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Urban Water Cycle Processes and Interactions Jiri
Marsalek Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Jiri Marsalek, Blanca Jimenez Cisneros, Mohammad Karamouz,
Per,Arne Malmquist, Joel Avruch Goldenfum, Bernard Chocat
ISBN(s): 9780203932469, 0203932463
Edition: Kindle
File Details: PDF, 1.81 MB
Year: 2008
Language: english
Urban Water Cycle Processes
and Interactions
Urban Water Series – UNESCO-IHP

ISSN 1749-0790

Series Editors:

Čedo Maksimović
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Imperial College
London, United Kingdom

Alberto Téjada-Guibert
International Hydrological Programme (IHP)
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
Paris, France
Urban Water Cycle Processes
and Interactions

Jiri Marsalek, Blanca Jiménez-Cisneros,

Mohammad Karamouz, Per-Arne Malmquist,
Joel Goldenfum and Bernard Chocat

UNESCO Publishing
Cover illustration
Aalborg Municipality, Denmark, aerial view of Aalborg, with kind permission.
Published jointly by
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
7, place de Fontenoy
75007 Paris, France
www.unesco.org/publishing
and
Taylor & Francis The Netherlands
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www.taylorandfrancis.com – www.balkema.nl – www.crcpress.com
Taylor & Francis is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business, London, United Kingdom.

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© UNESCO, 2008
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ISBN 0-203-93246-3 Master e-book ISBN

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ISBN Taylor & Francis, hardback: 978-0-415-45346-2
ISBN Taylor & Francis, paperback: 978-0-415-45347-9
ISBN Taylor & Francis e-book: 978-0-203-93246-9
Urban Water Series: ISSN 1749-0790
Volume 2
The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this publication do not imply the expres-
sion of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO or Taylor & Francis concerning the legal status of any
country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.
The authors are responsible for the choice and the presentation of the facts contained in this book and for the
opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those of UNESCO nor those of Taylor & Francis and do
not commit the Organization.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Urban water cycle processes and interactions / J. Marsalek … [et al.].
p. cm. — (Urban water series — UNESCO ihp ; v. 2)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-415-45346-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-415-45347-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-0-203-93246-9 (e-book)
1. Municipal water supply. I. Marsalek, J. (Jiri), 1940-
TD209.U73 2007
628.109173’2—dc22
2007032489
Foreword

Continuing urbanization leads to ever increasing concentrations of population in

urban areas. General statistics indicate that currently just over half of the world’s pop-
ulation lives in urban areas, and in some countries this proportion reaches 90% or
more. The process of urbanization is particularly marked in developing countries,
which account for a disproportionately high number of megacities with many millions
of inhabitants with sprawling periurban areas. Consequently, the issue of urban envi-
ronmental sustainability is becoming increasingly critical, because urbanization and its
associated environmental impacts are occurring at an unprecedented rate and scope.
These concerns have long been recognized by UNESCO’s International Hydrological
Programme (IHP), which has addressed the role of water in urban areas, effects of
urbanization on the hydrological cycle and water quality, and many aspects of inte-
grated water management in urban areas, and is developing integrated approaches to
deal with today’s acute problems in this domain.
This book presents results of one of these studies; its main focus is on the assessment
of anthropogenic impacts on the urban hydrological cycle and the urban environment,
including processes and interactions in the urban water cycle. The need for this study
follows from the fact that effective management of urban waters should be based on a
scientific understanding of anthropogenic impacts on the urban hydrological cycle and
the environment. Such impacts vary broadly in time and space, and need to be quanti-
fied with respect to the local climate, urban development, cultural, environmental and
religious practices, and other socio-economic factors.
This publication, which is part of a series of urban water management books pro-
duced within the framework of the Sixth Phase of IHP (2002–2007) is the main output
of the project on processes and interactions in the urban water cycle by IHP. In order to
address the broad range of conditions in urban water management, UNESCO estab-
lished a working group for this study with representatives of various professional back-
grounds and experience from various climatic regions, whose deliberations and joint
efforts resulted in this book. The role of Mr Jiri Marsalek as the driving force in the
composition of the book and as lead editor is amply recognized. The book has been
produced under the responsibility of Mr J. Alberto Tejada-Guibert, Deputy Secretary
vi Foreword

of IHP. We are grateful to all the contributors and the editors for their hard work, and
are confident that the conclusions, recommendations and case studies contained in this
volume will prove to be of value to urban water management practitioners, policy-and
decision makers and educators throughout the world.

András Szöllösi-Nagy
Secretary of UNESCO’s International Hydrological Programme (IHP)
Director of UNESCO’s Division of Water Sciences
Deputy Assistant Director-General for the Natural Sciences Sector of UNESCO
Contents

List of Figures xi
List of Tables xii
Acronyms xiii
Glossary xv
Acknowledgements xix
1 Urban water cycle 1
1.1 Introduction 1
1.2 Urban water cycle concept 3
1.3 Total management of the urban water cycle 7
2 Urban water cycle hydrologic components 9
2.1 Water sources 10
2.1.1 Municipal water supply 10
2.1.2 Precipitation 10
2.1.2.1 Climatic aspects 10
2.1.2.2 Urban precipitation 11
2.2 Hydrologic abstractions 12
2.2.1 Interception 13
2.2.2 Depression storage 13
2.2.3 Evaporation and evapotranspiration 13
2.2.4 Infiltration 14
2.2.5 Lumped hydrologic abstractions 14
2.3 Water storage 15
2.3.1 Soil moisture 15
2.3.2 Urban groundwater 15
2.4 Interflow and groundwater flow 16
2.5 Stormwater runoff 16
2.6 Natural drainage: urban streams, rivers and lakes 17
2.7 Needs for urban water infrastructure 18
3 Urban water infrastructure 19
3.1 Demands on water services in urban areas 19
3.2 Water supply 21
3.2.1 Overview of situation in developing countries 23
viii Contents

3.2.1.1 Middle East and North Africa (MENA) 23

3.2.1.2 Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) 24
3.2.1.3 East, South and South-East Asia (ESSA) 24
3.2.2 Historical development 24
3.2.3 Water demand 25
3.2.3.1 Water supply standards: quantity 27
3.2.3.2 Water supply standards: quality 28
3.2.4 Water supply sources 29
3.2.4.1 Conjunctive use of sources and artificial
recharge 30
3.2.4.2 Supplementary sources of water 30
3.2.4.3 Water shortage 32
3.2.5 Example of improving the water supply in the Tehran
Metropolitan Area 32
3.2.6 Drinking water treatment 33
3.2.6.1 Emerging technologies 33
3.2.6.2 Desalination 33
3.2.6.3 Disinfection 35
3.2.7 Water distribution systems 36
3.2.8 Drinking water supplies in developing countries 36
3.3 Urban drainage 37
3.3.1 Flooding in urban areas 39
3.3.1.1 Local (pluvial) flooding 40
3.3.1.2 Urban (fluvial) floods 41
3.3.2 Stormwater 42
3.3.2.1 Stormwater characterization 44
3.3.2.2 Stormwater management 45
3.3.2.3 Special considerations for drainage in
cold climates 48
3.3.3 Combined sewer overflows 48
3.3.3.1 CSO characterization 48
3.3.3.2 CSO control and treatment 49
3.4 Wastewater and sanitation 50
3.4.1 Problem definition 50
3.4.2 Technological development 52
3.4.3 Ecological sanitation 53
3.4.4 Basic demands on wastewater management systems 54
3.4.5 Wastewater characterization 55
3.4.6 Wastewater systems without separation of wastewaters
at the source 56
3.4.6.1 Centralized systems 56
3.4.6.2 Distributed (local) systems 57
3.4.7 Systems with separation of wastewaters at the source 58
3.4.8 Wastewater treatment technologies for developing countries 59
3.4.9 Case study of water pollution control in the Tehran
Metropolitan Area 60
3.4.10 Water and wastewater reuse 61
 Contents ix

