An experiment, which if properly managed, might have succeeded, was tried in 1850 and the two following years; it also proved a failure. The following is the account given in the _Edinburgh Review_ for October 1857. The reader must remember, however, that the article is written by an advocate of all the modern Highland innovations:--A number of people in the district of Sollas in North Uist had agreed to emigrate, but “a committee in the town of Perth, which had on hand £3000 collected for the Highland Destitution Relief Fund of 1847, resolved to form these people into a ‘settlement,’ Lord Macdonald assenting, and giving them the choice of any land in the island not under lease. The tenants, about sixty in number, removed to the selected place in autumn 1850, provided by the committee with an agricultural overseer. In the following spring a large crop of oats and potatoes was laid down. The oats never advanced above a few inches in height, and ultimately withered and died, and the potatoes gave little or no return. A great part of the land so dealt with has never since been touched, and it is now even of less value than before, having ceased to produce even heather. This result, however, we are bound to mention, was at the time, and perhaps still, popularly ascribed, like all Highland failures, to the fault of those in authority. A new overseer was therefore sent, and remained about a year and a half; but in 1852 a third of the people, becoming painfully impressed with the truth of the matter, went off to Australia. In 1853 a third manager was sent ‘to teach and encourage;’ but as the money was now running short, he had little to give but advice, and as the people could not subsist on _that_ any more than on the produce of their lots, they went off to seek employment elsewhere--and so ended what was called ‘this interesting experiment,’ but of which it seems to be now thought inexpedient to say anything at all. The results were to spend £3000 in making worse a piece of the worst possible land, and in prolonging the delusions and sufferings of the local population, but also in supplying one more proof of the extreme difficulty or impossibility of accomplishing, and the great mischief of attempting, what so many paper authorities in Highland matters assume as alike easy and beneficial.”