In districts where indebtedness is general, the bond formed by debt is stronger. Merchants are there obliged to save themselves by enforcing their claims against indebted men, whom others, in more fortunate districts, would gladly get rid of. The merchants have allowed their debts to become too numerous and too large, either from a wrong system in the management of their business or from a desire to 'thirl' the west side men to them. On the coast of Northmaven and of Delting, a complete monopoly of the fish trade is possessed, not by landholders or their tacksmen or factors, but by three merchants (Messrs. Adie at Olnafirth Voe, Inkster at Brae, and Anderson at Hillswick and Ollaberry), who lease curing premises and a small portion of agricultural or pasture land from the Busta trustees. Except at North Roe, where Messrs. Hay have a station, there is no other merchant, along a coast-line extending for many miles, to whom the tenant can sell his fish; and the indebted man has not the liberty, which he seems to be able to exercise in some other districts, of entering into an engagement with another merchant, with whom he begins afresh, with clear books, and the hope of keeping clear. I do not say that it is morally wrong for the merchant to endeavour to secure payment of a debt by requiring the debtor to agree to deliver to him the produce of his fishing. But it cannot be a wholesome system which has led the merchants into giving credits, which they can only recover or secure by such means, and which induces them to enter into a formal written engagement among themselves-'not to tamper with or engage each other's fishermen, or allow our boat-skippers or men to do so, or to make advances of rent to them on their cattle, sheep, or ponies, or under any circumstances whatever, unless they produce a certificate from any of us whom they last fished for to the effect that he is clear of debt.' The formal stipulation thus undertaken is only what has been very frequently, not universally, acted upon throughout the western and northern parts of Shetland; for men changing their employment often find at settlement the debts due to their late master standing against them in the books of the new master. Sometimes in coming to a new employer the men's debts are, with their consent, transferred to his books, or they get cash to discharge them. [Wm. Adie, 8641; J. Anderson, 7775; M. Laurenson, 7354; A. Harrison, 7746; T. Gifford, 8126; J. Wood, 8371; M. Henderson, 9940; A. Sandison, 10,497; T. Tulloch, 13,001; C. Ollason, 16,019; John Robertson, sen., 14,126; L. Williamson, 9074.]