As a kind of set-off to Burt’s disparaging account of the condition of Highland gentlemen, and yet to some extent corroborating it, we quote the following from the Old Statistical Account of the parish of Boleskine and Abertarf in Inverness-shire. The district to which this account refers was at least no worse than most other Highland parishes, and in some respects must have been better than those that were further out of the reach of civilisation.[42] “Till the beginning of this century, the whole heritors and wadsetters in this parish lived in houses composed of cupple trees, and the walls and thatch made up of sod and divot; but in every wadsetter’s house there was a spacious hall, containing a large table, where he and his family and dependants eat their two meals a-day with this single distinction, that he and his family sat at the one end of the table, and his dependants at the other; and it was reckoned no disparagement for the gentlemen to sit with commoners in the inns, such as the country then afforded, where one _cap_, and afterwards a single glass, went round the whole company. As the inhabitants experienced no want, and generally lived on the produce of their farms, they were hospitable to strangers, providing they did not attempt a settlement among them. But it was thought then disgraceful for any of the younger sons of these wadsetters to follow any other profession than that of arms and agriculture; and it is in the remembrance of many now living, when the meanest tenant would think it disparaging to sit at the same table with a manufacturer.”