In many parts of Argyllshire the people have been weeded out none the less effectively, that the process generally was of a milder nature than that adopted in some of the places already described. By some means or other, however, the ancient tenantry have largely disappeared to make room for the sheep farmer and the sportsman. Mr. Somerville, Lochgilphead, writing on this subject, says, “The watchword of all is exterminate, exterminate the native race. Through this monomania of landlords the cottier population is all but extinct; and the substantial yeoman is undergoing the same process of dissolution.” He then proceeds:—

“About nine miles of country on the west side of Loch Awe, in Argyllshire, that formerly maintained 45 families, are now rented by one person as a sheep farm; and in the island of Luing, same county, which formerly contained about 50 substantial farmers, besides cottiers, this number is now reduced to about six. The work of eviction commenced by giving, in many cases, to the ejected population, facilities and pecuniary aid for emigration; but now the people are turned adrift, penniless and shelterless, to seek a precarious subsistence on the sea-board, in the nearest hamlet or village, and in the cities, many of whom sink down helpless paupers on our poor-roll; and others, festering in our villages, form a formidable Arab population, who drink our money contributed as parochial relief. This wholesale depopulation is perpetrated, too, in a spirit of invidiousness, harshness, cruelty, and injustice, and must eventuate in permanent injury to the moral, political, and social interests of the kingdom.... The immediate effects of this new system are the dissociation of the people from the land, who are virtually denied the right to labour on God’s creation. In L——, for instance, garden ground and small allotments of land are in great demand by families, and especially by the aged, whose labouring days are done, for the purpose of keeping cows, and by which they might be able to earn an honest, independent maintenence for their families, and whereby their children might be brought up to labour instead of growing up vagabonds and thieves. But such, even in our centres of population, cannot be got; the whole is let in large farms and turned into grazing. The few patches of bare pasture, formed by the delta of rivers, the detritus of rocks, and tidal deposits, are let for grazing at the exorbitant rent of £3 10s. each for a small Highland cow; and the small space to be had for garden ground is equally extravagant. The consequence of these exorbitant rents and the want of agricultural facilities is a depressed, degraded, and pauperised population.”

These remarks are only too true, and applicable not only in Argyllshire, but throughout the Highlands generally.

A deputation from the Glasgow Highland Relief Board, consisting of Dr. Robert Macgregor, and Mr. Charles R. Baird, their Secretary, visited Mull, Ulva, Iona, Tiree, Coll, and part of Morvern, in 1849, and they immediately afterwards issued a printed report on the state of these places, from which a few extracts will prove instructive. They inform us that the population of

THE ISLAND OF MULL.

according to the Government Census of 1821, was 10,612; in 1841, 10,064. In 1871, we find it reduced to 6441, and by the Census of 1881, now before us, it is stated at 5624, or a fraction more than half the number that inhabited the Island in 1821.

Tobermory, we are told, “has been for some time the resort of the greater part of the small crofters and cottars, ejected from their holdings and houses on the surrounding estates, and thus there has been a great accumulation of distress.” Then we are told that “severe as the destitution has been in the rural districts, we think it has been still more so in Tobermory and other villages”—a telling comment on, and reply to, those who would now have us believe that the evictors of those days and of our own were acting the character of wise benefactors when they ejected the people from the inland and rural districts of the various counties to wretched villages, and rocky hamlets on the sea-shore.

Ulva.—The population of the Island of Ulva in 1849 was 360 souls. The reporters state that a “large portion” of it “has lately been converted into a sheep farm, and consequently a number of small crofters and cottars have been warned away” by Mr. Clark. “Some of these will find great difficulty in settling themselves anywhere, and all of them have little prospect of employment.... Whatever may be the ultimate effect to the landowners of the conversion of a number of small crofts into large farms, we need scarcely say that this process is causing much poverty and misery among the crofters.” How Mr. Clark carried out his intention of evicting the tenantry of Ulva may be seen from the fact that the population of 360 souls, in 1849, was reduced to 51 in 1881.

Kilfinichen.—In this district we are told that “The crofters and cottars having been warned off, 26 individuals emigrated to America, at their own expense and one at that of the Parochial Board; a good many removed to Kinloch, where they are now in great poverty, and those who remained were not allowed to cultivate any ground for crop or even garden stuffs. The stock and other effects of a number of crofters on Kinloch last year (1848), whose rents averaged from £5 to £15 per annum, having been sequestrated and sold, these parties are now reduced to a state of pauperism, having no employment or means of subsistence whatever.” As to the cottars, it is said that “the great mass of them are now in a very deplorable state.” On the estate of

Gribun, Colonel Macdonald of Inchkenneth, the proprietor, gave the people plenty of work, by which they were quite independent of relief from any quarter, and the character which he gives to the deputation of the people generally is most refreshing, when we compare it with the baseless charges usually made against them by the majority of his class. The reporters state that “Colonel Macdonald spoke in high terms of the honesty of the people and of their great patience and forbearance under their severe privations.” It is gratifying to be able to record this simple act of justice, not only as the people’s due, but specially to the credit of Colonel Macdonald’s memory and goodness of heart.

