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During the first years of
the century a great many were cleared from Kintail by Seaforth at the
instigation of his Kintail factor, Duncan Dior Macrae, and his father,
who themselves added the land taken from the ancient tenantry to their
own sheep farms, already far too extensive. In Glengarry, Canada, a few
years ago, we met one man, 93 years of age, who was among the evicted.
He was in excellent circumstances, his three sons having three valuable
farms of their own, and considered wealthy in the district. In the same
county there is a large colony of Kintail men, the descendants of those
cleared from that district, all comfortable, many of them very well off,
one of them being then member for his county in the dominion Parliament.
While this has been the case with many of the evicted from Kintail and
their descendants in Canada, the grasping sheep farmer who was the
original cause of their eviction from their native land, died ruined and
penniless; and the Seaforths, not long after, had to sell the last inch
of their ancient inheritance in Lochalsh and Kintail. Shortly after
these Glenelchaig evictions, about fifty families were banished in the
same way and by the same people from the district of Letterfearn. This
property has also changed hands since, and is now in possession of Sir
Alexander Matheson, Baronet of Lochalsh. Letter of Lochalsh was cleared
by Sir Hugh Innes, almost as soon as he came into possession by purchase
of that portion of the ancient heritage of Seaforth and Kintail. The
property has since passed into the hands of the Lillingstones. |
