The first farm that was so formed on the Sutherland estate was in 1806.  The great change was made in 1811-12, and completed in 1819-20.

The Sutherland estates are in the most northern portion of Scotland.  The distance of this district from the more advanced parts of the kingdom, the total want of roads, the unfrequent communication by sea, and the want of towns, made it necessary to adopt a different course in regard to the location of the Sutherland population from that which circumstances had provided in other parts of Scotland, where they had been removed from the bleak and uncultivable mountains.  They had lots given them near the sea, or in more fertile spots, where, by labor and industry, they might maintain themselves.  They had two years allowed them for preparing for the change, without payment of rent.  Timber for their houses was given, and many other facilities for assisting their change.

The general agent of the Sutherland estate is Mr. Loch.  In a speech of this gentleman in the House of Commons, on the second reading of the Scotch poor-law bill, June 12, 1845, he states the following fact with regard to the management of the Sutherland estate during this period, from 1811 to 1833, which certainly can speak for itself:  “I can state as from fact that, from 1811 to 1833, not one sixpence of rent has been received from that county, but, on the contrary, there has been sent there, for the benefit and improvement of the people, a sum exceeding sixty thousand pounds.”

Mr. Loch goes on in the same speech to say, “There is no set of people more industrious than the people of Sutherland.  Thirty years since they were engaged in illegal distillation to a very great extent; at the present moment there is not, I believe, an illegal still in the county.  Their morals have improved as those habits have been abandoned; and they have added many hundreds, I believe thousands, of acres to the land in cultivation since they were placed upon the shore.

“Previous to that change to which I have referred, they exported very few cattle, and hardly any thing else.  They were, also, every now and then, exposed to all the difficulties of extreme famine.  In the years 1812-13, and 1816-17, so great was the misery that it was necessary to send down oatmeal for their supply to the amount of nine thousand pounds, and that was given to the people.  But, since industrious habits were introduced, and they were settled within reach of fishing, no such calamity has overtaken them.  Their condition was then so low that they were obliged to bleed their cattle, during the winter, and mix the blood with the remnant of meal they had, in order to save them from starvation.

“Since then the country has improved so much that the fish, in particular, which they exported, in 1815, from one village alone, Helmsdale, (which, previous to 1811, did not exist,) amounted to five thousand three hundred and eighteen barrels of herring, and in 1844 thirty-seven thousand five hundred and ninety-four barrels, giving employment to about three thousand nine hundred people.  This extends over the whole of the county, in which fifty-six thousand barrels were cured.