soon save as much as would enable them to undertake the management of
land of their own. That the Highlanders were as capable of hand and
good labour as the lowlanders, is proved by the way they set to work
in these colonies, when they were entirely freed from oppression,
and dependence, and charity, and had to depend entirely on their own
exertions.
Besides the above settlements, the mass of the population in
Caledonia County, State of New York, are of Highland extraction, and
there are large settlements in the State of Ohio, besides numerous
families and individual settlers in other parts of the United States.
Highland names were numerous among the generals of the United States
army on both sides in the late civil war.[95]
The fondness of these settlers for the old country, and all that is
characteristic of it, is well shown by an anecdote told in Campbell’s
_Travels_ in North America (1793). The spirit manifested here is, we
believe, as strong even at the present day when hundreds will flock
from many miles around to hear a Gaelic sermon by a Scotch minister.
Campbell, in his travels in British America, mainly undertaken with
the purpose of seeing how the new Highland colonists were succeeding,
called at the house of a Mr Angus Mackintosh on the Nashwack. He
was from Inverness-shire, and his wife told Campbell they had every
necessary of life in abundance on their own property, but there was
one thing which she wished much to have--that was heather. “And
as she had heard there was an island in the Gulf of St Lawrence,
opposite to the mouth of the Merimashee river, where it grew, and as
she understood I was going that way, she earnestly entreated I would
bring her two or three stalks, or cows as she called it, which she
would plant on a barren brae behind her house where she supposed it
would grow; that she made the same request to several going that way,
but had not got any of it, which she knew would greatly beautify the
place; for, said she, ‘This is an ugly country that has no heather;
I never yet saw any good or pleasant place without it.’” Latterly,
very large numbers of Highlanders have settled in Australia and
New Zealand, where, by all accounts, they are in every respect as
successful as the most industrious lowland emigrants.
No doubt much immediate suffering and bitterness was caused when the
Highlanders were compelled to leave their native land, which by no
means treated them kindly; but whether emigration has been disastrous
to the Highlands or not, there can be no doubt of its ultimate
unspeakable benefit to the Highland emigrants themselves, and to
the colonies in which they have settled. Few, we believe, however
tempting the offer, would care to quit their adopted home, and return
to the bleak hills and rugged shores of their native land.
FOOTNOTES:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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