balance, profit, £20; still leaving him a balance of £10 to make up from some other source to meet his requirements. Extend this calculation, and it is only when we reach the £15 holdings that they can be said to be self-supporting. Everything depends on the yearly expenditure. If £30 yearly, a fifteen pound holding would be sufficient; but if £40, then a twerty pound holding would be necessary, but to thoroughly understand it, let us look all round it, and suppose the said family requirements not to exceed £25 annually, even then a ten pound holding would leave a deficit of £5, and it is only when we reached the twelve pound holdings they could be said to be self-supporting.

The croft, if ever so small, requires a certain amount of capital invested in it to stock it. A croft paying a yearly rental of £10, would represent a capital of about £60 sterling in round figures,* viz.

and so on, till we reach the twenty pound holdings, which would represent a capital of, say, £120.

Now we are face to face with figures, and here is the difficulty and the real reason why we have not a small prosperous tenantry-simply the want of capital. Imagine the whole of the Highlands now laid out in lots of the yearly value of from £10 to £20, how many could be found willing and capable of taking up the same? The foregoing is theory, now what are the facts?

I have not the means at hand to enable me to judge as to the position of the whole of the crofting population of the Highlands, my knowledge being limited to the position of the class in the Island of Skye, and I arrived at the following figures which may perhaps be taken as an index to other parts of the country; at any rate, they speak for matters as they stood in this Island.

The figures in question are taken from the Inverness County Roll for 1878-79, and since then the rent has not been increased or reduced to any such extent as would in any way affect the following calculation or conclusions, and refer entirely to the agricultural portion of the community, and I have been careful not to mix up with these figures such entries as "Croft and house," for, as a rule, such means that the house is a fairly good one, and that the rent is paid for it, the bit of ground being thrown in to the bargain, and has nothing to do with the subject under inquiry -the crofting system. The gross rental of the Island of Skye in

* Taking £60 as the average capital invested in holdings of a yearly rental of £10, gives £6 of invested capital for every £1 of rent paid, which may be considered fair for holdings of from £5 to £20, but may be slightly high for crofts of £3. I therefore estimate the capital invested in the latter at about £5 for every £1 of rent. This shows the capital now invested in land in the Island of Skye, which is not entirely self-supporting, to be upwards of £40,000, viz.—

1878-79 amounted to £36,802, including Raasay, but the purely agricultural portion of the above collected from tenants amounted to only £27,812 8s 3d, to which may be added £3,145 13s 10d in the hands of proprietors, making a total of £30,958 2s 1d. The remaining £5,844 includes rents derived from shootings, fishings, houses, &c., and subjects other than land.

One of the headings, and indeed the principal one, I only guess at, and though I enter the same in stated figures, still it is only an approximate estimate of the exact numbers. I mean the number of tenants' holdings under £4 per annum. The names of such tenants do not appear in the County Roll, but the sums paid by them are entered as paid by proprietor for tenants under £4-such and such an amount. It is therefore impossible to arrive at the exact numbers. On one estate, however, and that estate is well known as being typical of what is fair in rent-the entries under this heading in the County Roll appear as such and such an amount of rent paid by the proprietor on account of so many rents under £4, and the average comes to exactly £3 for each. On another estate I am acquainted with the average rental of tenants paying under £4 comes to £3 10s each, but taking the Island all over I have put down the average at £3 each, and I don't think I can be far out. Since writing the above I have just seen Mr Walker's-the Commissioner on agriculture— report on the state of crofting in the Lewis, which appears in the Inverness Courier of the 7th July, showing the average rental of 2,790 crofts to be £2 18s all round. The average rental in Skye, it will be seen, is considerably higher

610 Tenants, paying under £4 yearly, pay between them in all £1,832 17s 2d, or an average of £3 each.

935 Tenants, paying £4 and upwards, but under £10, pay £5,348 10s 11d, or an average of £5 16s 6d each.

178 Tenants, paying £10 but under £20, pay £2,154 11s 4d, or an average of £12 2s each.

25 Tenants, paying £20 but under £100 a year each, pay £993 9s 10d, or at an average of £39 14s 4d each.

Then come the gentlemen farmers,

33 of whom, paying over £100 a year each, swell the rental by £17,483, or an average of £529 15s 9d each,

From the above it is seen that the vast majority pay under £10 of a yearly rental, and if we add to the above number, the third class, numbering 178, at £12 2s each, £2,154 11s 4d, we have a total of 1,723 tenants, paying £9,336 19s 5d, whose holdings are not self-supporting.

