Book I. 



AGRICULTURE OF THE HEBRIDES. 



1197 



economical minerals, besides rare and curious species, are found in different islands. (Headrick's Survey, 

 17&6. Macdonald's General View, 1811. Edin. Gaz. 18 l 27.) 



1. Property. 



In the hands of forty -nine proprietors ; highest rental 18,000/. 

 and acres 312,500. A great many tacksmen. Those of Hay 

 are said to " combine with the spirit and elegant hospitality 

 indigenous to this country, the accuracy in dealing, the punc- 

 tuality in paving, and all the useful qualifications of first-rate 

 low country farmers. It must not be forgotten, in mentioning 

 the order of tacksmen, that they are exceedingly useful, and 

 often necessarv , for maintaining good order and government in 

 the countrv. 'Without their aid, the efforts of the clergy and 

 officers of justice would be painful and unavailing: and there- 

 fore they ought not to he lashly banished, were they to be 

 viewed in no other light than merely as subsidiary to the police 

 and moral administration of the Isles. 



2. Buildings. 



Farm-houses throughout the Hebrides are either houses of 

 tacksmen, of tenants, or subtenants. Tacksmen's houses, though 

 still far behind those of considerable farmers in the principal 

 counties of England and the lowlands of Scotland, are, how- 

 ever, in general, beginning to be tolerably decent and comfort- 

 able; and on all the large estates they "have been very much 

 improved within the last twenty-five years. Most of them are 

 now built of stone and lime, and roofed with blue slates, two 

 stories high, and furnished with kitchens and other accommo- 

 dations. In many instances, indeed, the office-houses are still 

 in a deplorable state ; but even these are rapidly improving ; 

 and should this order of farmers exist for half a century longer, 

 their houses will, probably, be as commodious, and their office- 

 houses as judiciously planned, as those of the same description 

 of men in any part of Great Britain. 



The houses of the occupying tenants are, generally speaking, 

 wretched hovels, and those ot the subtenants nasty and miser- 

 able beyond description. Pennant describes them as habit- 

 ations made of loose stones, without chimney or doors, excepting 

 the faggot opposed to the wind at one or other of the apertures 

 permitting the smoke to escape in order to prevent the pains 

 of suffocation. Furniture corresponds : a pot-hook hangs from 

 the middle of the roof, with a pot hanging over a grateless fire, 

 filled with fare that may rather be called a permission to exist 

 than a support of vigorous life : the inmates, as may be sup- 

 posed, lean, withered, dusky, and smoke-dried. 



It cannot be denietl, that this picture is, in some degree, 

 realised in a few of the Hebrides, even at the present day. 



The cottages in the Hebrides are almost universally so miser- 

 able, both in plan and execution, that they deserve mention 

 only as proofs, that a sensible and sagacious race of men may, 

 by a combination of unfavourable circumstances, not only be 

 gradually brought to endure privations, which, to their equals 

 in other countries, would seem intolerable, but also, in the 

 course of time, they may lose the power, and even the will, of 

 surmounting them. Three fourths of the 40,000 cottagers of 

 these isles live in hovels which would disgrace any Indian 

 tribe; and many of them are found on islands of the 

 first rank in point of population and extent. At least 

 7000 of the natives of Lewis {for instance) know no- 

 thing of a chimney, table, glass window, house floor- 

 ing, or even hearth stone, by their own experience at 

 home ; and what we call their furniture is, as may be 

 imagined, wretched and scanty beyond description, 

 corresponding with their shabby exterior. 



In the woods of the park at Bute were formerly fine 

 specimens of Swiss cottages and other fancy wooden 

 buildings. {Jig. 1135.) 



3. Occupation. 



In estimating the size of Hebridean farms, the com- 

 mon plan is to attend to three leading objects ; first, 

 the number of live stock which the farms in question 

 can maintain ; secondly* the number of bolls of grain 

 .which can be sown, or of ploughs requisite for their 

 tillage; and, thirdly, the quantity of keip that can be 

 made upon them. 



Grazing farms, whether for sheep or cattle, must 

 gradually be enlarged ; and kelp, or merely agricultural 

 farms, must as naturally become limited and confined 

 in point of extent. The hay on many of the grass- 

 farms, and sometimes the corn on arable grounds, is obliged 

 to be dried by hanging on poles, trees, or rods {Jig- 11 36.), as in 

 Sweden. 



