In 1849 more than 500 souls left Glenelg. These petitioned the
proprietor, Mr. Baillie of Dochfour, to provide means of existence for
them at home by means of reclamation and improvements in the district,
or, failing this, to help them to emigrate. Mr. Baillie, after repeated
communications, made choice of the latter alternative, and suggested
that a local committee should be appointed to procure and supply him
with information as to the number of families willing to emigrate,
their circumstances, and the amount of aid necessary to enable them to
do so. This was done, and it was intimated to the proprietor that a sum
of £3000 would be required to land those willing to emigrate at Quebec.
This sum included passage money, free rations, a month’s sustenance
after the arrival of the party in Canada, and some clothing for the
more destitute. Ultimately, the proprietor offered the sum of £2000,
while the Highland Destitution Committee promised £500. A great deal
of misunderstanding occurred before the _Liscard_ finally sailed, in
consequence of misrepresentations made as to the food to be supplied on
board, while there were loud protests against sending the people away
without any medical man in charge. Through the activity and generous
sympathy of the late Mr. Stewart of Ensay, then tenant of Ellanreach,
on the Glenelg property, who took the side of the people, matters were
soon rectified. A doctor was secured, and the people satisfied as to
the rations to be served out to them during the passage, though these
did not come up to one-half what was originally promised. On the whole,
Mr. Baillie behaved liberally, but, considering the suitability of the
beautiful valley of Glenelg for arable and food-producing purposes, it
is to be regretted that he did not decide upon utilizing the labour
of the natives in bringing the district into a state of cultivation,
rather than have paid so much to banish them to a foreign land. That
they would themselves have preferred this is beyond question.
Mr. Mulock, father of the author of “John Halifax, Gentleman,” an
Englishman who could not be charged with any preconceived prejudices
or partiality for the Highlanders, travelled at this period through
the whole North, and ultimately published an account of what he had
seen. Regarding the Glenelg business, he says, as to their willingness
to emigrate:--“To suppose that numerous families would as a matter
of choice sever themselves from their loved soil, abolish all the
associations of local and patriotic sentiment, fling to the winds every
endearing recollection connected with the sojourneying spot of vanished
generations, and blot themselves, as it were, out of the book of
‘home-born happiness,’ is an hypothesis too unnatural to be encouraged
by any sober, well-regulated mind.” To satisfy himself, he called forty
to fifty heads of families together at Glenelg, who had signed an
agreement to emigrate, but who did not find room in the _Liscard_, and
were left behind, after selling off everything they possessed, and were
consequently reduced to a state of starvation. “I asked,” he says,
“these poor perfidiously treated creatures if, notwithstanding all
their hardships, they were willing emigrants from their native land.
With one voice they assured me that nothing short of the impossibility
of obtaining land or employment at home could drive them to seek the
doubtful benefits of a foreign shore. So far from the emigration
being, at Glenelg, or Lochalsh, or South Uist, a spontaneous movement
springing out of the wishes of the tenantry, I aver it to be, on the
contrary, the product of desperation, the calamitous light of hopeless
oppression visiting their sad hearts.” We have no hesitation in saying
that this is not only true of those to whom Mr. Mulock specially
refers, but to almost every soul who have left the Highlands for the
last sixty years. Only those who know the people intimately, and the
means adopted by factors, clergy, and others to produce an appearance
of spontaneity on the part of the helpless tenantry, can understand the
extent to which this statement is true. If a judicious system had been
applied of cultivating excellent land, capable of producing food in
abundance, in Glenelg, there was not another property in the Highlands
on which it was less necessary to send the people away than in that
beautiful and fertile valley.