Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

niGHLAND pasturaoe. 99
make land arable, is the great system of improvement
which the Highlands both demand and admit. Where
this has been tried, as in Jura and Isla, the success has
justified the expense ; but very little indeed has been
done if we take the country throughout. Of lands easily
susceptible of it from their disposition, and where the
profit would be unquestionable, I cannot easily call to
mind a better example than Lewis. The expense of
drainage is, of course, the great obstacle, where want of
capital is the leading bar to improvement. The necessary
extent of most systems of drainage would compel the
proprietor to make the improvement himself; there not
being many cases where the confined powers of tenants
can do more than improve the very narrow spots which
they intend for cultivation. Yet there are many places
where the advantage of a general drainage might be ob-
tained by means even of the smallest tenants ; and without
encroaching on their other avocations, as they have
always much spare time. If, in the laying out of a large
estate, whether in chief farms or small crofts, a system of
drainage was to be designed at the same time, so that a
portion of it should be rendered a duty, or corvee, on
each lot, the whole would be effected with little expense
or inconvenience, and without oppression ; since every
individual, as well as the estate at large, would ulti-
mately be a gainer, not only by his own labour, but by
that of the whole, thus cooperating for a general and
beneficial end. The same reasoning may be applied to
plans of irrigation ;
the advantages of which I have sug-
gested on different occasions, when pointing out the
beautiful verdure of Canna, St. Kilda, and other places,
where the inclination of the land causes a perpetual flow
along the surface, of that water which the clouds inces-
santly discharge upon them.
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