324 RURAL ECONOMY OF ENGLAND. 



in the same latitude as Sweden and Norway, it is subject 

 to a like severity of climate, rendered still more severe 

 by the height of its mountains. A narrow strip of good 

 soil extends along the coast, especially towards the 

 south. There is a want of it everywhere else ; but though 

 it existed, the prevalence of cold and storms would be 

 sufficient to render cultivation almost impossible.* There, 

 isolated from the rest of the world, dwelt the largest and 

 most unmixed of the Gaelic tribes. A great chieftain, 

 called Mhoir-Fhear-Chattaibh, or the Great Man of the 

 South, in allusion to his contests with the Danish pirates 

 who infested the Caithness coasts to the north, was for- 

 merly the head of this clan. The population of the 

 country was not great, owing to the want of food, and 

 they were very badly off. Upon an area of about eight 

 hundred thousand acres, fifteen thousand men, women, 

 and children, existed in a condition little better than that 

 of beasts. 



At the time of the military organisation of the clans, 

 Sutherlandshire raised the 93d regiment of the line. In 

 the early part of the present century, the Countess of 

 Sutherland, sole descendant of the Great Man of the 

 South, having become Marchioness of Stafford by mar- 

 riage with a wealthy English nobleman, undertook to 



* This rugged picture, conveying an impression of general barrenness, is, it will be 

 seen, considerably softened by what immediately follows, when M. Lavergne 

 comes to treat of the improvements which have recently taken place in Suther- 

 land. After all, it is with the latitude of the very southern parts of Norway and 

 Sweden that this county ranges, and we know that the severity of its cli- 

 mate is much mitigated by its insular situation ; indeed, we have no reason 

 to think its summers are inferior, especially on the eastern coast, to those of 

 the Lothians, though they are undoubtedly a little shorter. There is a consi- 

 derable breadth of very useful land, in fine herbage, in the extensive valleys by 

 which the mountain ranges are intersected ; and the statistical returns, obtained 

 from Sutherlandshire last year, exhibit a total of up wards of twenty- two thousand 

 acres of arable land, nearly four thousand five hundred of which were in green 

 crops, and upwards of ten thousand five hundred in grain of different kinds. J. D, 