3.4.10.1 NEWater in Singapore 62

3.4.10.2 Shinjuku water recycling centre, Tokyo, Japan 62
3.4.10.3 Wetlands with fish production in Calcutta, India 63
3.4.10.4 Reuse of (untreated) sewage for agricultural
irrigation in the Mezquital Valley (Mexico
City sewage disposal) 63
3.4.10.5 Reuse of stormwater and greywater in Sydney,
Australia 64
3.4.11 Closing observations on wastewater management in
developing countries 64

4 Impacts of urbanization on the environment 67

4.1 Overview 67
4.2 General characterization of urbanization effects 68
4.2.1 Increased ground imperviousness 69
4.2.2 Changes in runoff conveyance networks 69
4.2.2.1 Construction of runoff conveyance networks 70
4.2.2.2 Canalization of urban streams and rivers 70
4.2.2.3 Interfering transport infrastructures 71
4.2.3 Increased water consumption 71
4.2.4 Timescales of urbanization effects 72
4.2.5 Types of receiving waters and spatial scales 72
4.3 Urbanization effects on the atmosphere 73
4.3.1 Thermal effects (urban heat island phenomenon) 74
4.3.2 Urban air pollution 74
4.3.3 Combined impacts 75
4.4 Urbanization effects on surface waters 75
4.4.1 Physical effects 76
4.4.1.1 Urbanization effects on flows 76
4.4.1.2 Urbanization effects on sediment
regime: erosion and siltation 76
4.4.1.3 Modification of the thermal regime of receiving
waters 77
4.4.1.4 Density stratification of receiving water bodies 77
4.4.1.5 Combined physical effects 78
4.4.2 Chemical effects 79
4.4.2.1 Dissolved oxygen reduction 79
4.4.2.2 Nutrient enrichment and eutrophication 79
4.4.2.3 Toxicity 80
4.4.3 Microbiological effects 81
4.4.3.1 Waterborne pathogens 81
4.4.3.2 Indicators of microbiological pollution 85
4.4.4 Combined effects on surface waters 86
4.4.5 Examples of urbanization effects on specific types of
receiving waters 87
4.4.5.1 Rivers 87
4.4.5.2 Lakes and reservoirs 89
x Contents

4.5 Urbanization effects on wetlands 91

4.6 Urbanization effects on soils 94
4.6.1 Erosion 94
4.6.2 Transport of pollutants in soils 95
4.6.3 Changes in water quality during percolation through soils 96
4.6.4 Effects of sludge disposal on soils 96
4.6.4.1 Sludge production 97
4.6.4.2 Sludge quality 97
4.6.4.3 Biosolids (sludge) application on land 98
4.6.4.4 Sludge disposal 98
4.6.4.5 New chemicals of concern in sludge 99
4.7 Urban impacts on groundwater 99
4.7.1 Unintentional discharges into groundwater aquifers 100
4.7.2 Intentional discharges into groundwater aquifers 102
4.7.3 Impacts on aquifers 103
4.8 Urban impacts on biota: loss of biodiversity 103
4.8.1 General structure of water bodies and their biota 103
4.8.2 Properties of the water bodies affecting flora and fauna 103
4.8.3 Effects of alterations of urban water bodies on biota 104
4.8.3.1 Rivers 104
4.8.3.2 Lakes and reservoirs 106
5 Summary 109
References 113
Index 127
List of Figures

1.1 Urban water cycle 4

1.2 Urban water cycle – main components and pathways 5
2.1 Rainfall–runoff components of the hydrologic cycle 9
2.2 Effects of watershed development on runoff peaks 17
2.3 Runoff hydrograph before and after urbanization 17
3.1 Ecocycles of water and nutrients supporting urban areas 20
3.2 A conventional layout of water treatment and distribution systems 34
3.3 An alternative layout of drinking water distribution and treatment
systems using small, local membrane filter units 34
3.4 Flows of water and pollutants in stormwater systems 43
3.5 A conventional system for managing wastewater and organic waste 52
3.6 Blackwater separation 59
4.1 Relation between the rates of processes and spatial and temporal
scale of effects 73
4.2 Impacts of urbanization on the aquatic environment 78
4.3 Combined effects on biological community performance 86
4.4 Dissolved oxygen sag curve 88
List of Tables

1.1 Megacities with more than 10 million people 2

3.1 Water supply in the world’s ten most populous cities (2000) 22
3.2 Definitions of water use terms 23
3.3 Percentage of the population supplied by groundwater in selected
countries 30
3.4 Quality of urban runoff and combined sewer overflows 44
3.5 Typical composition of sewage 55
3.6 Pathogen concentrations in wastewater in developing and
developed countries 56
3.7 Composition of urine, faeces, greywater, household wastewater and
compostable household waste in Sweden (in kg/person equivalent/year) 58
3.8 Yield increase as a result of irrigation with wastewater in the
Mezquital Valley, Mexico 64
4.1 Classifications and examples of impacts 68
4.2 Main pathogenic bacteria transmitted through water 82
4.3 Main protozoa transmitted through water 83
4.4 Infected people and annual cases and deaths caused by helminthiasis 84
4.5 Changes in river characteristics due to sewage discharges 87
4.6 Main water quality problems in lakes and reservoirs 90
4.7 Attributes, functions and values of wetland ecosystems 92
4.8 Removal of pathogens in wetlands 93
4.9 Processes or characteristics affecting virus transport in soils and
groundwater 97
4.10 Typical rates of biosolids applications 98
4.11 Objectives of aquifer storage recovery systems (ASRs) 102
4.12 Effects of eutrophication on rivers 105
4.13 Biota status in lakes with different trophic levels 106
Acronyms

ABR Anaerobic baffled reactor

ADB Asian Development Bank
ASR Aquifer storage recovery
BMP Best management practice
BOD Biochemical oxygen demand
CEC Commission of European Communities
COD Chemical oxygen demand
CSO Combined sewer overflow
DAF Dissolved air flotation
DDE Dichlorodiphenylethylene
DDT Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane
DNAPL Dense non-aqueous phase liquid
DO Dissolved oxygen
DOC Dissolved organic carbon
EC European Community
EC Escherichia coli
ECOSAN Ecological sanitation
EDS Endocrine disrupting substance
EEA European Environment Agency
EEC European Economic Community
EPA Environmental Protection Agency (USA)
ESSA East, South and South-East Asia
ET Evapotranspiration
FCU Faecal coliform units
GTZ Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit GmbH
(German society for technical cooperation)
HO Helminth ova
IHP International Hydrological Programme
INSA Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon
IOL Indicator organism limit
IPH Instituto de Pesquisas Hidráulicas
IWMED Institute for Wetland Management and Ecological Design (India)
kPa Kilo-Pascal (unit of pressure)
MENA Middle East and North Africa
MOE Ontario Ministry of Environment (Canada)
xiv Acronyms

