62
no less than 52 sales had been made, producing 819averagingabout 16/. 6s. 6-Jd. for each possession.
Tl)e quantity of moss which one man is able to heave in aday, from the moss bank to the drain, whan he meets with nointerruption, is seldom less than 48 cubic yards, each weighing90 stones, or 4320 stones in all. Valuing the day’s work of oneman at a shilling, a cubic yard is thus moved into the drain, andconsequently into the river Forth , for a farthing ; while the samequantity could not be carted to the same distance for less than6d. or 24 times the expense. An excellent gravelled road, 20feet wide, and a mile and a half long, is now carried across themoss; and there were in 1792, when this account was written, 69brick houses substantially built with lime. The possessions arelaid off in the way best suited for the operations, and are dividedby lanes in straight lines parallel to each other; and, parallel tothese again, the drains are carried in straight lines, to facilitate thefloating of the moss. Upon the banks of moss fronting the lanes,the operation of floating is begun, and 20 or 30 people are some-times seen heaving moss into the same drain. That the water maybe the more conveniently applied, the lanes include between themonly two possessions. The new houses are erected upon eachside of these lanes at the distance of 100 yards from each other.Before the lanes and roads were made, and while yet no groundwas cleared, the first settlers were obliged to erect their huts onthe surface of the moss. Upon the low moss there was plenty ofsod or turf for this purpose, of which the walls were composed.Upon the high moss no sod was to be found ; and the followingexpedient was resorted to. Having chosen a situation, the moss-tenant dug four trenches down to the clay, so as to separate anoblong or rectangular mass of sufficient dimensions for his house.He afterwards scooped out the inside of this for a dwelling, leav-ing a thickness of three feet for walls, and covered the whole withan ordinary cottage roof. Upon the softest parts of the moss,where such walls could not he obtained, the houses were built ofmoist peats closely compressed together, and constructed on aplatform of boards to prevent them from sinking. And in suchsituations, to stamp with the foot will shake the whole fabric andthe moss for fifty yards round. These turf huts are only tempo-rary habitations; and as soon as the tenant's have cleared a littleground, they build brick houses, for which they are a secondtime furnished with timber gratis by the proprietor.
In 1792, when this account was taken, the number of Scots-acres cleared was 3,50, or very near 444 English . The popula-tion on the moss, where none ever dwelt before, was 764, includ-ing men, women, and children, who had among them above 200-'cows, and about 54 horses. By a survey in 1805. 577 acres werecleared, including 12 acres occupied by roads. At present (1814)there are considerably above 800 acres cleared, and the popular