1136 



The dorr-maik, or wooden tongs, for drawing thistles, Ac. 

 differs- little from those in use in England. 



1137 



^M 



5. Arable Land. 



Tillage is in its infancy over the Hebrides, in all the isles 

 northward of Mull ; excepting half a dozen farms in Skye, a 

 part of M'Leod, of Rasay's estate, two farms in Uist, and a 

 little latelv done in Lewis, near Stornaway, and by Campbell, 

 of Islay, on a small island between North Uist and Harris. 

 These improvements have been carried on within the last fif- 

 teen years. 



It would be rather ludicrous than useful to describe the til- 

 lage generally practised in the Hebrides ; and, accordingly, we 

 shall not dwell upon it, or insult the common seme of the na- 

 tives, by seriously requesting ihem to abandon the many barba- 

 rous customs which have so long disgraced their country. A 

 man walking backwards, with his face towards four horses 

 abreast, brandishing his cudgel in their noses and eyes, to make 

 them advance to their enemy, followed by a ristle-plough em- 

 ploying a horse and two men, the three commonly altogether 

 superfluous, still followed by four horses, dragging clumsy har- 

 rows, fixed by hair ropes to their taps, and almost bursting their 

 spinal marrow at every tug and writhing of their tortured car- 

 casses. All this cavalcade on ground unenclosed, undrained, 



4. Implements. 



Some are nearly peculiar to the Hebrides, as the caschrom 

 or crooked spade"(./i>. 1137.1, which, in two parishes in the 

 Isle of Lewis, entirely supersedes the use of ploughs in the 

 raising of corn and potatoes. The great advantage of this in- 

 strument is, that it enables the operator to work in mosses or 

 bogs, where no horses can walk, and in stony ground inacces- 

 sible to the plough. Many districts of Harris and of Skye 

 would be unsusceptible of tillage without it. Its superiority to 

 the common trenching spade, or to any tool which penetrates 

 the ground perpendicularly, is very great, resulting both from 

 the ease with which the operator wields it, and the length of 

 the horizontal clod which its powerful lever enables him to 

 turn over. 



The ristle, or sickle plough (a sort of paring plough), is used 

 for cutting the strong sward of old land, or the tough roots of 

 plants, which would otherwise greatly impede the passage of 

 the plough. 



and yielding at an average little returns for the seed sown, and 

 sometimes :ost altogether by the depredat:ons of cattle, or by 

 accident in a 1. te harvest, is a barbarous spectacle, winch must 

 gradually vanish. It will soon give way, as it has already done 

 in Islay, Colonsay, and part of Skye, to improved systems of 

 tillage. 



6. Gardens and Orchards. 



It is not to be expected tbat much should be done in garden- 

 ing, in a district of which by far the greater part of the propri- 

 etors are non-resident, nor is the climate suitable for that art. 

 The winds are too violent, and the sun too shy of showing his 

 face. Until trees and othtr sorts of shelter become, therefore, 

 more general, the gardens and orchards of the Hebrides will 

 probably be little more than an empty name. 



7. Woods and Plantations. 



In the sixteenth century it appears most of these isles were 

 covered with woods, and even so late as Buchanans time. 

 One exhilarating remark, however, occurs to the traveller who 

 traverses those bleak and woodless recesses, amidst the melan- 

 choly impressed upon him by comparing their present aspect 

 with the description which he reads in Buchanan and Monro, 

 namely, that where trees have formerly grown they will ::r,,w 

 again;' and that any regions which were once MMlod 

 adorned by the hand of nature, may still be m a far higher de- 

 gree improved and embellished by the industry oi man. 

 ^In Bine the late Lord Bute, in Islay Campbell ri Shawfidd. 

 and in Skye Lord Macdonald, have planted extensively and 



successfully, and other proprietors are f. wins the example. 



The pTes'nt Marquess has almost naturalised the turkey in the 

 plantations of Bute Park. 



8. Live Stock. . . 



The ancient Hebridean breed of cattle is now no longer to 

 be found. Some persons imagine it to be the Sky.-, others the 

 Mull and others again the Lewis or Long Island variety. A 

 person habituated to accurate observations on cattle, car, .easily 

 oistinguish those different breeds from one another and a I of 

 them from the larger breed now introduced into Islay, Colon- 