MPN Most probable number

MSF Multi-stage flash evaporation
MST Microbial source tracking
N Nitrogen
NBT Nash bargaining theory
NOx Oxides of nitrogen
NRC National Research Council (US)
NSW New South Wales (Australia)
NURP Nationwide Urban Runoff Program
P Phosphorus
PAH Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon
PFU Plaque forming unit
PPCP Pharmaceuticals and personal care products
RO Reverse osmosis
RTC Real-time control
SAT Soil aquifer treatment
SBR Sequential batch reactor
SCS Soil Conservation Service (US)
SOx Oxides of sulphur
SSA Sub-Saharan Africa
TDS Total dissolved solids
THM Trihalomethanes
TN Total nitrogen
TP Total phosphorus
TSS Total suspended solids
TWCP Tehran Wastewater Collection Project
UASB Upflow anaerobic sludge blanket
UFRGS Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil)
UK United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
UNEP United Nations Environmental Programme
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
UN-HABITAT United Nations Centre for Human Settlements
UNICEF United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund
US United States
USLE Universal soil loss equation
UV Ultraviolet
UWC Urban water cycle
UWWE Urban wastewater effluents
VOC Volatile organic compound
VSS Volatile suspended solids
WC Water closet
WHO World Health Organization
WPCF Water Pollution Control Federation (US)
WWTP Wastewater treatment plant
Glossary

adiabatic cooling a natural atmospheric process whereby an air mass cools due to
lower pressures as it rises, while maintaining the same volume. This effect can
cause water vapour to condense and form rain or snow in the presence of conden-
sation nuclei.
aggregate water use water use for all purposes aggregated by a territorial (geograph-
ical) unit, e.g., county, or by a hydrologic unit, e.g., a catchment, or groundwater
aquifer; see also disaggregate water use.
bedload sediment in almost continuous contact with the bed of a watercourse, car-
ried by rolling, sliding or hopping.
benthic species/communities aquatic organisms which spend all or part of their life
cycle at the sediment-water interface.
berm low earthen wall constructed with sloping sides and arranged to contain,
direct or control surface runoff in stormwater management.
biocenosis a set of organisms, plants and animals living in ecological balance
which is based on the chemical, physical and biological conditions in the local
environment.
bioengineered soils soils amended by mixing natural soils with organic materials (to
improve the soil structure and water storage capacity) and stabilised and protected
against erosion by vegetation.
biofiltration combined physical and chemical processes of filtration and adsorption
with the uptake and processing of nutrients by attached micro-organisms.
bioretention area a vegetated surface depression designed to collect, store and infil-
trate runoff; where needed, the underlying soil layer is replaced with a bioengi-
neered soil.
biosphere parts of the Earth where life exists; they comprise the lower part of the
atmosphere, the hydrosphere and the Earth’s crust in contact with these.
biotype a naturally existing population comprising individuals with the same genetic
makeup.
blackwater sanitary wastewater produced from a combination of faeces and urine.
capillary tension the measure of the forces of attraction between a water molecule
and the clay surface, representing the sum of the adhesive and cohesive forces or
the capillary forces.
chelation a chemical process of forming or joining together metallic cations with cer-
tain organic compounds.
xvi Glossary

convective storms storms resulting from daytime heat build-up over land masses,
characterised by short bursts of intense rainfall and high winds. The intense rain-
fall often results in considerable runoff and danger of flooding.
disaggregate water use water use for individual purposes, including public supply,
irrigation, industrial, thermoelectric power, mining, livestock and aquaculture cat-
egories for a particular water supply utility unit; see also aggregate water use.
distributed systems wastewater treatment systems which are non-centralised. These
systems are usually small, inexpensive, uncomplicated and are designed to treat
locally wastewater generated by a small number of households.
ecohydrology a sub-discipline of hydrology that focuses on ecological processes
occurring within the hydrological cycle and strives to utilise such processes for
enhancing environmental sustainability.
elution syn leaching; separation of adsorbed compounds by continuous washing
with a liquid (eluent).
evapotranspiration process by which water is transferred to the atmosphere from
the soil by evaporation and from the vegetation by transpiration.
exfiltration loss of water in a drainage system to surrounding soils and groundwater
as a result of percolation or adsorption processes.
ferrule-based charges a method of charging for costs of water on a fixed basis (i.e.,
charging fees per a ferrule of certain size) rather than on the basis of water actu-
ally used.
fire flow the amount of water that should be available in a water distribution net-
work for municipal fire protection.
greywater domestic wastewater generated from dish washing, laundry and bathing.
It does not include any blackwater materials.
heat island effect increase in air temperature in urban areas resulting from the warm-
ing effect of hard surfaces, e.g., asphalt and concrete.
hydraulic conductivity property of a porous medium which, according to Darcy’s
law, relates the specific discharge to the hydraulic gradient.
hydrograph a graphical representation of stage, i.e., water depths above some
datum, or discharge as a function of time.
hydrologic components (of the hydrological cycle) major components of the
hydrological cycle including water sources (imported water or precipitation), hydro-
logical abstractions (interception, depression storage, evaporation and evapotran-
spiration, infiltration), water storage (soil moisture, groundwater), and water
transport by interflow, groundwater flow, and surface runoff.
hydrological cycle syn. water cycle; succession of stages through which water
passes from the atmosphere to the earth and returns to the atmosphere: evapora-
tion from the land or sea or inland water, condensation to form clouds, precipita-
tion, interception, infiltration, percolation, runoff and accumulation in the soil or
in bodies of water, and re-evaporation.
hydrological regime variations in the state and characteristics of a water body which
are regularly repeated in time and space and which pass through seasonal or other
phases.
hydrometeorological variable a variable describing weather or water characteristics,
e.g., wind, solar radiation, air temperature, precipitation, water temperature,
water depth, water velocity, and water quality.
 Glossary xvii

