From the earliest centuries the Scandinavian pagans poured into the islands and among the Celts, to rob and burn, but also to settle down and be decent. When satiated with robbery and slaughter, they became peaceful, married the daughters of the land, and adopted the language and faith of the islanders. The vikings and the immigrants multiplied in the Hebrides, especially when tyrants in Norway became unusually active and severe. Battles and fighting between the islanders and the Norwegians kept the region in turmoil for centuries. Not a few attempts were made by the Scottish kings to displace the Norsemen. One of these, John Macdonald, adopted the title of “Lord of the Isles.” He married the daughter of the earl, who afterwards became Robert II. Battles, treaties, and alliances followed, but insular sovereignty was abolished in the reign of James V. Bloody feuds continued, through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, among the rival clans and their dependent tribes. Even the subsidies granted by William III to the chiefs could not preserve order. Peace dawned only when the tribal system was broken up. Then, through the abolition of hereditary jurisdiction, through inheritance, and the appointments in the different districts of sheriffs who held the writ of the king, peace was secured. Nevertheless, in the new system of management the rents being made too high, there began an emigration to America that continued for many years, threatening at one time to depopulate the islands. Dr. Johnson, who, with Boswell, made what was virtually an exploration and published the classic, entitled “A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland,” in 1773, tells of the ships waiting in the harbors ready to take on their human cargo for the continent of promise. Thousands crossed the ocean to Canada or into those Atlantic colonies which became the United States. Following the loss of so many able-bodied men and women, the standard of civilization in these islands began to sink, even though the population, which subsisted almost wholly on potatoes and herring, kept multiplying. When in 1846 the potato blight reduced the masses, both in Ireland and in western Scotland, to the verge of starvation, another large emigration of thousands to Australia and America took place. Had Carlyle’s advice been followed, Canada would have forty million and South Africa ten million loyal British subjects. This sage wanted the Government to turn men-of-war into emigrant ships, in order to give free transport of people to waste lands beyond sea. A royal commission, appointed by Parliament, later secured legislation which has made life for the crofters in the island more tolerable.