a Scottish county, the most northern of the mainland of Great Britain, is situated between 58° 20' and 59° of north latitude, and between 2° 50' and 3° 27' west longitude; and, including the island of Stroma, in the Pentland Frith, extends over 6184 square miles, or 395,680 English acres, of which 8414 acres are covered by lakes and other waters. About a fourth of the surface is mountainous, more than a half consists of deep mosses, and only about an eighth part is cultivated. The boundaries, promontories, bays, climate, wild animals, &c. having been particularly described in the corresponding article in the Encyclopædia, we shall confine our notices at present to what is omitted there, and to the alterations which the progress of time has introduced.

This county is divided into thirty-four estates, Division of eight of which comprise two-thirds of the valued rent, which is L.37,256, 2s. 10d. Scots; and more than a third of the whole is held under entail. Nine proprietors of the names of Sinclair, one of whom is a Peer, hold more than the half of this valuation. The real rent, for the year ending April 1811, was Rental. for the lands L.30,926, 1s. 9d. Sterling; and for the houses L.1,698, 7s. 6d. The Earl of Caithness is the only nobleman who resides in, or is connected with the county; most of the other proprietors have modern mansions, and reside, at least a part of the year, upon their estates. Rents in this, as in almost every part of Scotland, have experienced a very great advance within the last fifty years; in one instance, noticed in Captain Henderson's survey of the county, published in 1812, nearly eight-fold, from 1762 to 1809. In 1792, Sir John Sinclair established a flock of Cheviot-sheep on his farm of Langwell, which have been found to prosper in that climate; and several other spirited improvements were about the same time promoted by this gentleman, though unfortunately they have not been attended with all the success that their indefatigable, but perhaps too sanguine, projector had contemplated. Several other proprietors have shown a very laudable zeal for the interests of this remote, and, till of late, much neglected quarter of the island. About twenty-four years ago, an act of Parliament was procured for commuting the statute-labour, under which L.550 has been annually expended on the repair of roads; and, within these few years, the proprietors have availed themselves of the aid granted by Parliament to the northern counties, of half the estimated expence necessary to make the great lines of road; more especially from the Ord to Wick, and from Wick to Thurso. No attempts to raise plantations in this county have yet been successful, though it appears, from the trees found in mosses, that woods had formerly grown, even on the sea-coast. As a great part of the county is nearly level, the want of plantations is much felt in this rigorous climate.

It has been the practice in this county, from time immemorial, for a few of the superior class of farmers, under the name of tacksman, to take a lease for 19 or 21 years of a town land, occupied by from 10 to 40 small farmers, at a rent commonly paid in money, and not partly in kind, as was the case with smaller tenants. These men occupied only a part of the lands themselves, and subset the remainder to small tenants, for a certain money rent, payments in grain, customs, and services (the latter in many cases unlimited), so as to have, upon the whole, a surplus rent for the trouble and risk of recovering their rack-rent from these subtenants. Though this arrangement has been much, and perhaps justly complained of, both in the Highlands of Scotland and in Ireland, as oppressive to the lower classes, yet it seems to be the natural consequence of that minute division of farm-lands which has been so injudiciously recommended for improving the condition of the poor. The surplus rent drawn by the tacksman is merely a charge against the proprietor for factorage and insurance; and, notwithstanding the oppression of the small tenants, which may be the consequence of thus placing them at the mercy of one who must have a much slighter interest in their welfare than the proprietor himself ought to feel, yet there appears to be no remedy but such a one as would dislodge these small tenants altogether,—the enlargement of farms to such a size as would make them an object to professional farmers. A few young men, from the south of Scotland, have taken farms here, but it is said they have not been successful in establishing a mode of management superior to that of the natives. A great part of the county, accordingly, is still divided into small holdings, of which the rent is paid in money, in the Highland district of it; and, in the Lowlands, partly in money and partly in grain; and in some instances, with customs, casualties, and services, as formerly. When the small tenants possess upon leases, the term is commonly too short to encourage any expensive improvements, or even to permit any favourable change in their modes of cultivation.

The implements of that numerous class are, in general, extremely rude and inefficient: ploughs, harrows, entirely of wood, excepting some thin plates of iron nailed to the sole of the former, to prevent its wearing by the friction of the soil, with four ponies or oxen yoked abreast, attended by a driver who walks backwards according to the ancient custom; seldom even a winnowing machine to separate their grain from the chaff,—and fences formed by a ditch and sod-wall. Their crops are bear and oats, alternately on the infield or old tillage lands, and grey oats successively, for four or five years, on the outfield or inferior land. Wheat has been tried by a few proprietors, but it does not succeed so well in that climate as to encourage its extensive culture. Turnips are beginning to attract notice among the small tenants, and to come into the regular course of cropping on large farms; and potatoes are now cultivated with the plough, as well as with the spade, in every part of the county. The cattle in Caithness have been long the worst breed in Scotland; but a considerable improvement has been lately effected on some estates, by the introduction of bulls from Argylshire and the Western Isles. Oxen continue to be worked at the plough and harrow. With the exception of a few flocks of the Cheviot breed, the sheep are of the ancient race of the island, mostly horned, bearing a white fleece, but coarser than the wool of Shetland, and weighing from seven to ten lbs. per quarter. Since two-horse ploughs have been partially established, some attention seems to be paid to the breed of horses, though the garrons from 11 to 14 hands high, are still by far the most numerous description. The native breed of swine is small, short bodied, and generally of a redish or grey colour; there are a few black, but the grey are reckoned the best.