hydrosphere all the components of water on the Earth, including water vapour in
clouds, ice caps and glaciers, and water in oceans, seas, lakes, rivers and aquifers.
impound to store water in reservoirs (impoundments).
improved water supply supply of drinking water, defined in terms of the technology
and levels of service as more likely to provide safe water than unimproved tech-
nologies, including household connections, public standpipes, boreholes, pro-
tected dug wells, protected springs, and rainwater collection (after WHO).
integrated management a planning and operational process in which interested
parties, stakeholders and regulators reach general agreement on the best mix
of conservation, sustainable resource use and economic development and
diversification.
interflow 1) that portion of the precipitation which has not passed down to the
water table, but is discharged from the area as subsurface flow into stream chan-
nels. 2) flow of water from ephemeral zones of saturation by moving through the
upper strata of a geological formation at a rate much in excess of normal base-
flow seepage.
lithosphere the upper layer of the earth, including the Earth’s crust and upper mantle.
lumped soil characteristics soil characteristics aggregated over some unit volume.
megacity a city with more than 10 million inhabitants.
microclimate the climate in a localized area, which differs from that of the surround-
ing region.
particulates tiny solid or liquid particles which are suspended in the air. Most partic-
ulates fall into the 10 nm to 100 µm diameter size range.
pelagic communities aquatic organisms which spend all or part of their life-cycle
swimming or floating in the water column. These types of organisms include algae
and zooplankton.
phreatic level a natural groundwater table (level).
pillar-based ecosystem approach a strategy for integrated management of land, water
and living resources promoting conservation and sustainability, which is based on
consideration of three basic pillars – society, living environment and economy.
regression analysis statistical method developed to investigate the interdependence
or relationship between two or more measurable variates.
rugosity roughness of river bed.
sanitary landfill site for disposal of solid wastes which has been engineered to pre-
vent discharge of leachates into the groundwater. This is typically achieved
through an impermeable layer under the landfill and a leachate collection and
treatment system.
sub-potable water which has not been treated to drinking water standards.
swale depression or ditch used to collect and divert runoff. Water and nutrients
gradually infiltrate into the surrounding soils and create a fertile growing area.
thermocline syn. metalimnion; layer in a thermally stratified body of water across
which the temperature gradient is at a maximum.
time series analysis evaluation and interpretation of a set of measurements, usually
taken at regular intervals, determining the way in which these data vary along the
time dimension.
transpiration process by which water from vegetation is transferred into the atmos-
phere in the form of vapour; see also evapotranspiration.
xviii Glossary

vadose zone syn unsaturated zone, zone of aeration; subsurface zone above the
water table in which the interstices are filled with air and water, and the water
pressure is less than atmospheric.
virtual water a measure of indirect consumption of water in the production of agri-
cultural or industrial products requiring significant quantities of clean water in
their production.
water pressure district a part of the water supply area served by a water distribution
system and characterized by a certain water pressure.
water-soil interface a common boundary between water and soils.
Acknowledgements

Many colleagues have contributed to the preparation of this report and their contribu-
tions are gratefully acknowledged. In particular, the work of the following is acknowl-
edged:

● UNESCO Secretariat: Mr J.A. Téjada-Guibert, officer in charge of Urban Water

activities of the International Hydrological Programme VI (IHP-VI) and Deputy
Secretary of IHP; Mr C. Maksimović, adviser for the IHP Urban Water compo-
nent; Ms B. Radojevic, consultant; and Mr W. H. Gilbrich, consultant.
● Mr W.E. Watt, Emeritus Professor, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario,
Canada, who served as an external editor of the final report.
● Mr Q. Rochfort, Ms J. Dziuba and Mr P. McColl, National Water Research Institute,
Burlington, Ontario, Canada, who produced the print-ready version of the report.
● All the members of the Working Group: for the study of the urban water cycle
processes and interactions for this project, and in particular, those who provided
written materials.

The Working Group for the study of the urban water cycle processes and interactions
comprised the following members:

● Gamal Abdo, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Khartoum,

Khartoum, Sudan.
● Bernard Chocat, INSA Lyon, Lyon, France, contributed to Chapter 4.
● Joel Goldenfum, IPH/UFRGS, Porto Allegre, Brazil, contributed to Chapters 2 and 3.
● K.V. Jayakumar, Water and Environment Division, Regional Engineering College,
Warangal, India.
● Blanca Jiménez-Cisneros, Environmental Engineering Department, Institute of
Engineering, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico,
contributed to Chapters 3 and 4.
● Mohammad Karamouz, School of Civil Engineering, University of Tehran,
Tehran, Iran, contributed to Chapters 2 and 3.
● Per-Arne Malmquist, Chalmers University of Technology, Goteborg, Sweden, con-
tributed to Chapter 3.
● Jiri Marsalek, National Water Research Institute, Burlington, Ontario, Canada,
contributed to Chapters 1–4 and provided report integration and editing.
Other documents randomly have
different content
 CHAPTER VII
LOCHABER NO MORE!
For a century and a half claymore and dirk have rusted all over the
Highlands, where ben and glen echo the report of breechloading
guns, and the gaff gleams and the reel whirrs by loch or river. But
peace, too, has her cruelties; and some of the misery once brought
into mountain glens by fierce raiders came again through spectacled
and moralising economists, who with more or less good intentions
displaced, shuffled, and banished a population deeply rooted in love
of their Lochabers. Dr. Johnson foresaw in part what would result
from the change of patriarchal community to business relations
between dependants of whose inveterate troubles he was ignorant,
and chiefs whom he found on the point of degenerating into
“rapacious landlords.” Another tourist, a generation later, remarked
that clan loyalty hung much on the fact of the people being tenants-
at-will, and that long leases would put an end to the old
dependence. Johnson was not so shrewd in judging that the people
would haste to expatriate themselves as soon as they saw a way
open to lands “less bleak and barren than their own.” The Celt’s love
for his home and his hatred for change made the course of
improvement to run rougher here than in the Lowlands. And the
Highland “improvements,” for which the ground was cleared by
bayonets, brought little good to many of the people. They found it
harder to pay rent in money than in blood and affection. Their chiefs
proved as often selfishly exacting as the clansmen ignorant and
obstinate. The white-faced sheep that nibbled away the romance of
the Highlands were more the charge or the profit of intruding
Sassenachs. Since the price of wool went down, sheep have much
given way to deer, that profit no one but the owners of high-rented
shootings, and keep cottars sitting up all night to guard their poor
fields, preserved for the sport of absentee lords or purse-proud
strangers, whose worst service to the country has been turning the
free son of the mist into a well-fed menial, broken in to touch his hat
for the tips he levies in lieu of blackmail. It is stated that the
demoralescent Celt does not so much object to deer forests, as
barring out his old enemy the sheep farmer, and as bringing into the
country a class of men who spend freely, sometimes in the way of
bribes given to secure good sport among herds that to a sportsman
of Colquhoun’s stamp seemed almost as tame as sheep.
The Highlander asked for bread, and his masters gave him
sometimes stones and sometimes sovereigns. Not that his old
masters had done much better for him, minus the sovereigns. If the
Highlands had once a golden age, that was, as in other quarters of
the world, before the day of facts and figures. I had gathered some
thorny points to prick the bubble of an ideal state of society before
the coming of the Sassenach; but the reader will find this better
done in the last chapter of Mr. Andrew Lang’s Companions of Pickle,
showing what tyranny and savagery held together in that good old
time of romance. The late Duke of Argyll’s work on the former
condition of Scotland, though written with a natural bias, is not to be
sneered at by sentimentalists. And if readers wish evidence at first
hand they may take a tour with Pennant or any of the early
observers, who will show them what it was to be counted among the
live stock of a paternal chief.
 THE FALLS OF SPEAN, INVERNESS-SHIRE