The land no doubt greatly, or, we may say, mostly, contributes to the support of the above, but, as a matter of fact, it only supports in entirety the small minority of 58, who pay between them the large sum of £18,476 9s 10d, or twice as much as the vast majority of 1,723. It is

therefore clearly apparent that now-a-days the land is not entirely selfsupporting to the vast majority. What then probably was the position of the majority of the crofter class in the days of the evictions? Making every allowance for the increased cost of living, and taking the then price of cattle into consideration, each of which would nearly balance the other, the probabilities are that the crofter's profit out of the land must have been then much about what it is now; but steam has altered the position for the better, as it enables the crofter to dispose of his labour in the Southern market, an opportunity which was not open to him in the eviction days. So his position on the whole must now be much better than in those days. Are we then justified in blaming proprietors for removing tenants, when the land they were in possession of would not maintain them, when they had not capital to enable them to increase their holdings, and when no other occupation was open to them? Under such circumstances I don't think the proprietors were to blame in all instances. So much for the past,

Now for the present. Having seen that the crofter has to depend on his labour as much as on his capital, the next question in importance to be considered is the locality best suited to his circumstances, and in which he will have most opportunities of employing his stock in trade; and here we come to the relative merits of the glen and sea-side situations. The glen has the romance of summer hanging about it, and the recollections that the glens were formerly inhabited. So why not let them be peopled again, and I interpret your own views from your article on the crofter to lean to this theory. It is quite true the glens were formerly inhabited, but circumstances have greatly altered since; the extra cost of living must be taken into consideration, and the isolation of the position makes it perfectly certain that the crofter can get no employment in such localities or their neighbourhood. Besides this, the glens possessed advantages in former days which they do not now possess, owing to the more practical restrictions and preservation of game; the glens also represent a money value now which was unheard of then. They are admirably situated for deer, so why not let them remain under those animals, at any rate for the present.

By this let me not be supposed to advocate the entire clearing of the glens, for my argument in no way applies to those inland situations through which railway lines run, for it is manifest such situations possess great advantages, as the inhabitants are in a position which makes the Southern markets easy of access. I refer simply to such localities as have no such advantages.

The sea-side resident is differently situated, and enjoys many oppor tunities of employing his labour, denied to the resident of such a glen.

The favourite and general means the crofter has of making up his deficit is by fishing, and here he often has it at hand; besides, the crofter who is not a fisherman, can often get other employment, for fishing, as a rule, creates more or less of a traffic in its neighbourhood; he has also sea-ware near at hand which he can use as manure, which of itself is a very great pull in his favour, but the glen man has nothing save the dry heather which he puts under his cows to use for this purpose.

In a small Island like Skye, surrounded by the sea, where even its most inland glen cannot be very remote from the sea air influence, it is

well known that even such glens are by no means so well adapted for stock as the sea-side localities, and if any further argument were necessary to prove the superiority of the sea-side to the glen locality, it is found in the fact of the conduct of the former inhabitants, in those days when might constituted right. The strongest, of course, always took the best, and so the gentry invariably chose the sea-board for their residences, leaving the glens to their dependants, or to those for whom room could not be found in the more favoured situations. I think, therefore, if the crofter system is to be encouraged, the sea-side situations should first be tried, and there is plenty of room for them on ground now under sheep.

As to the general question of improving the conditon of the present crofter, or letting him alone, I think there is a great deal of sense in the letting him alone plan.

