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Two sheep-farmers are in colloquy, and address each other by the names of their farms, as is all but universal in the north. Cnocnangraisheag asks Coignasgailean, "Have you sold your lambs?" The cautious reply is, "I don't know; are you inclined to give me an offer?" and the proposal ensues, "Come and let us take a drink on the transaction." Let us follow the two worthies into the Caledonian.
English people don't go much to that part, do they? 'No. I happened to read a book about it. It's the old fighting-ground of French and English interesting to any one pedantic enough to care for such things. 'But not to people born to be sheep-farmers. And you had a serious illness. Did Mr. Rolfe tell you, Mamma dear, that he nearly died at some miserable roadside inn? Mrs.
He had been sedulously plied with drink by "Charlie Mitchell" and some others of the Ross and Sutherland sheep-farmers, till reticence had departed from his tongue. Ultimately he had leaped on the table, breaking any quantity of glass-ware in the saltatory feat, and had asserted with free swearing his readiness to give 50s. all round for every three-year-old wedder in the north of Scotland.
But next year was as dull as '66 had been brisk, and then the buyers and dealers had their revenge and re-established the "clad score" in all its pristine firmness of position. The sheep-farmers wean their lambs about the 24th of August and delivery of them is given to the buyers as soon as possible thereafter. The delivery of ewes and wethers is timed by individual arrangement.
Bears had been the most dreaded scourge of the settlement sheep-farmers, but now, as he proudly said to himself, he had a ram that could "lick a b'ar silly!"
The officials gave you notice of the challenge, and six weeks' grace in which to raise the money, and buy it freehold yourself; but few sheep-farmers could afford to pay a good many hundred pounds unexpectedly to secure even their best "flats" or vallies.
These small farmers are called Cockatoos in Australia by the squatters or sheep-farmers, who dislike them for buying up the best bits of land on their runs; and say that, like a cockatoo, the small freeholder alights on good ground, extracts all he can from it, and then flies away to "fresh fields and pastures new."
The day was cloudy, raw, and cold, and a stern north wind whistled among the brackens of the hills. I was struck with the situation and appearance of the house. It had formerly been a mansion-house, and was much larger than the ordinary residences of small sheep-farmers among the hills.
The enthusiasm for deer-hunting has, however, increased with the increase of wealth and leisure among Englishmen, and immense tracts, amounting altogether to nearly two millions of acres, have been turned into deer-forests, yielding, as a rule, a slightly higher rent than was paid by the crofters and sheep-farmers.
Our beautiful summer weather was breaking up; high nor'-westers had blown down the gorges for days, and now a cold wet gale was coming up in heavy banks of fleecy clouds from the sou'-west. Everything looked cold and wretched out of doors, but the sheep-farmers were thankful and pleased.
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