Bunessan.—Respecting this district, belonging to the Duke of Argyll, our authority says:—“It will be recollected that the [Relief] Committee, some time ago, advanced £128 to assist in procuring provisions for a number of emigrants from the Duke of Argyll’s estate, in the Ross of Mull and Iona, in all 243 persons—125 adults and 118 children. When there, we made inquiry into the matter, and were informed [by those, as it proved, quite ignorant of the facts] that the emigration had been productive of much good, as the parties who emigrated could not find the means of subsistence in this country, and had every prospect of doing so in Canada, where all of them had relations; and also because the land occupied by some of these emigrants had been given to increase the crofts of others. Since our return home, however, we have received the very melancholy and distressing intelligence, that many of these emigrants had been seized with cholera on their arrival in Canada; that not a few of them had fallen victims to it; and that the survivors had suffered great privations.” Compare the “prospect,” of much good, predicted for these poor creatures, with the sad reality of having been forced away to die a terrible death immediately on their arrival on a foreign shore!

Iona, at this time, contained a population of 500, reduced in 1881 to 243. It also is the property of the Duke of Argyll, as well as

The Island of Tiree, the population of which is given in the report as follows:—In 1755, it was 1509, increasing in 1777, to 1681; in 1801, to 2416; in 1821, to 4181; and in 1841 to 4687. In 1849, “after considerable emigrations,” it was 3903; while in 1881, it was reduced to 2733. The deputation recommended emigration from Tiree as imperatively necessary, but they “call especial attention to the necessity of emigration being conducted on proper principles, or, ‘on a system calculated to promote the permanent benefit of those who emigrate, and of those who remain,’ because we have reason to fear that not a few parties in these districts are anxious to get rid of the small crofters and cottars at all hazard, and without making sufficient provision for their future comfort and settlement elsewhere; and because we have seen the very distressing account of the privations and sufferings of the poor people who emigrated from Tiree and the Ross of Mull to Canada this year (1849), and would spare no pains to prevent a recurrence of such deplorable circumstances. As we were informed that the Duke of Argyll had expended nearly £1200 on account of the emigrants (in all 247 souls) from Tiree; as the Committee advanced £131 15s. to purchase provisions for them; and as funds were remitted to Montreal to carry them up the country, we sincerely trust that the account we have seen of their sufferings in Canada is somewhat over-charged, and that it is not at all events to be ascribed to want of due provision being made for them, ere they left this country, to carry them to their destination. Be this as it may, however, we trust that no emigration will in future be promoted by proprietors or others, which will not secure, as far as human effort can, the benefit of those who emigrate, as well as of those who are left at home.... Being aware of the poverty of the great majority of the inhabitants of this island, and of the many difficulties with which they have to contend, we were agreeably surprised to find their dwellings remarkably neat and clean—very superior indeed, both externally and internally, to those of the other islands; nay, more, such as would bear comparison with cottages in any part of the kingdom. The inhabitants, too, we believe, are active and enterprising, and, if once put in a fair way of doing so, would soon raise themselves to comfort and independence.” Very good, indeed, Tiree!

The Island of Coll, which is separated from Tiree by a channel only two miles in width, had a population, in 1755, of 1193; in 1771, of 1200; in 1801, of 1162; in 1821, of 1264. In 1841 it reached 1409. At the time of the visit of the deputation, from whose report we quote, the population of the Island was down to 1235; while in 1881 it had fallen to 643. The deputation report that during the destitution the work done by the Coll people “approximates, if it does exceed, the supplies given;” they are “hard working and industrious.... We saw considerable tracts of ground which we were assured might be reclaimed and cultivated with profit, and are satisfied that fishing is a resource capable of great improvement, and at which, therefore, many of the people might be employed to advantage; we are disposed to think that, by a little attention and prudent outlay of capital, the condition of the people here might ere long be greatly improved. The grand difficulty in the way, however, is the want of capital. Mr. Maclean, the principal proprietor, always acted most liberally when he had it in his power to do so, but, unfortunately, he has no longer the ability, and the other two proprietors are also under trust.” Notwithstanding these possibilities the population is undergoing a constant process of diminution.

