SCOTS DESPOILED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 11, 13 January 1934, Page 2 (Supplement)

SCOTS DESPOILED.

NOVEL OF THE « CLEARANCES."

Scores of novels have been written of the long-ago battles between the cattle and invading sheepmen of Western America, but little or nothing has previously been told of-the invading eheepmen of the "South who dispossessed the thousands, "of humble but high-spirited crofter's of the Highlands 100 years ago and more. Impoverished- petty chiefs sold their ancestral lands to commercialminded immigrants, who brought their flocks and pastured them on plain and hill and in remotest valleys, driving out the tenants of small holdings. One of these "chiefs" was the Duchose of Sutherland, whoso name was cureed by hundreds of dispossessed crofters. Of the sheep fanning it was said: "The first manner of sheep ranching was ecartcly entitled to the name of farming; it was more like mining. The accumulated fertility of the soil was exploited until the-ground was eaten bare. The mania for sheep increased to such an extent that all the available ground was over-stocked. They (the farmers) despoiled the ground. The market for sheep wns flooded, and farmers could not afford to manure the soil. They lived in the hope of finding virgin country, in the expectation of upward fluctuations in prices, which 'made their farming what it remained ever aftor —a great gamble." There are in this country to-day some thousands of men and women whose forbears were driven from Scotland by this war between crofters and sheepmen, a sequel to the '45 and ten years of invasion. What the scattered Scots have done all over the world we know, and honour them for it. In the new novel by lan Macphcreon, "Land of Our Fathers" (Jonathan Cape), the whole story is plainly told with historical accuracy and in vivid sympathycompelling language. The Scots seldom, if ever, "squeal," and there is no hint of appeal in this book, but a compelling sincerity which grips the attention. It is a striking historical novel.