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BY ALEXANDER MACKENZIE.
In 1849 more than 500
souls left Glenelg. These petitioned the proprietor, Mr. Baillie of
Dochfour, to provide means of existence for them at home by means of
reclamation and improvements in the district, or, failing this, to help
them to emigrate. Mr. Baillie, after repeated communications, made
choice of the latter alternative, and suggested that a local committee
should be appointed to procure and supply him with information as to the
number of families willing to emigrate, their circumstances, and the
amount of aid necessary to enable them to do so. This was done, and it
was intimated to the proprietor that a sum of £3000 would be required to
land those willing to emigrate at Quebec. This sum included passage
money, free rations, a month's sustenance after the arrival of the party
in Canada, and some clothing for the more destitute. Ultimately, the
proprietor offered the sum of £2000, while the Highland Destitution
Committee promised £500. A great deal of misunderstanding occurred
before the Liscard finally sailed, in consequence of misrepresentations
made as to the food to be supplied on board, while there were loud
protests against sending the people away without any medical man in
charge. Through the activity and generous sympathy of the late Mr.
Stewart of Ensay, then tenant of Ellanreach, on the Glenelg property,
who took the side of the people, matters were soon rectified. A doctor
was secured, and the people satisfied as to the rations to be served out
to them during the passage, though these did not come up to one-half
what was originally promised. On the whole, Mr. Baillie behaved
liberally, but, considering the suitability of the beautiful valley of
Glenelg for arable and food-producing purposes, it is to be regretted
that he did not decide upon utilizing the labour of the natives in
bringing the district into a state of cultivation, rather than have paid
so much to banish them to a foreign land. That they would themselves
have preferred this is beyond question.
Mr. Mulock, father of the
author of "John Halifax, Gentleman," an Englishman who could not be
charged with any preconceived prejudices or partiality for the
Highlanders, travelled at this period through the whole North, and
ultimately published an account of what he had seen. Regarding the
Glenelg business, he says, as to their willingness to emigrate:- "`To
suppose that numerous families would as a matter of choice sever
themselves from their loved soil, abolish all the associations of local
and patriotic sentiment, fling to the winds every endearing recollection
connected with the sojourneying spot of vanished generations, and blot
themselves, as it were, out of the book of 'home-born happiness,' is an
hypothesis too unnatural to be encouraged by any sober, well-regulated
mind." To satisfy himself, he called forty to fifty heads of families
together at Glenelg, who had signed an agreement to emigrate, but who
did not find room in the Liscard, and were left behind, after selling
off everything they possessed, and were consequently reduced to a state
of starvation. "I asked," he says, "these poor perfidiously treated
creatures if, notwithstanding all their hardships, they were willing
emigrants from their native land. With one voice they assured me that
nothing short of the impossibility of obtaining land or employment at
home could drive them to seek the doubtful benefits of a foreign shore.
So far from the emigration being, at Glenelg, or Lochalsh, or South Uist,
a spontaneous movement springing out of the wishes of the tenantry, I
aver it to be, on the contrary, the product of desperation, the
calamitous light of hopeless oppression visiting their sad hearts." We
have no hesitation in saying that this is not only true of those to whom
Mr. Mulock specially refers, but to almost every soul who have left the
Highlands for the last sixty years. Only those who know the people
intimately, and the means adopted by factors, clergy, and others to
produce an appearance of spontaneity on the part of the helpless
tenantry, can understand the extent to which this statement is true. If
a judicious system had been applied of cultivating excellent land,
capable of producing food in abundance, in Glenelg, there was not
another property in the Highlands on which it was less necessary to send
the people away than in that beautiful and fertile valley. |
