d, lastly, two, three, or more
feet of gravel, to fill up the interstices of the small stones, and form
a smooth and binding surface. This part of the road has a bank on each
side, to separate it from a ditch, which is made without-side to receive
the water from the bog, and, if the ground will allow it, to convey it
by a trench to a slope, and thereby in some measure drain it....

The objections made to these new roads and bridges, by some in the
several degrees of _condition_ among the Highlanders, are in part as
follow: viz.--

I. These chiefs and other gentlemen complain, that thereby an easy
passage is opened into their country for strangers, who, in time, by
their suggestions of liberty, will weaken that attachment of their
vassals which it is so necessary for them to support and preserve. That
their fastnesses being laid open, they are deprived of that security
from invasion which they formerly enjoyed. That the bridges, in
particular, will render the ordinary people effeminate, and less fit to
pass the waters in other places where there are none. And there is a
pecuniary reason concealed, relating to some foreign courts, which to
you I need not explain.

II. The middling order say to them the roads are an inconvenience,
instead of being useful, as they have turned them out of their old ways;
for their horses being never shod, the gravel would soon whet away their
hoofs, so as to render them unserviceable; whereas the rocks and
moor-stones, though together they make a rough way, yet, considered
separately, they are generally pretty smooth on the surface where they
tread, and the heath is always easy to their feet....

III. The lowest class, who, many of them, at some times cannot compass a
pair of shoes for themselves, they alledge, that the gravel is
intolerable to their naked feet; and the complaint has extended to their
thin brogues. It is true they do sometimes, for these reasons, go
without the road, and ride or walk in very incommodious ways.

FOOTNOTES:

[79] Dunkeld.

SCOTTISH GARDENING (1735).

+Source.+--_Letters of John Cockburn of Ormistoun to his Gardener,
1727-1744_, p. 22. Edited by James Colville, M.A., D.Sc. (Edinburgh:
Scottish Historical Society, 1904.)

_3 June, 1735._

CHARLES.[80]--I have had none from you since my last. We have this day a
great deal of soft rain, which if with you will do great servic