But once inside the lock, we had no difficulty at all; none of the watching and fending of our experiences with the fishing boats. We were tucked into a corner where nothing came at us, and when the next gate was open the obliging lock-keepers hauled us through. It was child’s play, and the Crew departed to get fresh milk from a farm and some provisions from a small store close by.

What held most interest for us so far in our journey up the Canal was not clan feuds or hunted princes or battles long ago, but the sight of new forests growing along its banks. It is difficult to describe the curious impersonal pleasure this gave us. Perhaps it is that at the back of his mind the Highlander is tired of his ‘romantic’ past, particularly when contrasted with his unromantic present. Tired, too, of talking of the failure of his fishings and his crofts, of deer forests and sportsmen, of the decay of his native tongue, Gaelic; even tired of the chronic habit of grousing against the Government, and not a little ashamed of the recent fungus growth of State aid in direct cash or other payments, free potatoes or assisted settlements.

An impartial factual history of the Highlands in modern times by one also able to deal with the psychological factors involved would make an amazing story. To find a parallel to some of the treacheries and cruelties to the inhabitants, one would have to go to Armenia and the Turks. I am not now referring to the wholesale evictions, or even to solitary efforts by chiefs to try to sell some of their clansmen into slavery, but to the open acts of responsible British governments. Here, for example, is part of a letter from a man, taken prisoner a few weeks after Culloden (1746) and sent to the hulks on the Thames: ‘. . . In the latter end of June we was put on board of a transport of 450 tons called the “Liberty and Property,” in which we continued the rest of the eight months upon twelve ounces of oat shilling [a day] as it came from the mill. There was 32 prisoners more put aboard of the said “Liberty and Property”, which makes 157, and when we came ashore we was but 49 in life. . . . They would take us from the hold in a rope, and hoist us to the yard-arm and let us fall in the sea in order for ducking of us, and tie us to the mast and whip us. This was done to us when we was not able to stand. . . . We had neither bed nor bedclothes, nor clothes to keep us warm in the day-time. The ship’s ballast was black earth and small stones, in which we was obliged to dig holes to lie into for to keep us warm. . . .’ (Though he was lucky in this last respect, as in another transport the prisoners had to lie on horse manure.) Having survived those pleasantries, he was transported to the Barbadoes. Many of the prisoners had surrendered on a promise having been given that no action would be taken against them.