The first and general idea that gets hold of the Southern traveller when he visits the Highlands is one of commiseration for the crofter, judging entirely from the crofter's household arrangements-the said traveller, taking his own town residence as the test and model of what the crofter's house ought to be, leaving out of sight the fact that towns are the results of the combined efforts of various classes, which, with a great deal of money expended over a limited space, result in the formation of handsome streets and splendid edifices, forgetting that the crofter is only a labourer, that he is his own mason, carpenter, and architect, and above all that he is acquainted with the labourer's position in the south, and that after a practical knowledge of this and that system, he elects a croft with its black hut, and after due reflection considers that his own position, that of a dignified rent-payer, even with the drawback of the black hut, is preferable to the drudgery imposed on the Southern labourer, notwithstanding he is housed under a slated roof. And, taking an impartial view of both positions, I cannot think the crofter is wrong in his choice; for so long as he is reasonably industrious, he is independent, and surrounded by influences calculated to make him more or less a thinking being; and children raised in such a position have every tendency to rise, not to sink, in the social scale. The croft, be it large or be it small, has certain advantages. The crofter has his own house, such as it be, his peats, pure milk and fresh air. for his children, all fanned by the atmosphere of independence. To carry home peats is no hardship to the labouring man or woman, who has to earn every penny made by some sort of manual labour; and what more glorious labour could they be employed in than in this seeming drudgery, when it is independently incurred and engaged in on their own behalf, without an order from a superior; and far from commiserating him on his position, he should be viewed as he actually stands, the real aristocrat of the labouring class.

In conclusion, one other word in defence of the crofter, and that is, to say, that he should not be judged by the present condition of his household, for it is no fault of his that it is such. It is but the results of a bye-gone and short-sighted policy, when to improve one's dwelling-house or even to improve one's holding, was nothing short of an act of insanity, as it would simply have been an invitation to have his rent raised; the then view being that, if a man could afford to improve his dwelling-house, surely he could afford to pay a little more rent, hence a premium on nonimprovement.

There seems now to be a changed feeling on the part of laird and factor, public opinion having, no doubt, a great deal to do with it; for it is wonderful how liberal people can be with property which does not belong to them! Yet lairds and factors may naturally ask when are we to get the change. Should it not be immediately apparent now since the crofter is encouraged?

This will, no doubt, come when the crofter understands that he will get compensation for any improvement he may make to his dwellinghouse or holding. At the same time, some patience must be exercised by those in authority in many, or, perhaps, in most instances, for it must be remembered that crofters are not at all times in a position to effect improvements.

I have known crofters who might have been seen some twenty years ago with numerous and weak families having as much to do as they could, in supplying them with meat and clothes. See the same crofters now with grown up and strong families, each contributing to the maintenance of the household, and engaged in improving their dwelling-houses, and making them comfortable. This is the aesthetic period of those crofters' lives, and, as a rule, an independent and competent period of this kind, or some other, occurs during the lifetime of every or of most crofters, when improvements can, and no doubt will be carried out sooner or later; but the crofter must first be assured that any outlay expended on improving his house or holding, will not result in a rise of rent, but on the other hand be as good as money in the bank.

Skaebost, Isle of Skye.

L. MACDONALD.

IN the excellent account of the late Seaforth's funeral, which appeared in the Courier of Saturday last, we find the following:-"In the first part of the funeral arrangements the traditions of the house of Seaforth were strictly honoured, and were departed from only at the dictation of circumstances. What is called the Kintail privilege has always been accorded to the Kintail people-the privilege, namely, of carrying a dead Seaforth out of the Castle; and at the funeral of the late Honourable Mrs Mackenzie the coffin was borne from the Castle by Kintail men only. On Saturday, however, there was a small representation of Kintail men, and the vacant places around the coffin were taken by tenants on the Brahan property." What a sad comment on a system which has driven the ancient retainers of the soil from Kintail, only to be followed soon after them by the chiefs themselves, who had to sell the ancient heritage of the race. Not many years ago, the greatest portion of a splendid regiment was raised in Kintail. To-day a sufficient number of natives cannot be found to carry out of Brahan Castle the coffin of the lineal representative of their illustrious chiefs according to ancient custom. The sad fact is indescribably lamentable, and we trust it will prove a warning to those who are still driving away their kith and kin and ancient retainers, to make room for sheep and deer.-Invernessian for July.