We shall now return to the mainland portion of the County, and take a glance at the parish of

ARDNAMURCHAN.[23]

“Uaine gu’m mullach” (green to their tops!). So Dr. Norman Macleod described the bens of Ardnamurchan in his inimitable sketch, the “Emigrant Ship,” and so they appear even to this day. Their beautiful slopes show scarcely a vestige of heather, but an abundance of rich, sweet grass of a quality eminently suitable for pasturage.

As the steamboat passenger sails northward through the Sound of Mull, he sees straight ahead, and stretching at right angles across his course, a long range of low hills culminating in a finely-shaped mass which seems to rise abruptly from the edge of the sea. The hills are those of Ardnamurchan, and the dominating pile is Ben Hiant, 1729 feet in height, and “green to its top.” Around the base of the mountain and for miles in every direction the land is fair, fertile, and well adapted either for arable or grazing purposes. It comprises the farm of Mingary, and, to-day, is wholly under deer.

Down to the second decade of last century it supported about twenty-six families, which were distributed over the component townships of Coire-mhuilinn, Skinid, Buarblaig, and Tornamona. At one sweep, the whole place was cleared, and the grounds added to the adjacent sheep farm of Mingary. The evictions were carried out in 1828, the process being attended with many acts of heartless cruelty on the part of the laird’s representatives. In one case a half-witted woman who flatly refused to flit, was locked up in her cottage, the door being barricaded on the outside by mason-work. She was visited every morning to see if she had arrived at a tractable frame of mind, but for days she held out. It was not until her slender store of food was exhausted that she ceased to argue with the inevitable and decided to capitulate. It is to cases of this character that Dr. John MacLachlan, the Sweet Singer of Rahoy, referred in the lines—

(The blind, the aged, and the imbecile calling curses on thy greed.) The proprietor at whose instance these “removals” were carried out was Sir James Milles Riddell, Bart. Of the dislodged families a few were given small patches of waste land, some were given holdings in various townships on the estate—the crofts of which were sub-divided for their accommodation—and some were forced to seek sanctuary beyond the Atlantic.

Additional clearances were effected on the Ardnamurchan estate in 1853, when Swordle-chaol, Swordle-mhor, and Swordle-chorrach, with an aggregate area of about 3000 acres, were divested of their crofting population, and thrown into a single sheep farm. Swordle-chaol was occupied by four tenants, Swordle-mhor by six, and Swordle-chorrach by six. Five years previous to the evictions, all the crofters came under a written obligation to the proprietor to build new dwelling-houses. The walls were to be of stone and lime, 40 ft. long, 17½ ft. wide, and 7½ ft. high. The houses, two-gabled, were to have each two rooms and a kitchen, with wooden ceiling and floors, the kitchen alone to be floored with flags. By the end of 1851 all the tenants had faithfully implemented their promise, and the work of building was quite completed. Tradesmen had been employed in every case, and the cost averaged from £45 to £50. When the people were ejected, two years later, they received no compensation whatever for their labours and outlays. They were not even permitted to remove a door, a window, or a fixed cupboard. Some of the houses are still intact in this year of grace, 1914, one being occupied by a shepherd on Swordle farm, and another used as a byre. They compare favourably as regards size, design, and workmanship with the best and most modern crofter houses in the Ardnamurchan district. The Swordle tenants were among the best-to-do on the estate, and not one of them owed the proprietor a shilling in the way of arrears of rent. When cast adrift, the majority of them were assigned “holdings” of one acre or so in the rough lands of Sanna and Portuairk, where they had to start to reclaim peatbogs and to build for themselves houses and steadings. Sir James Milles Riddell was the proprietor responsible for clearing the Swordles as well as the Ben Hiant townships.[24]

Other places which he divested of people and placed under sheep were Laga, held by eight tenants, and Tarbert, which was in the hands of four.

About sixteen years ago Ben Hiant, or Mingary, as well as the Swordles, Laga, Tarbert, and other farms, was swept clean of sheep and converted into a deer forest, the preserve having a total area of 22,000 acres. The woolly ruminants met with a retribution, direful and complete, and the native people viewed the change with mild amusement. Sheep had been the means of ruining their forefathers, whereas deer had never done them or their kinsfolk the smallest injury.

The highest hill on the estate of Ardnamurchan is Ben Hiant, the altitude of which is 1729 feet. It may be described as an isolated peak. It forms no part of any definite mountain range, although, when viewed from the sea, it seems to blend with Ben an Leathaid and other local eminences. For the most part, the elevation of the area embraced in the Ardnamurchan deer forest varies from 600 feet or 700 feet to sea-level.

