THE HIGHLANDS. 325 



strike the first blow. She ordered all her vassals to quit 

 the interior of the country, at the same time offering to 

 establish them on the sea-coast, where they might become 

 sailors, fishermen, labourers, and even cultivators of the 

 soil, since the soil and climate there offered greater re- 

 sources. Those who refused had no alternative but emi- 

 gration to America. This measure was carried out 

 between 1810 and 1820. Only thirty years have elapsed 

 since the whole thing was finished. Three thousand fami- 

 lies were forced to quit the country of their fathers, and 

 were transplanted into the new villages upon the coast. 

 When resistance was shown, the agents of the Marchion- 

 ess demolished their miserable habitations, and in some 

 instances, in order to effect this more speedily, the 

 huts were set on fire. 



As soon as what was going on in Sutherlandshire 

 became known in England and in Europe, the irritation, 

 which similar proceedings had already excited, reached 

 its height. The maledictions which rose from the burning 

 embers of the cottages were echoed with redoubled force, 

 until Lord and Lady Stafford, in 1820, felt themselves 

 called upon to publish a justification of their conduct ; and 

 this they did through their chief agent, Mr James Loch. 



According to Mr Loch, the heiress of the Earls of 

 Sutherland had done her vassals a real service in obliging 

 them to leave a country where they were subjected to 

 nothing but misery. In place of the mud cabins in 

 which they were huddled together upon their native 

 mountains, she had prepared more commodious dwell- 

 ings for them under a less inclement sky. In place of 

 those pastures, immense no doubt, but wholly unculti- 

 vated, where their scanty flocks were dying of hunger, 

 she had provided more fertile land, which was, besides, 

 open to the sea. The people had not been driven out, 



