Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1888-12-20
60 be continued, J
Making Deer Forests in Scotland.

maSdZlue.
Many villages were cleared when the
great deer forest OF Harris was extended
not so many years ago. The people
were turned from homes where they had
always lived, the old with the young, and
women about to become mothers. High
| landers love their land. Many went
| back again and again, even after their
cottages were but black piles of ruin.
Because he evicts tenants who will not
pay their reat, the Irish landlord is call
ed cruel. The evirted in the Hebrides
are those who interfere with the landlords
| convenience or amusements. The rent
he's nothing to do with IT. And yet OF
Scotch evictions com paratively little has
| been heard. Journalists skilled in their
trade have published abroad, from one
| end of the land to the other, the tale of
Irish wronds. But who knows the liz
| Justice that has been done in Scott and in
order to lay waste broad tracts OF good
ground? 81 will tell you how Rodi! was
cleared" said John McDiarmid, of Scalpa,
to the commissioners. "There were $50
aearths in RodiJ. Forty of these paid
rent. When young Macleod (the landlord)
came home with his newly married wife
to Rodil, he went away to show his wife
the place, and 20 of the women of Rodil
came and met them, and danced a reel
before them, SO glad were they to see
them. By the time the year was out-l2
months from that day-these 20 women
were weeping and wailing, their houses
being unroofed and thsir fires 6uenched
| by the orders of the estate. | could not
say who was to blame, but before the
year was out $50 fires were quenched."
As in Rodil, so it was where now stretch
es the deer forests of Harris-wherever,
| indeed, deer are hunted liz the Hig HANDS.
| Whoever wants to learn the nature of
some of the blessings which come to the
many from the proprietary power and
| right of the few-a right and power to
which the duke of Argyll refers all ad-
vance in-the hig hlands-let him read the
"History of the Highlands Clearances,"
as told by Alexander Mackenzie, the
Gloomy Memories of the Highlands"
by Donald Macleod, himself one of the
evicted. Their story Is TOO cruel for me
| to tell again. Their country was
with fire; their land, strangers de-
voured il in their presence, and it was
desolate. Never did negro slaves IN
| the South fare did the highland men
and women cleared from the glens and
valleys of Sutherland. Slaves at least
represented so much money; but the
crofter was and is less valuable to the
laird than his sheep and his deer. Slaves
could be sold. This was the one tning
which the Ianlord, dispute all his rights,
could not do without crofters. He could
starve them and their families, turn them
adrift, burn their cottages, chase them
over seas, there, perhaps, to meet new
starvation, disease and death. From
every part of the highlands and islands,
from Ross and Argyllshire, as from
Sutherland, hundreds aud thousands were
forced to fly, hether they would or no.
And with those who stayed at home,
how Jared it? The evicted squatted, we
would say, on the crofts of friends and
relations in other parts of the estate.
There vas no place else for them to go.
When there they sought to solve the bit
terest problem of life-how to make that
which Is but enough for one, serve for
two-and therein were unsuccessful. Inc
landlord washed his hands of them and
their poverty. They had brought 1t up
on themselves, he reasoned; II croft5
were overcro Eded, the fault was theirs,
You might as well force man into the
Jungle or swamp reeking with malaria,
and then when he is stricken, upraid
him for living in such horbed of fever.