By the Rev. Mr William McKenzie, and the Rev. Mr Hugh Ross
Houses:
There has not been one house of any note built within these 10 years, except the manse, and 2 convenient farm houses. Several cottages have been built, many old ones pulled down and rebuilt, and others have been repaired. For want of sufficient buildings, the generality of the small farmers employ a great part of every summer in repairing their huts, to the neglect of improving their farms, by collecting, in that season, materials for manure. The number of houses in the parish is 248, all inhabited; and the number of persons in each, at an average, is 5.
Servants and Cottagers:
Hired servants are employed in agriculture; but as the wages in this country are low, many go to the southern part of the kingdom for service, and few of the young men stay at home, except those whose parents have employment for them. The number of male servants is 52; of female servants, 176. The wages of men servants, from 1l 4s. to 3l. yearly, besides shoes, and six bolls of meal for board wages; and of women servants, from 1l. to 10s. with shoes, and 3 bolls of meal for board wages. Such tacksmen as have sub-tenants, employ them in spring and harvest too frequently to cultivate their land, to the almost utter neglect of their own small farms. To abolish this species of slavery, (which is doubtless in the power of every proprietor, when giving leases), would surely be a patriotic act, by which a great number of worth people would be emancipated from a degree of bondage almost equal to that of the negroes in the West Indies. There are indeed some few exceptions. Some tacksmen are kind and benevolent, and support their subtenants in calamitous times; but the generality naturally prefer their own interest to every other consideration.
General Character:
The people of this country do not eat their morsel alone. They open their hospitable door to the traveller; they make the heart of the widow to rejoice; and they grant to the poor his desire. Generosity, indeed is the principal trait of their character; to this they add devotion to the Supreme Being. An illiterate countryman, while he contemplates the stupendous scenery of rocks piled one upon another, the long extended heath, the tempestuous ocean, and the like, will exclaim, with an expression of countenance not o be described, "Justly is HE called Wonderful!" They are also emerging from their former habits of indolence. Many of them having been in the south country, in their younger days, employed in hard service, have returned to their native soil, with more skill to work, and more free of that Highland Pride, which made the antient inhabitants of the mountain disdain to submit to hard labour, or pursue any other exercise but the chace, or a military life.
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