In this Scottishweb section on the highland clearances there is a special focus on the Sutherland Clearances, sometimes known as 'the cruel clearances'.

The reality of the highland clearances can be seen all over Sutherland. The remains of burned out blackhouses, frequently comprising of whole villages and settlements, stand as witnesses to the cruel and uncompromising plans drawn up by men driven by greed. From Strathnaver to Assynt many thosands of people were moved from their ancestral lands to emigration ships bound for the colonies or to the difficult and rocky terrain of the coast.

The Clan system and way of life had died with Culloden and the Jacobite Rebellion, but the people of the highlands, and especially the north of Sutherland, were the same clan people, most of which carried the clan name - Mackay.

Life, however, was tough and anyone with an impression of a bonnie wee highland village where everyone was happy couldn't be more inaccurate. Most people had taken to growing potatoes, which provided more food but were vulnerable to disease and crop failure. The houses themselves consisted of a one-level stone dwelling, with some rough wooden rafters and thatched with turf. The fire was in the middle of the room and smoke escaped through a hole in the roof. Rough living, compared to those in Edinburgh! In fact, emigration was already happening to a degree in the highlands, where people chose for themselves to leave their homeland for pastures in the new world.

Despite the emigration, the population of every highland county increased between 1755 and 1821. Population was not the only thing on the way up. Rent was increasing and ordinary people found it more and more difficult to pay. Here are some views of travellers, writers and residents of the day. Notice the various different views on the changing highlands:

I should love my father not merely as such, because he was the son of the wise and pious Donald, whose memory the whole parish venerates, and the grandson of the gallant Archibald, who was the tallest man in the district, who could throw the putting stone further than any Campbell living, and never held a Christmas without a deer of his own killing, four Fingalian greyhounds at his fireside, and sixteen kinsmen sharing his feast. Shall I not be proud of a father, the son of such fathers, of whose fame he is the living record. What is my case is every other Highlander's.
Mrs. Grant of Laggan
Letters from the mountains, 1773

It is not easy for those who live in a country like England, where so many of the lower orders have nothing but what they acquire by the labour of a passing day, and possess no permanent property or share of the agricultural produce of the soil, to appreciate the nature of the spirit of independence in countries where the free cultivators of the soil constitute the major part of the population. It can scarcely be imagined how proud a man feels, however small his property may be, when he has a spot of arable land and pasture stocked with corn, horses and cows. He considers himself to be an independent person.
David Stewart of Garth
Sketches of the Highlanders, Vol.1

Near Taynish in Argyll, ridges of potatoes appeared on the steepest eminences, and green streaks of corn emerged on the summits of the hills amid clusters of white rocks. Almost every spot of arable land appeared cultivated, even where no plough could possibly be employed. On enquiry we found that the spade was used in tillage where the country is very rocky and irregular.
John Leyden
Tour in the Highlands and Western Islands, 1800

HIGHLAND DWELLINGS

By a house, I mean a building with one storey over another; by a hut, a dwelling with only one floor. The laird, the tacksman and the minister have commonly houses. Wherever there is a house, the stranger finds a welcome.
The wall of a common hut is always built without mortar by a skilful adaptation of loose stones. Sometimes a double wall of stones is raised and the intermediate space is filled with earth.The air is thus completely excluded. Some walls are, I think, formed of turf. Of the meanest huts, the first room is lighted by the entrance, and the second by the smoke hole.The fire is usually made in the middle.
There are huts, or dwellings, of only one storey, inhabited by gentlemen, which have walls cemented with mortar, glass wondows, and boarded floors. Of these, all have chimneys, and some chimneys have grates.
Dr Samuel Johnson
Journey to the Western Islands, 1773

The houses of the peasants in Mull are most deplorable. Some of the doors are hardly four feet high and the houses themselves, composed of earthen sods, in many instances are scarcely twelve. There is often no other outlet of smoke but at the door, the consequence of which is that the women are more squalid and dirty than the men and their features more disagreeable.
John Leyden
Tour in the Highlands and the Western Isles, 1800