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Old Highland Industries.
description of the Western Isles says that in 1689 they were the
ordinary food of the couunon people in Skye at that date.
Kelp. - One of the most important industries was Kelp. From
the eighteenth century, kelp was the great sta})le of Highland export,
and during the war in the beginning of the century, the kelp
stores yielded over 5000 tons of kelp, at the average price in tlie
market of £16 per ton, yielding not less than X80,000, exceeding
five times the rent of the thirty thousand acres of Hebridean arable
land.
Since the introduction of Spanish barilla and other substitutes,
kelp fell in price from two-thirds to one-third of the former
average, but as it is manufactured at a cost only of from £3 to
£4 per ton, it is still produced in the Hebrides, and along the
West Coast of Scotland.
Mr A[acleod, the late proprietor of Harris, in a letter to Lord
Glenelg, then Secretary of State, dated April 10th, 1829, says :
" The production of and manufacture of kelp, which has existed
more than 200 years, had for a gi-eat length of time received a
vigilant and special protection against the articles of foreign or
British growth or manufacture, which compete with it in the
mai-ket, namely, barilla, pot and pearl ash, and black ash, the last
of which is formed by the decomposition of salt, effected chiefly by
the use of foreign sulphur, which sulphur forms three-fourths of
the value of the manufactured alkali."
Up to the year 1822, considerable duties were leviable on all
the commodities just enumerated, Vjut in that year the duty on salt
was lowered from 15s. to 2s. a bushel. Shortly afterwards the impost
on barilla was considerably reduced. This measure was
quickly succeeded by a repeal of the remainder of the salt duties
(duties which had lasted more than 130 years), and of the duty on
alkali made from salt. Close upon this followed a considerable reduction
in the duty on pot and pearl ash, and an entire removal of
that on ashes from Canada, and this last step was accompanied by a
diminution in the duty on foreign sulphur from £15 to 10s. a ton.
Such is the succession of the measures which now threatens the
total extinction of the kelp manufacture, and with it (in reference
to Scotland alone) the ruin of the landed proprietors in the
Hebrides and on the West Coast, the most serious injury to all
descriptions of annuitants on kelp estates, and the destitution of a
population of more than 50,000 souls. Mr Bowie, in his evidence
before the Select Committee on Emigration in February 1871, says
— " I know one estate where formerly 1 100 tons of kelp were manufactured
annually, another where 1200 tons were manufactured
—
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