The estate of Ferintosh consisted of about eighteen hundred arable acres,[158] and the produce of barley was so considerable that a very large quantity of whisky came to be produced within its bounds; Hugo Arnot says nearly as much as in all the rest of Scotland together—but Hugo, it must be admitted, is a remarkably unstatistical author. Whatever might be the exact truth, there was certainly a surprising quantity of usquebaugh issued forth from the domains of Forbes, insomuch that _Ferintosh_ came to be that _quasi_ synonym for whisky which ‘Kilbagie’ and ‘Glenlivet’ afterwards were in succession. The privilege of course yielded a large revenue to the family, and in time made ample compensation for all their patriotic sufferings past and potential. In 1784, when at length the government was inclined to purchase it back, there was such a demonstration made of its lucrativeness, that the capital sum of £21,500 assigned for it was thought to be but a poor equivalent. The minister of Dingwall, in his account of the parish, written a few years after the abolition of the Ferintosh privilege, tells of a remarkable consequence of that measure. During the continuance of the privilege, quarrels and breaches of the peace were abundant among the inhabitants, yielding a good harvest of business to the procurators (i. e. solicitors) of Dingwall. When the privilege ceased, the people became more peaceable, and the prosperity of attorneyism in Dingwall sustained a marked abatement. [Sidenote: 1695. MAY 16.] It was not so _subscribing_ a world at the close of the seventeenth century as it is now; yet, poor as our country then was, she kept her heart open for important public objects, and for works in which faith and charity were concerned. There was no bridge over the Clyde between Bothwell Bridge and Little-gill Bridge, a space of eighteen miles. At Lanark, there was a ferry-boat; but the river was frequently impassable, and there were repeated instances of the whole passengers being swept down and engulfed in the Stonebyres Linn. Arrangements were now made, chiefly by a collection at all the church-doors in the kingdom, for building ‘a sufficient stone bridge’ at the foot of the Inch of Clydeholm—this charitable measure being rendered necessary by the poverty to which the burgh of Lanark had been reduced by spoliation during the late reign, ‘by exactions of fines, free quarters for soldiers, and the like.’