for every mouth in his family, pass the whole year.” This bleeding of the cattle to eke out the small supply of oatmeal is testified to by many other witnesses. Captain Burt refers to it;[46] and Knox, in his _View of the British Empire_,[47] thus speaks of it:--“In winter, when the grounds are covered with snow, and when the naked wilds afford them neither shelter nor subsistence, the few cows, small, lean, and ready to drop down through want of pasture, are brought into the hut where the family resides, and frequently share with them their little stock of meal, which had been purchased or raised for the family only, while the cattle thus sustained are bled occasionally to afford nourishment for the children, after it has been boiled or made into cakes.” It must be borne in mind that at that time potatoes were all but unknown in the Highlands, and even in the Lowlands had scarcely got beyond the stage of a garden root. The staple food of the common Highlander was the various preparations of oats and barley; even fish seems to have been a rarity, but why it is difficult to say, as there were plenty both in the sea and in freshwater rivers and lochs. For a month or two after Michaelmas, the luxury of fresh meat seems to have been not uncommon, as at that time the cattle were in condition for being slaughtered; and the more provident or less needy might even go the length of salting a quantity for winter, but even this practice does not seem to have been common except among the tacksmen. “Nothing is more deplorable than the state of this people in time of winter.” Then they were completely confined to their narrow glens, and very frequently night and day to their houses, on account of the severe snow and rain storms. “They have no diversions to amuse them, but sit brooding in the smoke over the fire till their legs and thighs are scorched to an extraordinary degree, and many have sore eyes and some are quite blind. This long continuance in the smoke makes them almost as black as chimney-sweepers; and when the huts are not water-tight, which is often the case, the rain that comes through the roof and mixes with the sootiness of the inside, where all the sticks look like charcoal, falls in drops like ink. But, in this circumstance, the Highlanders are not very solicitous about their outward appearance.”[48] We need not wonder under these circumstances at the prevalence of a loathsome distemper, almost peculiar to the Highlands, and the universality of various kinds of vermin; and indeed, had it not been that the people spent so much of their time in the open air, and that the pure air of the mountains, and been on the whole temperate in drinking and correct in morals, their condition must have been much more miserable than it really was. The misery seems to have been apparent only to onlookers, not to those whose lot it was to endure it. No doubt they were most mercilessly oppressed sometimes, but even this oppression they do not