The sentimental quarrel is with civilisation, which all along has

proceeded by ascertaining and enclosing rights of property.
Socialism, which to us sounds new, is of course old as the hills, that
once, after a manner, belonged to a whole clan in their different
degrees of advantage, till some other sept could effectually evict
them by fire and sword. There never was a time when the leader of
the conquering troop did not get the best of what was going. The
land held in his name he was in the way of giving out in large
portions to his captains and kinsfolk, the “tacksmen” of Highland
farms, who in turn sublet small holdings to the inferior clansmen,
rent being paid in kind or in service to superiors, often arbitrarily
oppressive, as seemed their right. The shortcomings of this economy
were made up for by plunderings of neighbours, a feature not
usually put into the foreground of Arcadian pictures, but so common
and so perilous as to keep a regular check on prolific population.
There was a general community of interests, of manners, of
sympathy which smoothed down social differences. The humblest
clansman, born or adopted into the guild, expected to be provided
for somehow or other, while the chief’s power and dignity depended
on the number of “pretty men” he could keep about him. When the
resources of plunder and blackmail were cut off, the mass of
Highlanders had to live by cultivating small patches of poor land, as
they did wastefully, idly, and unprofitably, usually on the old system
of “runrig,” by which a joint farm was tilled in common, but each
ridge had its own occupier. As a rule they were practically tenants-
at-will, holding directly or indirectly from the head of the clan.
Badly off as they were, the tenants obstinately withstood almost
all attempts towards a better state of things. The improvements that
in a century changed the face of Scotland and multiplied its wealth,
came from lairds won over to economic science; they could hardly
have been carried out but by men who had risen above prejudices
and were in a position to risk capital in experiments. In the
Highlands, more obstinately than in the Lowlands, there was a
deadlock between the ignorant conservatism of the lower class and
the enlightened self-interest of the upper, who were sometimes so
imperfectly enlightened as to show grasping haste to be rich,
whatever became of those born to dependence on their fathers. On
the other hand, unenlightened selfishness, good neither for man nor
beast, came as natural to crofter as to laird, among a race noted for
what Matthew Arnold calls its “passionate, turbulent, indomitable
reaction against the despotism of fact.”
These seem to be moral and historical facts. Then come the
considerations of a science in our day much decried for dismal. I am
not going to enter into vexed economical controversies. The subject
of the Highland clearances offers a good many considerations on
both sides. Sentimental arguments are nearly all on the side of the
evicted; but the evictors have much to say for themselves. The
slovenly agriculture of the clans had to be schooled sooner or later.
The pig-headed prejudices of those backward cultivators appears in
the fact that their now indispensable potato was almost forced upon
them. The sheep farming that ousted scanty and precarious crops
paid best on a large scale. There are mountain wildernesses fit not
even for sheep-walks, where deer-runs make as profitable
employment as may be. It proved often a kind cruelty that drove
thousands from their half-starved life to a more roomy lot in
pastures new. But for this movement the Highlands would have
shared the full horrors of the Irish famine, felt here also to some
extent after the potato disease of 1846. The landlord need not be
blamed for taking in cash an equivalent of the services and the
personal loyalty lost to him through operation of law. Small tenants
often did him as little good as for themselves. The gist of the whole
question, indeed, is whether the land thrives best in the hands of
any one grade of occupier, or whether there is not more room for all
when large, middle-sized, and small proprietors or tenants are
mingled as in other walks of life. That question I leave to those who
have much to say on it. But this may be said by the weakest
statistician, that the changes introduced into the Highlands were
often carried out with a haste and harshness specially painful in the
case of a race so inapt at adapting itself to new circumstances,
whose poor household gods, like Charles Lamb’s, “plant a terrible
fixed foot,” and “do not willingly seek Lavinian shores.” So, as one
can now indulge Jacobite sentiment without practical treason to the
House of Hanover, the reader may be invited to join chorus in the
wail of “Lochaber no more!” so often raised in Highland glens.
That pathetic lament seems to date back to Dutch William’s days,
when it is suspected for the work of an English officer, though
another account gives it a becomingly native origin. Emigration from
the Highlands, voluntary or enforced, set in before Culloden. The
Hudson’s Bay Company had recruited its servants from hardy
Orkneymen and Hebridean islanders. Between 1715 and 1745, while
the ill-used Scots of Ulster were knitting a chain of British outposts
along the Alleghanies, philanthropic General Oglethorpe took out a
number of Highlanders to his Georgia colony; others settled in North
Carolina and in New York; and it is said that some of these exiles still
kept up their Gaelic a generation ago, though it does not appear that
the Stars and Stripes afford a pattern for tartans. When Aberdeen
bailies connived at the kidnapping of children for the “plantations,”
arbitrary chiefs like old Lovat did not stick at getting rid of
troublesome vassals by selling them into the same servitude, to
which Covenanters and other rebels had been transported in the
previous century. Proscribed rebels naturally sought refuge in the
New World, where rebellion of another stamp would soon be in
fashion; then it is notable that these exiles were apt to take the side
of the king de facto.

