466 
Sutherland Reclamation. 
on the 22nd and 24th of the month, filling the engine-tracks with 
water, and converting every hollow into a little quagmire into 
Avhich the engines sank. For a day they seemed to make no 
progress at all ; no sooner was one engine extricated from a hole 
than another came to grief elsewhere. Mr. Greig had spent the 
previous day, from 6 A.M. till 6 P.M., in going from one engine to 
another stuck fast in the bog, the men needing all the encourage- 
ment of the master's help and dogged resolution to keep them from 
abandoning their efforts in despair. I found ten men ladling 
mud from the deep hole in which one of the engines had sunk 
itself ; others were fetching stones and birch saplings ; the latter 
thrown in front of the wheels usually enable an engine to pull 
itself out of a hole, but in very soft ground it is often necessary 
to send a second engine to the rescue, or to pay out a helping 
rope from some engine that happens to be at Avork within a 
moderate distance. Good men will often be discouraged under 
such circumstances, and many of those who first offered them- 
selves for work proved anything but well-trained workmen. 
The work would have been rendered comparatively easy if 
proper roads had been first constructed ; and, if sufficient accom- 
modation had been provided for the workmen, a better class of 
hands would have been obtained. These provisions have been 
made before beginning work on the other farms at Kildonan • 
but to have waited for them in this instance would have caused 
the loss of a season. 
With the exception of these troubles, Avhich arose in great 
measure from the wetness of the season, there have been but few 
mechanical difficulties in the reclamations of Achintoul. The 
plough used was the same as that already described, except that 
the stirrer or subsoiler was rendered more effective by having 
a mould-board added to it : at first, a small short board was- 
tried, but this was afterwards exchanged for a very large one 
that raised a considerable portion of the subsoil to the surface. 
The first furrow is cut from 20 to 24 inches wide, and about 
7 inches deep ; where the turf is shallow, the first furrow will 
often lift its whole thickness of 8 to 12 inches off the free sub- 
soil and roll it over like a thick carpet ; the second furrow turns, 
up 12 inches of the subsoil, and where this is of a sandy nature 
it is spread irregularly over the whole surface of the first furrow. 
Where there are big stones in the land, a very large proportion 
of them are now brought to the surface by the huge turn-furrow 
of the subsoiler ; but wherever a land-fast rock is touched, the 
man in charge of the rope merely pauses to put in a stick to 
indicate the spot, and pushes on with his work, leaving the rock 
to be extracted by hand-labour, or blasted by dynamite. Where 
there are many stones, the plough is often jerked from side to 
side, but never broken. In such places the huge turf-furrows are 