In a county where the want of coal is added to the many disadvantages under which it labours from its soil, climate, and other circumstances, it is not to be expected that manufactures or commerce should have acquired any footing. A tannery, bleachfield, and woollen factory, were long ago undertaken under the direction, and chiefly at the expense, of Sir John Sinclair, of which only the first has been found profitable. A brewery is still carried on at Thurso; and a small ropework in the village of Castletown. In winter 1810, about 250 women and girls were employed in Thurso plaiting straw for ladies' bonnets; the straw-plait being returned to London, from whence the straw itself is imported. Caithness exports a few cattle and sheep, but of the former not a tenth part of what has been stated by Pennant. About twenty years ago from Caithness-shire.

Fisheries. 20,000 to 30,000 bolls of grain were annually sold out of it, but the quantity has diminished; and there used to be about 140 tons of kelp prepared from the sea-weed on its shores. But their fish form the most important article of export. Herrings, cod, lobsters, and salmon, bring in L.43,400, of which the herring-fishery alone yields L.40,000. Besides a great number of boats employed in the several creeks and harbours in fishing for haddock, ling, &c. which are consumed in the county; about twenty smacks from Gravescend fish for cod and ling, on the north coast of Caithness, and are said to have, in a great degree, destroyed the cod-fishery on its shores.

John o'-Groat's House. Among the antiquities of this county, the far famed John-o'-Groat's house deserves to be noticed. The tradition regarding this celebrated personage is, that his ancestor came from Holland, and settled in this county in the reign of James IV.; and that he built this house of an octagon form, inclosing a large table of the same shape, to obviate disputes about precedence, at their anniversary meetings, among the Groats in his time, consisting of eight families. Each family, by this contrivance, entered separately at its own door, and was seated at the corresponding side of the table. A variety of these singular structures called Picts Houses, are still to be seen in Caithness. Many of the stones are of an enormous size, and must have been brought from a distance; fragments of earthen-ware, and a few small copper coins, have been found in them; and some singular articles made of bone fixed with nails of the same material. They are almost always of a conical form, and their exterior being now covered with a thick sward of fine grass, they have the appearance of large tumuli or barrows. The internal structure, as well as the size of these Duns, as they are called by the Highlanders, is various. The smallest, and apparently the oldest, have only one circular wall which contracts as it rises, till, at the top, only a small hole must have remained open, or been covered with flat stones.

The largest ones have two concentric walls, two feet distant, which in some instances meet at a certain height, and in others ascend parallel to the summit; the space between them being entered by a door only two feet high, and occupied by a winding stair from the bottom to the top of the building; and these are surrounded by a broad deep ditch, and a sort of rampart. The walls are usually nine or ten feet thick, without cement of any kind; and from their situation on high land near the sea, or on the banks of precipitous rocks, stretching in a chain from one headland to another; they are supposed to have been used either as storehouses, or as retreats for women and children when the men were at a distance engaged in war.

The county of Caithness sends a Member to Parliament alternately with Buteshire, on the west of Scotland, an arrangement which of late has been much objected to, not only because one of these counties must always be without a representative, to which each, it is thought, is entitled, but also because there can be hardly any common interest between districts so distant from one another, and placed in circumstances so different. Five of the northern boroughs, of which Wick, the only royal borough in this county, is one, join together in the election of a Member for that department.

On the low grounds, the people differ little in their dialect from the inhabitants of the south of Scotland; but on the mountainous tract, where Caithness borders with Sutherland, the Gaelic prevails; though many of the natives can speak both languages with nearly equal facility.

By comparing the population lists taken under the acts 1800 and 1811, it will be seen that, even in this remote and comparatively unproductive portion of the British Empire, there has been an increase of numbers in the intermediate period, though not so considerable as in most other counties. The inhabitants of the towns bear a very small proportion to those of the country.

<table> <tr> <th colspan="2">HOUSES.</th> <th colspan="2">PERSONS.</th> <th colspan="4">OCCUPATIONS.</th> </tr> <tr> <th>Inhabited.</th> <th>By how many Families occupied.</th> <th>Uninhabited.</th> <th>Males.</th> <th>Females.</th> <th><i>Persons</i> chiefly employed in Agriculture.</th> <th><i>Persons</i> chiefly employed in Trade, Manufactures, or Handicraft.</th> <th>All other <i>Persons</i> not comprised in the two preceding classes.</th> <th>Total of Persons.</th> </tr> <tr> <td>433</td> <td>4652</td> <td>140</td> <td>10,183</td> <td>12,426</td> <td>13,263</td> <td>2201</td> <td>7145</td> <td>22,609</td> </tr> </table>

1800.

<table> <tr> <th colspan="2">HOUSES.</th> <th colspan="2">PERSONS.</th> <th colspan="4">OCCUPATIONS.</th> </tr> <tr> <th>Inhabited.</th> <th>By how many Families occupied.</th> <th>Uninhabited.</th> <th>Males.</th> <th>Females.</th> <th><i>Families</i> chiefly employed in Agriculture.</th> <th><i>Families</i> chiefly employed in Trade, Manufactures, or Handicraft.</th> <th>All other <i>Families</i> not comprised in the two preceding classes.</th> <th>Total of Persons.</th> </tr> <tr> <td>4301</td> <td>4714</td> <td>139</td> <td>10,608</td> <td>12,811</td> <td>3270</td> <td>838</td> <td>606</td> <td>23,419</td> </tr> </table>

1811.