CROFTERS’ COTTAGES, ONICH, INVERNESS-SHIRE

 The exodus was accelerated after the crushing of the Jacobite
clans, when travellers like David Balfour could often see an emigrant
ship freighting with heavy hearts in Highland harbours, else little
frequented. Pennant, who speaks of “epidemic migrations” in other
islands, states that a thousand people had left Skye before his visit.
Soldiers who had served in America spread through their native
glens report of a distant land of milk and honey. Large bodies were
led into hopeful exile by the tacksmen who had been their
immediate landlords, or by the priests of the Catholic clans. Emigrant
agents used arts of cajolery, and in some cases, it is said, carried off
youngsters by fraud or even force. The American Revolution checked
this migration for a time, then diverted its course to Canada.
Towards the end of the century the movement could be spoken of as
a “rage” or an undesirable “spirit” which deserved curbing by law.
But till after that period the chiefs were seldom concerned to get rid
of the vassals whose hereditary attachment still gave them
consequence, and by whose hands they hoped to reap more solid
advantages. One of Johnson’s hosts spoke of emigration as
deserting, a view which the sage of Fleet Street found quite
reasonable. One of Burns’s bitterest pasquinades attacks the
Highland Society as concerting means (1786) to hinder some
hundreds of Glengarry men in an “audacious” design of escape to
Canada “from their lawful lords and masters.”
It was prosperous sheep farming that gave a main impetus to the
shifting of idle hands thrown out of employment; while the pacific
settling down of the Highlands would increase the mouths to be fed,
as in India, under the pax Britannica, humane war against natural
checks on population has multiplied a people always tending to press
upon their means of subsistence. The lamb was in Scotland not only
an emblem but a pledge of peace. The substitution of sheep for
more easily driven cattle had in half a century or so gone to quiet
and scatter the Border clans, once as keen for booty and bloodshed
as those of the Highlands; yet no minstrel bemoans the
depopulation of Ettrick and Liddesdale. The Highlanders in historical
times had small hairy sheep as well as flocks of goats; but their best
stock used to be the small black cattle, whose blood they would
sometimes draw to mix with oatmeal in seasons of scarcity, and
might starve outright when those lean herds were raided by as
hungry neighbours.
All through the eighteenth century the keeping of an improved
breed of sheep in large flocks had been spreading northward from
the Borders, largely displacing cattle in upland districts where such
enterprising drovers as Rob Roy had not to be reckoned with. Into
the Highlands this change would often be introduced by strangers
placed upon forfeited estates, a fact not recommending it to the
natives. Chiefs and lairds who followed the new system were at first
laughed at as wise-acres like to lose their money; but the clansmen
found it no laughing matter when sheep were found to pay better
than humble homes, and more and more small tenants had rough
notice that their room was needed rather than their company. Scott
tells us how his first acquaintance with the Trossachs was in leading
a party of soldiers to evict a family believed unwilling to carry out a
bargain made for their removal. Between the local Cains and the
intruding Abels ill-feeling, quarrels, outrages could not but result,
which in many cases went with little notice as but too like the state
of society just passed away. In 1792 a number of hot-headed Ross
and Sutherland men proclaimed at several parish churches that on a
certain day all the sheep were to be driven out of these two counties
beyond the Beauly River. Some two hundred men undertook to carry
out this clearance, and went on for days driving off sheep in
thousands till they were encountered by the sheriff with a military
force, when most of the raiders took to their heels. A few prisoners,
tried at Inverness, were sentenced to various punishments; but
public opinion was so strong on their side that they seem to have
been helped out of jail, no great zeal for their recapture being shown
by the authorities.
This is perhaps the most remarkable ebullition of a grudge hot all
over the Highlands then, and not quite cool in our own day. Sheep-
stealing on a small scale was common, the crofters and the
shepherds retorting the blame on each other. Another sore point was
the small tenants’ cattle or ponies straying on to their old pastures
and being impounded or chased off to destruction on rocky ground.
A brighter feature of the revolution came through the placing of poor
farmers on hitherto barren mosses which they were helped and
guided in transforming to fertile land. But too many landlords, in
their haste to be rich, acted with a disastrous want of consideration
for those who had hitherto looked on them as an earthly providence,
bound to make up for the deficiencies of nature, and who were
naturally slow to accept Lowland conceptions of landed property.
To many a Gael his native land seemed no longer worth living in
now that the “law had reached Ross-shire” As yet the landlords did
little to help away their dependants to New World fields. One
philanthropic nobleman, Lord Selkirk, distinguished himself by his
zeal in colonising the wilds of Canada. He began by settling some
hundreds of Highlanders in the comparatively mild climate of the St.
Lawrence mouth. His more ambitious scheme was in the Red River
valley. But his agents here served him ill; his claims were disputed
by the North-Western Fur Company; and the clansmen whom he
sent to this remote wilderness found themselves in for a petty civil
war, after half a century’s want of practice. The colony was broken
up by hostile force; but Selkirk, like a true Douglas, would not own
himself beaten. He raised a small private army from soldiers thrown
out of employment at the end of the British-American war of 1812,
retook his chief station, Fort Douglas, and there laid the foundations
of what is now the flourishing province of Manitoba. About the time
of his death in 1820 there entered the field another Scottish
recruiter, Gregor MacGregor, the Venezuelan General, who
proclaimed himself Cacique of Poyais in Central America, raising a
loan on that title, granting lordships, commissions, orders of chivalry,
issuing banknotes, and promising mounts and marvels to his future
subjects. But imagination and paper money were the main assets of
his enterprise; and the few hundreds he deluded, most of them from
Scotland, reached the Mosquito shore only to perish of fever or
starvation till rescued by the authorities of Honduras. The fate of this
ill-conducted attempt, reviving memories of the older Darien
disaster, must have gone to check emigration at a time when there
was sore need of such a remedy.
The most notorious and far-spread clearing off of the population
was that carried out in Sutherland in the second and third decades
of last century. Nearly the whole of this county belonged to an infant
Countess, who grew up to marry the rich English Marquis of
Stafford, eventually created Duke of Sutherland. They resolved to
improve their vast northern estate by giving up the interior to sheep,
the inhabitants moved to a fringe of small holdings on the sea-coast,
where a small farm could be eked out by fishery. The matter seems
fairly enough stated by Hugh Miller, though a hot advocate on the
popular side:
Here is a vast tract of land, furnished with two distinct sources
of wealth. Its shores may be made the seats of extensive
fisheries, and the whole of its interior parcelled out into
productive sheep farms. All is waste in its present state; it has no
fisheries, and two-thirds of its internal produce is consumed by
the inhabitants. It had contributed, for the use of the community
and the landlord, its large herds of black cattle; but the English
