Gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 2

548
HIGHLANDS.
for the general good, and necessarily pointed
out the proper direction of those subsidi-
ary branches which were required to be made
by the statute labour and out of private
funds. The public aid afforded for the par-
liamentary works kept the local funds, in a
great measure, entire for such separate pur-
poses; and the knowledge gained from ob-
serving the works of the commissioners sav-
ed much expense, and furnished the assistance
of skilful engineers and experienced workmen.
Upon this subject I have received the follow-
ing communication from good authority : " In
illustration of the spirit which these public
works have excited, and the incalculable bene-
fits which they have produced already, and
may produce more extensively hereafter, it
may be sufficient to refer to the recent act for
regulating the statute labour of the.county of
Sutherland, by which the services in kind were
converted into a money payment. The coun-
ty having been divided by this act into four
districts, in the first of them, the Dornoch dis-
trict, nineteen miles of new road have been
made with requisite bridges, by the joint means
of composition for statute labour and contri-
bution from Lord Stafford the principal pro-
prietor ; in the second, or Sutherland district,
seventy-five miles of road have been made by
the like means, besides a line of twenty-five
miles from Tongue down Strathuahaver to
Altnaharrow, and a direct line of thirty seven
miles from Helmsdale on the east coast, to
Bighouse on the north coast, both of which
have been effected by statute labour funds ex-
clusively ; in the third, or Reay district, there
is now constructing a road of thirty-four miles
from Altnaharrow to Durness ; and in the
fourth, or Assynt district, several roads and
bridges also have been constructed, and one
line of forty-four miles in length from the east
coast up Strath- Ordil to Loch-Inver on the
west coast, intersecting this portion of the
island at right angles to the Helmsdale road ;
this important line has been made partly by
the statute labour funds, partly at Lord Staf-
ford's expense, and four miles of it entirely by
the late Lord Ashburton. One immediate
result of making these roads has been the sub-
stitution of carts instead of ponies for the com-
mercial intercourse of the country ; and the
saving in point of time, and labour and expense
in this respect is beyond all calculation, giving
* new impulse to the improvement of the coun-
try. The people are extending their smaller
roads in all directions for their carts to bring
sea-weed from the shore, or their fuel from the
peat mosses ; and activity, energy and industry
have taken place of their former indolence,
sloth, and idleness ; raising everywhere more
comfortable and better-built cottages, with the
addition of gardens, an accommodation and
source of supply to such heretofore unknown,
but now getting into very general use." With
regard to the state of husbandry, the following
extract from the letter before mentioned will
suffice, as applying with equal, and in many
cases with greater, force to all parts of the
Highlands : — '•' With the exception of a few
carts, which were in the possession of a very
few individual principal tenants, paying a rent
of from L.200 to L.700 a-year, there were
none to be found in the island of Skye. There
are now numerous carts in every quarter ; and
their introduction has in like manner been the
means of introducing other useful implements,
such as the plough and iron-teethed harrows ;
neither of which were much used, excepting
by the principal tenants, not many years ago.
These improvements have, without doubt,
been caused solely by the roads made under
the authority of the parliamentary commis-
sioners, as without roads there could of course
be no carts ; and although it may be true that,
by having roads made on different farms, cer-
tain advantages might have been derived, still,
as these roads would be merely local, no great
general good could be derived from them, as
they could not possibly open up the communi-
cation from one place to another." At the
commencement of the present century, from
the difficulty of conveyance for exportation,
cultivation was almost entirely confined to nar-
row stripes of land situated along the sea-coast,
and in the immediate neighbourhood of the
few sea-port towns ; and even here, was not
brought to that state of perfection which, since
the introduction of implements of a less defec-
tive description than those formerly used, it
has of late years attained. As an instance of
the improvement that has taken place in Ross-
shire, now the most beautiful and highly cul-
tivated county in the Highlands, I may men-
tion, that there is at present in the service of
Major Gilchrist of Ospisdale, in Sutherland,
as farm manager, the individual who first in-
troduced the ploughing of land into regular
ridges, and the division of fields into any thing