nd its way into Scotland.
George the First had passed away, and George the Second was reigning in
his stead, before any Englishman was found foolhardy enough to explore
the Scottish Highlands, and lucky enough to escape unhurt, and publish
an account of his experiences, and put on record his disgust at the
monstrous deformity of the Highland scenery. But the Londoner in 1714
was scarcely better informed about the Scotch Lowlands. What he could
learn was not of a nature to impress him very profoundly. Scotland
then, and for some time to come, was very far behind England in many
things; most of all, in everything connected with agriculture. In the
villages the people dwelt in rude but fairly comfortable cottages, made
chiefly of straw-mixed clay, and straw-thatched. Wearing clothes that
were usually home-spun, home-woven, and home-tailored; living
principally, if not entirely, on the produce of his own farm, the
Lowland farmer passed a life of curious independence and isolation. To
plough his land, with its strange measurements of "ox-gate,"
"ploughgate," and "davoch," he had clumsy wooden ploughs, the very
shape of which is now almost a tradition, but which were certainly at
least as primitive in {88} construction as the plough Ulysses guided in
his farm at Ithaca. Wheeled vehicles of any kind, carts or
wheelbarrows, were rarities. A parish possessed of a couple of carts
was considered well provided for. Even where carts were known, they
were of little use, they were so wretchedly constructed, and the few
roads that did exist were totally unfit for wheeled traffic. Roads
were as rare in Scotland then as they are to-day in Peloponnesus. An
enterprising Aberdeenshire gentleman, Sir Archibald Grant, of Monymusk,
is deservedly distinguished for the interest he took in road-making
about the time of the Hanoverian accession. Some years later statute
labor did a little--a very little--towards improving the public roads,
but it was not until after the rebellion of 1745, when the Government
took the matter in hand, that anything really efficient was done. A
number of good roads were then made, chiefly by military labor, and
received in popular language the special title of the King's highways.
But in the early part of the century there was little use for carts,
even of the clumsiest kind. Such carriage as was necessary was
accomplished by strings of horses tethered in Indian file, like the
lines of camels in the East