392 A Walk from 



square miles a sheep-walk. But I will not break the 

 seal of that history. It was full of bitter experience 

 to multitudes. Not for the time being was it joyous, 

 but grievous exceedingly surpassing endurance to 

 many. But it is all over now. The ship-loads of 

 evicted men and women who looked their last upon 

 Scotland while its mountains and glens were reddened 

 with the flames of their burning cottages, carried away 

 with them a bitter feeling in their hearts which years 

 of better experience did not soften. Not for their good 

 was it meant in the motive of the transaction ; but 

 for their good it worked most blessedly. It was a 

 rough transplanting, and the tenderest fibres of human 

 affection broke and bled under the uptearing ; but they 

 took root in the Western World, and grew luxuriantly 

 under the light and dew of a happier destiny. It 

 was hard for fathers and mothers who were taking 

 on the frost-work of age upon their brows; but for 

 their children it was the birth of a new life; for 

 them it was the introduction to a future which had 

 a sun in it, rayful and radiant with the beams of 

 hope and promise. Let those who denounce and 

 deplore this harsh unpeopling come and stand upon 

 the cold, bleak summit of one of these Sutherland 

 mountains. Let them bring their compasses, or some 

 instrument for measuring the angles, sines and cosines 



