The chief articles of diet of the crofter population are fish, either fresh or cured, oatmeal, potatoes, and milk, with a little butcher meat occasionally. Eggs are not much eaten, but are exported to Glasgow in considerable quantities. None of the crofters keep pigs, which they consider to be unclean beasts; it is singular they should entirely neglect a source of food and profit so universal among their Irish congeners. Captain Burt, in his day, noticed the absence of swine among the mountains; he said, "those people have no offal wherewith to feed them; and were they to give them other food, one single sow would devour all the provisions of a family." The principal intoxicating beverage in Gairloch is whisky. Very little beer is consumed by the natives. Whisky became known in the Highlands during the sixteenth century, and soon found its way to Gairloch; but it is said that the mania for illicit distillation did not reach the parish until the year 1800. The first whisky was distilled in Gairloch by the grandfather of Alexander Cameron, the Tournaig bard, in Bruachaig, on the way up to the heights of Kenlochewe. The mother of George Maclennan, of Londubh, was at that time servant at the Kenlochewe inn, and long afterwards told her son how the innkeeper bought the whisky and the plant as well. James Mackenzie says that it was in his father's house at Mellon Charles, in the same year (1800), that the first Gairloch whisky was made by a stranger, who had craved and obtained his father's hospitality. Probably both accounts are correct, but it is impossible at this distance of time to determine to whom the questionable honour of having commenced the illicit distillation of whisky ought to be assigned. The mania for smuggled whisky spread very rapidly throughout the parish, and is not yet extinct. The larger islands of Loch Maree were the scenes of illicit distillation in the early part of the nineteenth century. They say a regular periodical market for the sale of whisky made on the islands, used to be held at the large square stone on the shore of Loch Maree between Ardlair and Rudha Cailleach, called Clach a Mhail (_see illustration_).