The History of the Highland Clearances 4

The History of the Highland Clearances 4

The notorious Mr. Sellar was at this time sub-factor, and in the

spring of 1814 he took a large portion of the parishes of Farr and

Kildonan into his own hands. In the month of March the old tenantry

received notices to quit at the ensuing May term, and a few days after

the summonses were served the greater portion of the heath pasture

was, by his orders, set on fire. By this cruel proceeding the cattle

belonging to the old tenantry were left without food during the spring,

and it was impossible to dispose of them at a fair price, the price

having fallen after the war; for Napoleon was now a prisoner in Elba,

and the demand for cattle became temporarily dull, and prices very

much reduced. To make matters worse, fodder was unusually scarce this

spring, and the poor people’s cattle depended for subsistence solely on

the spring grass which sprouts out among the heather, but which this

year had been burnt by the factor who would himself reap the benefit

when he came into possession later on.

 

In May the work of ejectment was again commenced, accompanied by

cruelties hitherto unknown even in the Highlands. Atrocities were

perpetrated which I cannot trust myself to describe in my own words. I

shall give what is much more valuable--a description by an eye-witness

in his own language. He says:--In former removals the tenants had been

allowed to carry away the timber of their old dwellings to erect houses

on their new allotments, but now a more summary mode was adopted by

setting fire to them. The able-bodied men were by this time away after

their cattle or otherwise engaged at a distance, so that the immediate

sufferers by the general house-burning that now commenced were the

aged and infirm, the women and children. As the lands were now in the

hands of the factor himself, and were to be occupied as sheep farms,

and as the people made no resistance, they expected, at least, some

indulgence in the way of permission to occupy their houses and other

buildings till they could gradually remove, and meanwhile look after

their growing crops. Their consternation was therefore greater, when

immediately after the May term-day, a commencement was made to pull

down and set fire to the houses over their heads. The old people, women

and others, then began to preserve the timber which was their own; but

the devastators proceeded with the greatest celerity, demolishing all

before them, and when they had overthrown all the houses in a large

tract of country they set fire to the wreck. Timber, furniture, and

every other article that could not be instantly removed was consumed

by fire or otherwise utterly destroyed. The proceedings were carried

on with the greatest rapidity and the most reckless cruelty. The cries

of the victims, the confusion, the despair and horror painted on the

countenances of the one party, and the exulting ferocity of the other,

beggar all description. At these scenes Mr. Sellar was present, and

apparently, as sworn by several witnesses at his subsequent trial,

ordering and directing the whole. Many deaths ensued from alarm,

from fatigue, and cold, the people having been instantly deprived of

shelter, and left to the mercies of the elements. Some old men took

to the woods and to the rocks, wandering about in a state approaching

to, or of absolute, insanity; and several of them in this situation

lived only a few days. Pregnant women were taken in premature labour,

and several children did not long survive their sufferings. “To these

scenes,” says Donald Macleod[2], “I was an eye-witness, and am ready to

substantiate the truth of my statements, not only by my own testimony,

but by that of many others who were present at the time. In such a

scene of general devastation, it is almost useless to particularise the

cases of individuals; the suffering was great and universal. I shall,

however, notice a very few of the extreme cases of which I was myself

an eye-witness. John Mackay’s wife, Ravigill, in attempting to pull

down her house, in the absence of her husband, to preserve the timber,

fell through the roof. She was in consequence taken in premature

labour, and in that state was exposed to the open air and to the view

of all the by-standers. Donald Munro, Garvott, lying in a fever, was

turned out of his house and exposed to the elements. Donald Macbeath,

an infirm and bed-ridden old man, had the house unroofed over him, and

was in that state exposed to the wind and rain until death put a period

to his sufferings. I was present at the pulling down and burning of the

house of William Chisholm, Badinloskin, in which was lying his wife’s

mother, an old bed-ridden woman of nearly 100 years of age, none of the

family being present. I informed the persons about to set fire to the

house of this circumstance, and prevailed on them to wait until Mr.

Sellar came. On his arrival, I told him of the poor old woman being

in a condition unfit for removal, when he replied, ‘Damn her, the old

witch, she has lived too long--let her burn.’ Fire was immediately set

to the house, and the blankets in which she was carried out were in

flames before she could be got out. She was placed in a little shed,

and it was with great difficulty they were prevented from firing it

also. The old woman’s daughter arrived while the house was on fire, and

assisted the neighbours in removing her mother out of the flames and

smoke, presenting a picture of horror which I shall never forget, but

cannot attempt to describe.” Within five days she was a corpse.

 

[2] Author of “Gloomy Memories,” etc.

