His father
dying while he was a youth of sixteen, the management of the family
property thus early devolved upon him; and at eighteen he began a
course of vigorous improvement in the county of Caithness, which
eventually spread all over Scotland. Agriculture then was in a
most backward state; the fields were unenclosed, the lands
undrained; the small farmers of Caithness were so poor that they
could scarcely afford to keep a horse or shelty; the hard work was
chiefly done, and the burdens borne, by the women; and if a cottier
lost a horse it was not unusual for him to marry a wife as the
cheapest substitute. The country was without roads or bridges; and
drovers driving their cattle south had to swim the rivers along
with their beasts. The chief track leading into Caithness lay
along a high shelf on a mountain side, the road being some hundred
feet of clear perpendicular height above the sea which dashed
below. Sir John, though a mere youth, determined to make a new
road over the hill of Ben Cheilt, the old let-alone proprietors,
however, regarding his scheme with incredulity and derision. But
he himself laid out the road, assembled some twelve hundred workmen
early one summer's morning, set them simultaneously to work,
superintending their labours, and stimulating them by his presence
and example; and before night, what had been a dangerous sheep
track, six miles in length, hardly passable for led horses, was
made practicable for wheel-carriages as if by the power of magic.
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