ally in its western parts, of peaks; and, thirdly, to the south
of Strathnavern, _Sudrland_, or the Southland, a riviera of pastoral
links and fertile ploughland, sheltered on the north by its own
forests and hills, and sloping, throughout its whole length from
the Oykel to the Ord of Caithness, towards the _Breithisjorthr_,
Broadfjord, or Moray Firth, its southern sea.[2]

Save in north-east Ness, and in favoured spots elsewhere, also below
the 500 feet level, the land of Cat was a land of heath and woods[3]
and rocks, studded, especially in the west, with lochs abounding in
trout, a vast area of rolling moors, intersected by spacious straths,
each with its salmon river, a land of solitary silences, where red
deer and elk abounded, and in which the wild boar and wolf ranged
freely, the last wolf being killed in Glen Loth within twelve miles
of Dunrobin at a date between 1690 and 1700.[4] No race of hunters or
fishermen ever surpassed the Picts in their craft as such.

The land, especially Sutherland, is still a happy hunting-ground not
only for the sportsman but also for the antiquary. For the modern
County of Sutherland is outwardly much the same now as it was in
Pictish times, save for road and rail, two castles, and a sprinkling
of shooting lodges, inns, and good cottages, which, however, in so
vast a territory are, as the Irishman put it, "mere fleabites on the
ocean." Much of the west of the land of Cat was scarcely inhabited at
all in Pictish or Viking days, because as is clearly the case in the
Kerrow-Garrow or Rough Quarter of Eddrachilles, it would not carry
one sheep or feed one human being per hundred acres in many parts. The
rest of it also remains practically unchanged in appearance from the
earliest days till the present time, as it has been little disturbed
by the plough save in the north-east of Ness and at Lairg and
Kinbrace, and in its lower levels along the coast. But Loch Fleet no
longer reaches to Pittentrail, and the crooked bay at Crakaig has been
drained and the Water of Loth sent straight to the sea.

The only buildings or structures existing in Cat in Pictish and early
Norse times were a few vitrified forts, some underground erde-houses,
hut-circles innumerable, and perhaps a hundred and fifty brochs, or
Pictish towers as they are popularly called, which had been erected at
various dates from the first century onwards, long before the advent
of the Norse Vikings is on record, as defences aga