family saw, and, we believe, saw truly, that for every one pound
of beef which it produced, it could be made to produce two
pounds of mutton, and perhaps a pound of fish in addition. And it
was resolved, therefore, that the inhabitants of the central
districts, who, as they were mere Celts, could not be transformed,
it was held, into store farmers, should be marched down to the
seaside, there to convert themselves into fishermen, on the
shortest possible notice, and that a few farmers of capital, of the
industrious Lowland race, should be invited to occupy the new
subdivisions of the interior. And, pray, what objections can be
urged against so liberal and large-minded a scheme? The poor
inhabitants of the interior had very serious objections to urge
against it. Their humble dwellings were of their own rearing; it
was they themselves who had broken in their little fields from the
waste; from time immemorial, far beyond the reach of history,
had they possessed their mountain holdings,—they had defended
them so well of old that the soil was still virgin ground, in which
the invader had found only a grave; and their young men were
now in foreign lands, fighting at the command of their
chieftainess the battles of their country, not in the character of
 hired soldiers, but of men who regarded these very holdings as
their stake in the quarrel. To them, then, the scheme seemed
fraught with the most flagrant, the most monstrous injustice.
Were it to be suggested by some Chartist convention in a time of
revolution that Sutherland might be still further improved, that it
was really a piece of great waste to suffer the revenues of so
extensive a district to be squandered by one individual; that it
would be better to appropriate them to the use of the community
in general; that the community in general might be still further
benefited by the removal of the one said individual from Dunrobin
to a roadside, where he might be profitably employed in breaking
stones; and that this new arrangement could not be entered on
too soon—the noble Duke would not be a whit more astonished,
or rendered a whit more indignant, by the scheme, than were the
Highlanders of Sutherland by the scheme of his predecessor.
It is believed that the ducal couple were not fully aware of the
suffering caused by their innovations. The poor Highlanders could
not believe that it was intended to root them from their homes like
weeds. They took little notice of warnings and summonses, till in
many cases the agents of authority appeared to thrust them out by
force, the most effectual method being to pull down or set fire to
their wretched hovels, turning hundreds of families out to the mercy
of the weather. Their heath pastures had been first burned off; and
they were not always allowed time to save their small stock and
crops. Violence hastened the end of many infirm old people; and
even strong men, it is stated, lost their health through hardships
that bred fever and other diseases. Except in one or two instances
there appears to have been no attempt at forcible resistance, while
the executors of such rough policy, provoked by the passive
obstinacy of the evicted, often worked themselves up to a brutal
temper of destruction. So violent were their proceedings that one of
the Sutherland factors, Mr. Sellar, had in 1816 to stand his trial at
Inverness on the charge of culpable homicide and fire-raising. He
was acquitted; and the work of eviction went on unchecked under a
new agent, Mr. Loch, who in print defended this agrarian revolution,
and gained the verdict of the voting class in his election to
Parliament. Another factor concerned in those notorious evictions
lived to tell in our time that he had received hundreds of letters from
the colonies thanking him for apparent harshness that turned out a
blessing in the end.
At the time the soreness was intense. Almost the only magistrates
in the county were those large stranger tenants, oppressors as they
seemed, who would take care to do themselves justice. The
Established Church ministers were also on the landlord’s side, as a
rule, accused by the opposite party as having been bribed through
the favour of the class to which they inclined to be subservient, and
especially by advantages given to their glebes in the redistribution of
land. This character of Erastian worldliness fastened upon the Old
Kirk largely accounted for the success of the Free Church in the
Highlands, the latter’s sympathy having commonly gone with the
people, who found an eloquent champion in Hugh Miller, ex-mason
and Editor of the Witness. The best-known contemporary account of
the Sutherland evictions is Donald Macleod’s Gloomy Memories,
letters written to an Edinburgh paper by another mason lad, who,
like fellow-sympathisers, was practically expelled from the district for
denouncing the landlords’ agents. His book, reprinted at home and
in Canada, and included in Mr. Alexander Mackenzie’s History of the
Highland Clearances, is very angry in its tone; but impartial
judgment can hardly be expected from one who has witnessed such
a sight as this:
Strong parties for each district, furnished with faggots and
other combustibles, rushed on the dwellings of this devoted
people, and immediately commenced setting fire to them,
proceeding in their work with the greatest rapidity till about three
hundred houses were in flames! The consternation and confusion
were extreme; little or no time was given for removal of persons
or property—the people striving to remove the sick or helpless
before the fire should reach them—next, struggling to save the
most valuable of their effects. The cries of the women and
children—the roaring of the affrighted cattle, hunted at the same
time by the yelling dogs of the shepherds amid the smoke and
fire—altogether presented a scene that completely baffles
description: it required to be seen to be believed. A dense cloud
of smoke enveloped the whole country by day, and even extended
far on the sea; at night an awfully grand but terrific scene
 presented itself—all the houses in an extensive district in flames
at once! I myself ascended a height about eleven o’clock in the
evening, and counted two hundred and fifty blazing houses, many
of the owners of which were my relations, and all of whom I
personally knew, but whose present condition, whether in or out
of the flames, I could not tell. The conflagration lasted six days,
till the whole of the dwellings were reduced to ashes or smoking
ruins. During one of these days a boat lost her way in the dense
smoke as she approached the shore; but at night she was
enabled to reach a landing-place by the light of the flames!
The clearances carried out, the people had a fresh tale of
sufferings to bear in addition to the want and sickness engendered
by their removal. The bewildered tenants had hastily to build houses
on their new allotments, often on unsuitable or unhealthy sites; and
it was some time before, on the whole, they began to find
themselves unwillingly more comfortable than in their moorland
hovels. They might have to shake down among new neighbours, all
cramped for room on thin soil. On a rough and stormy coast, most of
them had to be apprenticed to the trade of fishing, on which for the
future they must partly depend; and at first shell-fish picked from
the rocks might be their best diet. Even after they had learned to be
bold and skilful fishermen, the herring and the harvest might fail
together, as they did in one black season, bringing the bulk of the
population to starvation but for charitable aid. It was small comfort
to them to see the prosperity of the large Lowland sheep-farmers
who had supplanted them. The Duchess of Sutherland made some
generous attempts at clarifying the misery she had shaken up; but
her occasional visits could not instruct her fully as to the state of
things, and she is said to have been hoodwinked and misled by the
factors whom the people, rightly or wrongly, looked on as their real
tyrants.

