HUGH MILLER 13 



and scrutoires of the local cabinet-maker, Donald 

 Sandison, enjoyed a reputation through the North, and 

 were, far into this century, found in the houses of Ross, 

 together with the old eight-day clocks made in Kil- 

 winning. But the great founder of its modern pro- 

 sperity was George Ross, the son of a small proprietor 

 in Easter Ross, who, after amassing a fortune as an 

 army-agent as the friend of Lord Mansfield and the 

 Duke of Grafton, had in 1772 purchased the estate of 

 Cromarty. When he started his improvements in his 

 native district, there was not a wheeled-cart in all the 

 parish, and the knowledge of agriculture was rude. 

 Green cropping and the rotation of crops were un- 

 known, and in autumn the long irregular patches of 

 arable land were intersected by stretches of moorland 

 that wound deviously into the land, like the reaches of 

 the Ctomarty and the Beauly Firths. Though long 

 opposed by tenacious local prejudices, he at length 

 triumphed over the backward habits of the people, who 

 yoked their oxen and their horses by the tail, and who 

 justified their action by an appeal to the argument from 

 design, and by a query as to what other end in creation 

 such tails had been provided ? Ross also established 

 in the town a manufactory for hempen cloth, and 

 erected what at the time was the largest ale-brewery in 

 the North. A harbour was built at his own expense, 

 and a pork trade of a thriving nature set on foot, wheat 

 reared, the rotation of crops introduced, a nail and spade 

 manufactory set up, and lace manufactures brought 



