and to its sea-coasts, or had emigrated to
America. The inland districts were converted into deserts, through
which the traveller may take a long day's journey, amid ruins that
still bear the scathe of fire, and grassy patches betraying, when the
evening sun casts aslant its long deep shadows, the half-effaced lines
of the plough. The writer of the singularly striking passage we have
just quoted, revisited his native place (Kildonan) in the year 1828,
and attended divine service in the parish church. A numerous and
devout congregation had once worshipped there: the congregation now
consisted of eight shepherds and their _dogs_. In a neighbouring
district--the barony of Strathnaver, a portion of the parish of
Farr--the church, no longer found necessary, was razed to the ground.
The timber was carried away to be used in the erection of an inn, and
the minister's house converted into the dwelling of a fox-hunter. 'A
woman well known in the parish,' says M'Leod, 'happening to traverse
the Strath the year after the burning, was asked, on her return, What
news? "Oh," said she, "_sgeul bronach, sgeul bronach!_ sad news, sad
news! I have seen the timber of our kirk covering the inn at
Altnaharran; I have seen the kirkyard, where our friends are
mouldering, filled with tarry sheep, and Mr. Sage's study-room a
kennel for Robert Gun's dogs.'"

CHAPTER V.

Let us follow, for a little, the poor Highlanders of Sutherland to the
sea-coast. It would be easy dwelling on the terrors of their
expulsion, and multiplying facts of horror; but had there been no
permanent deterioration effected in their condition, these, all
harrowing and repulsive as they were, would have mattered less.
Sutherland would have soon recovered the burning up of a few hundred
hamlets, or the loss of a few bedridden old people, who would have
died as certainly under cover, though perhaps a few months later, as
when exposed to the elements in the open air. Nay, had it lost a
thousand of its best men in the way in which it lost so many at the
storming of New Orleans, the blank ere now would have been completely
filled up. The calamities of fire or of decimation even, however
distressing in themselves, never yet ruined a country: no calamity
ruins a country that leaves the surviving inhabitants to develope, in
their old circumstances, their old character and resources.

In one of the eastern eclogues of Collins, where two shepherds are
described as flying