During the first years of the century a great many were cleared
from Kintail by Seaforth at the instigation of his Kintail factor,
Duncan Mor Macrae, and his father, who themselves added the land
taken from the ancient tenantry to their own sheep farms, already
far too extensive. In Glengarry, Canada, a few years ago, we met one
man, 93 years of age, who was among the evicted. He was in excellent
circumstances, his three sons having three valuable farms of their
own, and considered wealthy in the district. In the same county there
is a large colony of Kintail men, the descendants of those cleared
from that district, all comfortable, many of them very well off, one
of them being then member for his county in the dominion Parliament.
While this has been the case with many of the evicted from Kintail
and their descendants in Canada, the grasping sheep farmer who was
the original cause of their eviction from their native land, died
ruined and penniless; and the Seaforths, not long after, had to sell
the last inch of their ancient inheritance in Lochalsh and Kintail.
Shortly after these Glenelchaig evictions, about fifty families were
banished in the same way and by the same people from the district of
Letterfearn. This property has also changed hands since, and is now
in possession of Sir Alexander Matheson, Baronet of Lochalsh. Letter
of Lochalsh was cleared by Sir Hugh Innes, almost as soon as he came
into possession by purchase of that portion of the ancient heritage of
Seaforth and Kintail. The property has since passed into the hands of
the Lillingstones.