense the horror at the prospect of being 

 located on the ' wild, black Dornoch moors.' When 

 you go to Sutherland, just take a look at these 

 ' wild, black Dornoch moors ' now ; and if you can 

 point me out a brighter specimen of cotter prosperity 

 in the north, more luxuriant crops, more productive 

 potatoes and yellow oats, be kind enough to let me 

 know its whereabouts, for I should like to see it. 

 So intense was this terror of the change, that it 

 seemed the same to many of the people whether 

 they went ten miles down the strath or to America ; 