 

In 1816 Sellar was charged at Inverness, before the Court of

Justiciary, with culpable homicide and fire-raising in connection

with these proceedings, and, considering all the circumstances, it

is not at all surprising that he was “honourably” acquitted of the

grave charges made against him. Almost immediately after, however, he

ceased to be factor on the Sutherland estates, and Mr. Loch came into

power. Evictions were carried out from 1814 down to 1819 and 1820,

pretty much of the same character as those already described, but the

removal of Mr. Young, the chief factor, and Mr. Sellar from power was

hailed with delight by the whole remaining population. Their very

names had become a terror. Their appearance in any part of the county

caused such alarm as to make women fall into fits. One woman became

so terrified that she became insane, and whenever she saw any one she

did not recognise, she invariably cried out in a state of absolute

terror--“_Oh! sin Sellar_”--“Oh! there’s Sellar.” The people, however,

soon discovered that the new factors were not much better. Several

leases which were current would not expire until 1819 and 1820, so that

the evictions were necessarily only partial from 1814 down to that

period. The people were reduced to such a state of poverty that even

Mr. Loch himself, in his “Sutherland Improvements,” page 76, admits

that--“Their wretchedness was so great that, after pawning everything

they possessed to the fishermen on the coast, such as had no cattle

were reduced to come down from the hills in hundreds for the purpose

of gathering cockles on the shore. Those who lived in the more remote

situations of the county were obliged to subsist upon broth made of

nettles, thickened with a little oatmeal. Those who had cattle had

recourse to the still more wretched expedient of bleeding them, and

mixing the blood with oatmeal, which they afterwards cut into slices

and fried. Those who had a little money came down and slept all night

upon the beach, in order to watch the boats returning from the fishing,

that they might be in time to obtain a part of what had been caught.”

He, however, omitted to mention the share he and his predecessors had

taken in reducing the people to such misery, and the fact that at this

very time he had constables stationed at the Little Ferry to prevent

the starved tenantry from collecting shellfish in the only place where

they could find them.

 

He prevailed upon the people to sign documents consenting to remove

at the next Whitsunday term, promising at the same time to make good

provision for them elsewhere. In about a month after, the work of

demolition and devastation again commenced, and parts of the parishes

of Golspie, Rogart, Farr, and the whole of Kildonan were in a blaze.

Strong parties with faggots and other combustible material were set

to work; three hundred houses were given ruthlessly to the flames, and

their occupants pushed out in the open air without food or shelter.

Macleod, who was present, describes the horrible scene as follows:--

 

“The consternation and confusion were extreme; little or no time was

given for the removal of persons or property; the people striving to

remove the sick and the helpless before the fire should reach them;

next, struggling to save the most valuable of their effects. The cries

of the women and children, the roaring of the affrighted cattle,

hunted at the same time by the yelling dogs of the shepherds amid the

smoke and fire, altogether presented a scene that completely baffles

description--it required to be seen to be believed. A dense cloud

of smoke enveloped the whole country by day, and even extended far

out to sea; at night an awfully grand but terrific scene presented

itself--all the houses in an extensive district in flames at once.

I myself ascended a height about eleven o’clock in the evening, and

counted two hundred and fifty blazing houses, many of the owners of

which were my relations, and all of whom I personally knew, but whose

present condition--whether in or out of the flames--I could not tell.

The conflagration lasted six days, till the whole of the dwellings were

reduced to ashes or smoking ruins. During one of these days a boat

actually lost her way in the dense smoke as she approached the shore,

but at night was enabled to reach a landing-place by the lurid light of

the flames.”

 

The whole of the inhabitants of Kildonan, numbering nearly 2000 souls,

except three families, were utterly rooted and burnt out, and the whole

parish converted into a solitary wilderness. The suffering was intense.

Some lost their reason. Over a hundred souls took passage to Caithness

in a small sloop, the master humanely agreeing to take them in the

hold, from which he had just unloaded a cargo of quicklime. A head

storm came on, and they were nine days at sea in the most miserable

condition--men, women, and helpless children huddled up together, with

barely any provisions. Several died in consequence, and others became

invalids for the rest of their days. One man, Donald Mackay, whose

family was suffering from a severe fever, carried two of his children

a distance of twenty-five miles to this vessel. Another old man took

shelter in a meal mill, where he was kept from starvation by licking

the meal refuse scattered among the dust on the floor, and protected

from the rats and other vermin by his faithful collie. George Munro,

the miller at Farr, who had six of his family down with fever, had to

remove them in that state to a damp kiln, while his home was given to

the flames. And all this was done in the name of proprietors who could

not be considered tyrants in the ordinary sense of the term.

 

General Stewart of Garth, about a year after the cruelties perpetrated

in Sutherland, writes with regret of the unnatural proceedings as

“the delusions practised (by his subordinates) on a generous and

public-spirited proprietor, which have been so perseveringly applied,

that it would appear as if all feeling of former kindness towards the

native tenantry had ceased to exist. To them any uncultivated spot of

moorland, however small, was considered sufficient for the support of a

family; while the most lavish encouragement has been given to all the

new tenants, on whom, with the erection of buildings, the improvement

of lands, roads, bridges, &c., upwards of £210,000 had