MORVEN.

The population of this extensive parish in 1755 was 1223; in 1795 it increased to 1764; in 1801 to 2000; in 1821, it was 1995; in 1831, it rose to 2137; and in 1841 it came down to 1781; in 1871, it was only 973; while in the Census Returns for 1881 we find it stated at 714, or less than one-third of what it was fifty years before.

The late Dr. Norman Macleod, after describing the happy state of things which existed in this parish before the clearances, says:—

“But all this was changed when those tacksmen were swept away to make room for the large sheep farms, and when the remnants of the people flocked from their empty glens to occupy houses in wretched villages near the sea-shore, by way of becoming fishers—often where no fish could be caught. The result has been that ‘the Parish,’ for example, which once had a population of 2200 souls, and received only £11 per annum from public (Church) funds for the support of the poor, expends now [1863] under the poor law upwards of £600 annually, with a population diminished by one-half [since diminished to one-third] and with poverty increased in a greater ratio.... Below these gentlemen tacksmen were those who paid a much lower rent, and who lived very comfortably, and shared hospitality with others, the gifts which God gave them. I remember a group of men, tenants in a large glen, which now has not a smoke in it, as the Highlanders say, throughout its length of twenty miles. They had the custom of entertaining in rotation every traveller who cast himself on their hospitality. The host on the occasion was bound to summon his neighbours to the homely feast. It was my good fortune to be a guest when they received the present minister of ‘the Parish,’ while en route to visit some of his flock. We had a most sumptuous feast—oat-cakes, crisp and fresh from the fire; cream, rich and thick, and more beautiful than nectar,—whatever that may be; blue Highland cheese, finer than Stilton; fat hens, slowly cooked on the fire in a pot of potatoes, without their skins, and with fresh butter—‘stoved hens,’ as the superb dish was called; and though last, not least, tender kid, roasted as nicely as Charles Lamb’s cracklin’ pig. All was served up with the utmost propriety, on a table covered with a fine white cloth, and with all the requisites for a comfortable dinner, including the champagne of elastic, buoyant, and exciting mountain air. The manners and conversations of those men would have pleased the best-bred gentleman. Everything was so simple, modest, unassuming, unaffected, yet so frank and cordial. The conversation was such as might be heard at the table of any intelligent man. Alas! there is not a vestige remaining of their homes. I know not whither they are gone, but they have left no representatives behind. The land in the glen is divided between sheep, shepherds, and the shadows of the clouds.”[25]

The Rev. Donald Macleod, editor of Good Words—describing the death of the late Dr. John Macleod, the “minister of the Parish” referred to by Dr. Norman in the above quotation, and for fifty years minister of Morven—says of the noble patriarch:—

“His later years were spent in pathetic loneliness. He had seen his parish almost emptied of its people. Glen after glen had been turned into sheep-walks, and the cottages in which generations of gallant Highlanders had lived and died were unroofed, their torn walls and gables left standing like mourners beside the grave, and the little plots of garden or of cultivated enclosure allowed to merge into the moorland pasture. He had seen every property in the parish change hands, and though, on the whole, kindly and pleasant proprietors came in place of the old families, yet they were strangers to the people, neither understanding their language nor their ways. The consequence was that they perhaps scarcely realised the havoc produced by the changes they inaugurated. ‘At one stroke of the pen,’ he said to me, with a look of sadness and indignation, ‘two hundred of the people were ordered off. There was not one of these whom I did not know, and their fathers before them; and finer men and women never left the Highlands.’ He thus found himself the sole remaining link between the past and present—the one man above the rank of a peasant who remembered the old days and the traditions of the people. The sense of change was intensely saddened as he went through his parish and passed ruined houses here, there, and everywhere. ‘There is not a smoke there now,’ he used to say with pathos, of the glens which he had known tenanted by a manly and loyal peasantry, among whom lived song and story and the elevating influences of brave traditions. All are gone, and the place that once knew them, knows them no more! The hill-side, which had once borne a happy people and echoed the voices of joyous children is now a silent sheep walk. The supposed necessities of Political Economy have effected the exchange, but the day may come when the country may feel the loss of the loyal and brave race which has been driven away, and find a new meaning perhaps in the old question, ‘Is not a man better than a sheep?’ They who ‘would have shed their blood like water’ for Queen and country, are in other lands, Highland still, but expatriated for ever.

GLENORCHY.