‘Tis not the distant Emperor they fear,

But the proud viceroy who is ever near!
 These “doers,” indeed, were often to be pitied rather, who,
perhaps against their own sympathies, had to set hand to what
seemed the dirty work of absentee proprietors. The clansmen
appear never to have quite lost their hereditary feeling for their
superior, even during these few years when three thousand families
were driven from 800,000 acres of land to make room for sheep,
which in turn have largely been displaced by deer.[5]

[5]It ought to be remembered that in a later generation the

Sutherland family sank at least a quarter of a million pounds in
trying to reclaim thousands of acres that to a great extent ran
back to their native wildness.
 REDDIN’ THE LINE

Forty years ago the Economist stated that the same change had
been worked on two millions of acres in Scotland, where fertile as
well as unfertile land has been artificially made a wilderness, as the
New Forest was by William the Conqueror. From Glentilt, from
Lochaber, from Strathglass, from Glenorchy, from Glenelg, from
Rannoch, and from many another beloved glen and strath, the
people were pressed or driven forth by the pastoral invasion of
strangers. Lairds who held out against the movement would often be
impoverished, had perhaps themselves to emigrate; then their
properties passed into the hands of new men, not so scrupulous in
ridding the land of unprofitable human stock. In the course of last
century owners grew willing to promote the emigration which they
had formerly tried to check, and found it a cheap charity to ship off
to America at their own expense the inconvenient dependants who
now showed more reluctance to seek sunnier climes, stiffly sticking
in their mud under a rainfall that on the coast is sometimes over 100
inches per annum. Visitors to Strathpeffer may see how the crofter
has a fairer chance on the east side of the Grampians, that fence
him against Atlantic clouds.
In the wet and windy Hebrides the same change has been
pushed, but not so thoroughly in some parts, while in others very
forcible means of eviction were used both by man and by nature.
The people of the isles and on secluded stretches of the opposite
coast are less touched by the spirit of the age, more like the
Highlanders who fought for Prince Charlie. They are sprinkled,
indeed, with mainlanders settled here, and with waifs of shipwreck
and fishery. Interlopers and natives throve for a time through the
kelp industry, whose decline left too many mouths with too little
provision. Some islands have passed into the hands of philanthropic
strangers, who spend large sums on ameliorating the condition of
the inhabitants, often with the proverbial result of good intentions.
Liberality seems to breed new hydra-heads of poverty among a
people satisfied with a low standard of well-being, and bent on
clinging limpet-like to a soil that will not support their increase.
Family affection, close knitted, for Donald, “in the condensation of
his focal circle,” keeps sons trying to scrape a living from the patch
of ground on which their parents could barely rear them. Thus each
of the islands makes a petty Ireland, where periodic cries of famine
go to justify the policy of clearance. The blame is loudly laid on
landlords; but it remains to be seen whether the tinkering of the
Crofters’ Commission will effectually solder all the “ifs” and “ands”
that are offered to make a Highland Arcadia. The Commissioners
have used a free hand, cutting down rents “with a hatchet,” wiping
off old scores of arrears and compulsorily marking out holdings of
arable and pasture land, which should pay if Nature be a party to
the arrangement, especially as the subdivision of holdings is
forbidden, which did so much mischief by beating out the thin lot of
semi-starvation. The Congested Districts Board has recently bought
70,000 acres in Skye, on which may be carried out such an
experiment in State landlordism as under more favourable
circumstances has not yet given new heavens and a new earth to
less congested areas of the world.
The Crofters’ Holdings Act of 1886 was taken as a treaty of peace,
that seems not beyond danger of being broken between landlord
and tenant. Already in some cases where a clean sheet has been
made, arrears begin to gather again, so that we may soon hear
fresh ugly stories of eviction and riot. Unfortunately, of late years
newspapers, political agitators, and contact with more prosperous
society have inflamed the grievances of the people to a chronic
sullenness, smouldering up from time to time in inhuman outrages
on cattle and futile resistance to legal proceedings, which are only
too much of a return towards the good old times. The Celt, as
wrong-headed as he is warm-hearted, much agrees with that typical
Saxon, Mr. Tulliver, in connecting lawyers with some Ossianic variant
of Old Harry. If Donald had more sense of humour he would not
make martyrs of men lightly punished for attacking sheriffs’ officers
in the exercise of their duty in very trying circumstances. So strong
is clannishness still, that from all over Scotland, and beyond the
seas, come help and sympathy for the outbreaks of abuse, outrage,
and perverse stupidity, that seem the lees of the old devotion,
refined to such a noble spirit by poets. But the Highlander of our
time has not taken to Irish assassination, as at the date of a
Campbell factor’s murder by Alan Breck or James Stewart, or whom?
and that remoter date when those early “improvers,” the young
Macdonalds of Keppoch, were killed by their own kinsmen for the
crime of being able to teach their grandfathers.
 Again, I have shirked all controversy as to land laws and systems
of agriculture. But, turning to facts, we can see the effect of the
evicting regime. Over the thoroughly cleared districts the people are
as well off as in other parts of Scotland, in material circumstances at
least far ahead of the dirty, starving, and quarrelling Highlanders
described by Burt, Pennant, and Johnson. What they have lost in
spirit, romance, loyalty, and other sentiments is not so easy to
estimate. Their well-being has certainly come at expense of their
numbers. While the population of Scotland has in a century nearly
tripled itself, that of the Highland counties has in several cases
remained almost stationary or even decreased, the people, too, as
elsewhere, being more concentrated in towns and villages. The
question is whether the landlords have not on the whole done no
better for themselves than for as many of the people as could here
find welfare.
A further question, for the nation, relates to the fact that this
semi-civilised world of ours has not yet entered upon Herbert
Spencer’s golden age of mutual contract, since the most Christian
and Catholic potentates are still fain to settle their disputes at a
game in which Highlanders once took a willing hand. Should we not
breed food for powder rather than sheep and deer? The idea seems
to be that snug burgesses of the south might sit comfortably at
home, thinking imperially and sentimentally, while those hardy
mountaineers went out to fight for them with due applause from
newspaper readers. Alas! the Gael, whether thriving or starving, no
longer shows his ancestral readiness to go and be killed, at any
king’s or chief’s bidding; and his Free Church pastors do not
recommend army life.
During the half-century or so after Culloden fifty battalions had
been raised in the Highlands to serve the Guelphs more effectively
than their fathers had served the Stuarts. Norman Macleod recalls
that in the wars of the French Revolution, besides thousands of
soldiers and scores of officers sent to the regular army, Argyll had
three regiments of Fencibles and a company of volunteers in every
parish. Since the beginning of those wars he counts up 21 generals,
48 colonels, 600 other commissioned officers, and 10,000 soldiers as
sprung from the poor island of Skye alone, where, a century ago,
half the farms were held by half-pay veterans. Another writer asserts
that 1600 Skyemen stood in the squares of Waterloo. But even some
years before Waterloo half a dozen kilted regiments had been
reduced to trousers for want of recruits; and in our day it is too
seldom that the real Highlander has heart or mind to enlist, now that
—

The land, that once with groups of happy clansmen teemed,

Who with a kindly awe revered the clan’s protecting head,
Lies desolate, and stranger lords, by vagrant pleasure led,
Track the lone deer, and for the troops of stalwart men
One farmer and one forester people the joyless glen.

This poet of course rather shirks the fact that the clansmen, if
“happy,” “kindly,” and so forth, were like to be so at the expense of
other “revering” clansmen and their ineffectually “protecting head.”
At all events, they have little reverence left for “stranger lords.”
The resentful men who once made our plaided and plumed array
have passed rather into the ranks of labour in Glasgow, London, and
other large towns. Not a few of them indeed have gone into sea-
service, as shown by the Royal Naval Reserve at Stornoway. Many
have sought better fortunes in Australia, New Zealand, all over the
world. I was at school with a Highland laird’s sons, who for years
went kenspeckle, like Lord Brougham, in a succession of shepherd’s-
plaid nether garments off the same web, sent home from the plains
of Otago by a loyal ex-tenant. But for three or four generations the
special promised land of Highlanders has been Canada, a region of
hills, woods, rivers, and lakes, in which the Celt learns soon to feel
at home; and when he comes in sight of the Rocky Mountains he
hails a new, a greater, a brighter Lochaber rising up to the gates of
heaven, where whole clans of angelic pipers, tartan-winged, will
welcome him at last with all their pibrochs played in one celestial
chorus.
 Across the Atlantic, the sea-sick and home-sick emigrants’ troubles
were not always over at once. They had often to suffer sorely from
ill-laid plans, or from want of plans, throwing them on the charity of
a new country. The new lairds, who were glad to get rid of them,
thought they did enough in paying the passage of helpless glensmen
thrown among bewildering scenes. But every fresh Highlander
landed was a friend to those who followed his example; and in a
country that has room for half a dozen Scotlands it would be a hale
and hearty man’s own fault if he did not soon clear out for himself a
home and livelihood free from help or hindrance of chief as of factor.
Their present prosperity is attested by the fact that “Mac” seems
almost a title for Canadian statesmen, and by names of towns and
counties scattered over the Dominion—Macdonald, Mackenzie,
Dundas, Lennox, Inverness, Seaforth, Gareloch, Wallace, and of
course Campbeltown. In travelling by train through Ontario the
Scottish wanderer’s heart may come into his mouth at the familiar
sound of station after station. Clans have in some parts settled down
together, the Catholic ones keeping their priests and least forgetting
the language in which they continue to pray. Many of these exiles
not only cherish their Gaelic but, it appears, the particular dialect of
their original district, handed down to generations that never set
foot on Scottish soil. To-day there is perhaps more Gaelic spoken in
Canada than in all Scotland. There is also a clan of French-speaking
Macs, descended from Highland soldiers who married and settled
among the daughters of Heth.
Those Canadians who have given in to the conquering Saxon
tongue make up for such defection by an earnest cult of bagpipes,
kilts, and reels, flaunting red knees in a clime of blue noses, and
lustily singing the songs of Caledonian Sion in what is now no
strange land. The Dominion rears battalions of kilted warriors, that
skirl defiance to the mosquitry of summer as to the snows of winter.
Britain has lately been visited by a Canadian “Kiltie” Band, three
score strong, making on Sassenach platforms such a revived show of
tartan as is hardly to be seen in all the Highlands. One of them,
belonging to the MacAnak clan, stood seven feet high, a hopeful sign
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