s springs late, and the cattle-feeder in the spring
months depends chiefly on the heather), were set on fire and burnt up.
There was that sort of policy in the stroke which men deem allowable
in a state of war. The starving cattle went roaming over the burnt
pastures, and found nothing to eat. Many of them perished, and the
greater part of what remained, though in miserable condition, the
Highlanders had to sell perforce. Most of the able-bodied men were
engaged in this latter business at a distance from home, when the
dreaded term-day came on. The pasturage had been destroyed before
the legal term, and while, in even the eye of the law, it was still
the property of the poor Highlanders; but ere disturbing them in their
dwellings, term-day was suffered to pass. The work of demolition then
began. A numerous party of men, with a factor at their head, entered
the district, and commenced pulling down the houses over the heads
of the inhabitants. In an extensive tract of country not a human
dwelling was left standing, and then, the more effectually to
prevent their temporary re-erection, the destroyers set fire to
the wreck. In one day were the people deprived of home and shelter,
and left exposed to the elements. Many deaths are said to have ensued
from alarm, fatigue, and cold. Pregnant women were taken with
premature labour in the open air. There were old men who took to the
woods and rocks in a state of partial insanity. An aged bedridden
man, named Macbeath, had his house unroofed over his head, and was
left exposed to wind and rain till death put a period to his
sufferings. Another man lying ill of a fever met with no tenderer
treatment, but in his case the die turned up life. A bedridden woman,
nearly a hundred years of age, had her house fired over her head,
and ere she could be extricated from the burning wreck, the sheets in
which she was carried were on fire. She survived but for five days
after. In a critique on the work of Sismondi, which appeared a few
months since in the _Westminster Review_, the writer tells us, 'it
has even been said that an old man, having refused to quit his
cabin, perished in the flames.' But such was not the case. The
constituted authorities interfered; a precognition was taken by the
Sheriff-substitute of the county, and the case tried before the
Justiciary Court at Inverness; but the trial terminated in the
acquittal of the pannels. There was no punishable crime proven to
attach to the