Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

HIGHLAND PASTURAGE. 95
white collies which seem to have little other occupation
than to bark at the heels of horses. If the people would
eat them, there might be some excuse. Their diet might
almost keep as many children ;
and excepting the very
few wanted on the sheep farms, there is literally no busi-
ness for them. Among the small tenants, they lead the
lives of gentlemen. Mr. Dent would have performed a
humane act if he had taxed them at five guineas a poll.
I once saw executed an edict which savoured deeply of
oppression, but which I believe was necessary, certainly
advantageous. The poor people were positively in want
and the alternative offered, was to quit their farms or
execute their dogs. From forty families, I think, there
were one hundred and twenty useless animals destroyed.
Now these good people, who thus liberally entertain
guests from which they can derive no benefit, are silly
enough to hate or fear pigs as much as if they were Jews
or Turks. Here the people of Shetland and Orkney have
shown much more good sense. If they choose to persist
in disliking pork, or, what is the fact, in not choosing to
try whether they like it or not, they might recollect that
the animal is saleable under many forms, and that they
are under no compulsion to eat their own bacon. Not but
what they would soon learn ; if we may judge by their
emigrants in Canada, to whom salt pork is a daily diet,
and who are not long in understanding how to devour it
voraciously. A pig is at least as ornamental as a collie ;
what he devours he will at some day refund, and he has
the merit of neither barking nor biting. It is plain that
the Highland cottagers could keep them on at least as good
terms as the Irish ; and it is very desirable that a practice
which seems to want nothing but an introduction, should
be introduced. Whenever it shall become a more general
fashion for Highland proprietors to reside, and to extend
;