season, when the stock of grain from the
previous year was fast running out, and the crops on the ground not
yet ripened for use, the people experienced a considerable degree of
scarcity,--such scarcity as a mechanic in the south feels when he has
been a fortnight out of employment. But the Highlander had resources
in these seasons which the mechanic has not. He had his cattle and his
wild pot-herbs, such as the mugwort and the nettle. It has been
adduced by the advocates of the change which has ruined Sutherland, as
a proof of the extreme hardship of the Highlander's condition, that at
such times he could have eaten as food a broth made of nettles, mixed
up with a little oatmeal, or have had recourse to the expedient of
bleeding his cattle, and making the blood into a sort of pudding. And
it is quite true that the Sutherlandshire Highlander was in the habit,
at such times, of having recourse to such food. It is not less true,
however, that the statement is just as little conclusive regarding his
condition, as if it were alleged there must always be famine in France
when the people eat the hind legs of frogs, or in Italy when they make
dishes of snails. We never saw scarcity in the house of our relative,
but we have seen the nettle broth in it very frequently, and the
blood-pudding oftener than once; for both dishes were especial
favourites with the Highlanders. With regard to the general comfort of
the people in their old condition, there are better tests than can be
drawn from the kind of food they occasionally ate. The country hears
often of dearth in Sutherland now: every year in which the crop falls
a little below average in other districts, is a year of famine there;
but the country never heard of dearth in Sutherland then. There were
very few among the holders of its small inland farms who had not saved
a little money. Their circumstances were such, that their moral nature
found full room to develope itself, and in a way the world has rarely
witnessed. Never were there a happier or more contented people, or a
people more strongly attached to the soil; and not one of them now
lives in the altered circumstances on which they were so rudely
precipitated by the landlord, who does not look back on this period of
comfort and enjoyment with sad and hopeless regret. We have never
heard the system which has depopulated this portion of the country
defended, without recurring to our two several visits to the turf
cottage in