NOETHEEN SCOTLAND. 861 



grounds.* Thus, contrary to what may be usually witnessed in civilised countries, 

 the Highland valleys are returning to a state of nature, and wild beasts taking the 

 place of domesticated animals. The country, formerly almost bare of trees, has been 

 largely planted, and from Black Mount in Argyllshire to Marr Forest in Aberdeen 

 there now extends an almost unbroken belt of verdure. Already the shooting 

 grounds cover over 2,000,000 acres, and they are continually extending. Scotland 

 has emphatically become a sporting country, and many a large estate is managed 

 as a shooting ground, that proving more profitable to its proprietor than would its 

 cultivation. There are not wanting sportsmen willing to pay £400 for a salmon 

 stream, £1,000 for the right of shooting over a moor, or £4,000 for a deer park. 

 With these rents a salmon may cost £8, and a stag £40. f 



Scotland, even more than England, is a land of wide demesnes. Twenty-one 

 individuals share between them the third of the kingdom, 70 the half, and 1,700 

 nine-tenths of it. The Duke of Sutherland alone owns about the fifteenth 

 part of Scotland, including nearly the whole county from which he derives his 

 title. Domains of such vast extent cannot be properly cultivated, and heaths and 

 swamps which would repay the labour bestowed upon them by peasant proprietors 

 are allowed by their wealthy owners to remain in a state of nature. 



In the Orkneys a portion of the land is still owned by odallers, or peasant 

 proprietors ; but the Shetland Islands and several of the Hebrides, including Lewis, 

 the largest amongst them, belong to a single proprietor, who thus disposes 

 indirectly of the lives of the inhabit.ints, whom he can compel to abandon their 

 homes whenever it suits his interests. Several islands, such as Barra and Eum, 

 which formerly supported a considerable population, have in this way become 

 almost deserts ; and amongst the inhabitants left behind there are even now 

 many who live in a state of extreme poverty, who look upon carracjcen, or Iceland 

 moss, as a luxury, and who are dependent upon seaAveeds and fish for their daily 

 sustenance. Owing to the inferiority of the food, dyspepsia is a common complaint, 

 and certain physicians declare that the gift of " second sight," which plays so 

 prominent a part in the history of the Highlanders, is traceable to a disorder of 

 the organs of digestion. The villages of Lewis are perhaps unique of their kind 

 in Europe. The inhabitants gather the stones embedded in the peaty soil to 

 construct rough concentric walls, filling the space between them with earth and 

 gravel. A scaffolding made of old oars and boughs supports a roof covered with 

 earth and peat, leaving a wide ledge on the top of the circular wall, upon which 

 vegetation soon springs up, and which becomes the favourite promenade and play- 

 ground of children, dogs, and sheep. A single door gives access to this unshapely 

 abode, within which a peat fire is kept burning throughout the year, in order that 

 the damp which perpetually penetrates through the wall and roof may evaporate. 

 Horses, cows, and sheep, all of diminutive stature, owing to their want of nourish- 

 ment, occupy one extremity of this den, w^hile the fowls roost by the side of the human 

 inhabitants, or perch near the hole left for the escape of the smoke. To strangers 



* Hugh Miller, " Sutherland as it Was and Is." 



t In 1877 2,060 shooting grounds in Scotland were let for d£GOO,000. (Ofiicial Journal, November 

 16th, 1877.) 



133 