Glenorchy, of which the Marquis of Breadalbane is sole proprietor, was, like many other places, ruthlessly cleared of its whole native population. The writer of the New Statistical Account of the Parish, in 1843, the Rev. Duncan Maclean, “Fior Ghael” of the Teachdaire, informs us that the census taken by Dr. Webster in 1755, and by Dr. MacIntyre forty years later, in 1795, “differ exceedingly little,” only to the number of sixty. The Marquis of the day, it is well known, was a good friend of his reverence; the feeling was naturally reciprocated, and one of the apparent results is that the reverend author abstained from giving, in his Account of the Parish, the population statistics of the Glenorchy district. It was, however, impossible to pass over that important portion of his duty altogether, and, apparently with reluctance, he makes the following sad admission:—“A great and rapid decrease has, however, taken place since [referring to the population in 1795]. This decrease is mainly attributable to the introduction of sheep, and the absorption of small into large tenements. The aboriginal population of the parish of Glenorchy (not of Inishail) has been nearly supplanted by adventurers from the neighbouring district of Breadalbane, who now occupy the far largest share of the parish. There are a few, and only a few, shoots from the stems that supplied the ancient population. Some clans, who were rather numerous and powerful, have disappeared altogether; others, viz., the Downies, Macnabs, Macnicols, and Fletchers, have nearly ceased to exist. The Macgregors, at one time lords of the soil, have totally disappeared; not one of the name is to be found among the population. The Macintyres, at once time extremely numerous, are likewise greatly reduced.”

By this nobleman’s mania for evictions, the population of Glenorchy was reduced from 1806 in 1831 to 831 in 1841, or by nearly a thousand souls in the short space of ten years! It is, however, gratifying to find that it has since, under wiser management, very largely increased.

In spite of all this we have been seriously told that there has been no

DEPOPULATION OF THE COUNTY

in the rural districts. In this connection some very extraordinary public utterances were recently made by two gentlemen closely connected with the county of Argyll, questioning or attempting to explain away statements, made in the House of Commons by Mr. D. H. Macfarlane, M.P., to the effect that the rural population was, from various causes, fast disappearing from the Highlands. These utterances were—one by a no less distinguished person that the Duke of Argyll, who published his remarkable propositions in the Times; the other by Mr. John Ramsay, M.P., the Islay distiller, who imposed his baseless statement on his brother members in the House of Commons. These oracles should have known better. They must clearly have taken no trouble whatever to ascertain the facts for themselves, or, having ascertained them, kept them back that the public might be misled on a question with which, it is obvious to all, the personal interests of both are largely mixed up.

Let us see how the assertions of these authorities agreed with the actual facts. In 1831 the population of the county of Argyll was 100,973; in 1841 it was 97,371; in 1851 it was reduced to 88,567; and in 1881 it was down to 76,468. Of the latter number the Registrar-General classifies 30,387 as urban, or the population of “towns and villages,” leaving us only 46,081 as the total rural population of the county of Argyll at the date of the last Census, in 1881. In 1911 the total population for the county had dropped to 70,902.

It will be necessary to keep in mind that in 1831 the county could not be said to have had many “town and village” inhabitants—not more than from 12,000 to 15,000 at most. These resided chiefly in Campbeltown, Inveraray, and Oban; and if we deduct from the total population for that year, numbering 100,973, even the larger estimate, 15,000 of an urban or town population, we have still left, in 1831, an actual rural population of 85,973, or within a fraction of double the whole rural population of the county in 1881. In other words, the rural population of Argyllshire was reduced in fifty years from 85,973 to 46,081, or nearly by one-half.

The increase of the urban or town population is going on at a fairly rapid rate; Campbeltown, Dunoon, Oban, Ballachulish, Blairmore, and Strone, Innellan, Lochgilphead, Tarbet, and Tighnabruaich, combined, having added no less than some 5500 to the population of the county in the ten years from 1871 to 1881. These populous places will be found respectively in the parishes of Campbeltown, Lismore, and Appin, Dunoon and Kilmun, Glassary, Kilcalmonell and Kilbery, and in Kilfinan; and this will at once account for the comparatively good figure which these parishes make in the tabulated statement in the Appendix. That table will show exactly in which parishes and at what rate depopulation progressed during the last fifty years. In many instances the population was larger prior to 1831 than at that date, but the years given will generally give the best idea of how the matter stood throughout that whole period. The state of the population given in 1831 was before the famine which occurred in 1836; while that in 1841 comes in between that of 1836 and 1846-47, during which period large numbers were sent away, or left for the Colonies. There was no famine between 1851 and 1881, a time during which the population was reduced from 88,567 to 76,468, notwithstanding the great increase which took place simultaneously in the “town and village” section of the people in the county, as well as throughout the country generally.