Cottages. 265 



for the same class in the Rhinns of Galloway, on the estate of 

 Mr. Macdouall of Looran. These erections, for which the 

 name of hut or hovel would be more appropriate than that of 

 cottage, are built of turf, or mud, or stones, or of a mixture 

 of all these. They are commonly covered with straw, though 

 sometimes with slates. The interior of each contains but one 

 apartment, open to the rafters (which, as may be expected, 

 are blackened by smoke), and having no floor but the earth. 

 The fire is made on the ground, at one end of the room ; and, 

 by way of chimney, a quadrilateral structure of straw rope, 

 warped around a frame of wood, is projected from the wall 

 over the fire, and continued upwards through the roof, ter- 

 minating about 1 ft. above it. The windows are very small, 

 and fixed. Mr. Macdouall receives sixpence a week for cot- 

 tages of this kind, from labourers to whom he pays tenpence 

 a day, the common wages of the district. A gentleman re- 

 sident in that part of the country told us that he knew one of 

 Mr. Macdouall's labourers, who, in one of these cottages, and 

 on the above wages, from which all broken time is deducted, 

 has to support a wife and six children. Rags, filth, cutaneous 

 eruptions, and sometimes atrophy, in the children; emaciation, 

 debility, and })remature old age, in the adults, are the inevi- 

 table effects of this state of existence. It is but just, however, 

 to add that Mr. Macdouall grants, by way of indulgence to 

 his labourers, land on which they may grow their potatoes, 

 provided they manure and clean it. 



Having pointed out the separate faults of these three classes 

 of cottages, we shall now state what appears to be their greatest 

 defect, and which is common to them all. 



Every one who has lived any time in England is aware that 

 the humblest cottage in that country has an appendage to it, 

 essential not only to cleanliness, but even to decency. It is 

 hardly credible, but it is nevertheless a fact, that these append- 

 ages are scarcely ever to be met with throughout the west of 

 Scotland. There are even new and substantial farm-houses, 

 and first-rate gardeners' and bailiffs' houses, without them. 

 Some gentlemen who have built themselves handsome man- 

 sions, and erected elegant lodges at their entrance gates, have 

 altogether neglected to add this necessary convenience to those 

 lodges. Not far from Ayr, we found a new village, consist- 

 ing of about a hundred houses, all feued; and we ascertained 

 from one of the inhabitants, that there were only three of 

 the houses to which this appendage was attached. It is not 

 to be wondered at, therefore, that the outskirts of all the vil- 

 lages and of all the towns, and the immediate neighbourhoods 

 of all the cottages, in the west of Scotland are most offensively 



