GEOGRAPHY AND TOPOGRAPHY

Physically, Knoydart appears like an extended knuckle stretching westwards from Loch Quoich. It is bounded on the north by Loch Hourn, on the south by Loch Nevis and to the west by the Sound of Sleat. To the east lie high mountains and the freshwater Loch Quoich. Seton Gordon reports that three cairns beside the track at Mam na Cloich Airde (NM 8994) mark the boundaries of the lands of Lovat (N Morar to the WSW), Lochiel (Loch Arkaig to the ESE) and Glengarry (NE and NW). Since Glengarry held both Knoydart and Glengarry, he was presumably not concerned with the boundary between his two territories.

Most of Knoydart is incapable of agriculture. Very little land lies below 200 feet and most of this is confined to the coastal strip and the major glens (See Plate 1). Relief has always dictated the district's settlement pattern which concentrated on pockets of land along the coast and in the river valleys of Barrisdale, Guseran, Inverie and Carnach.

Geography has also determined Knoydart's orientation and communications. Access to the east is by steep, rocky passes from Kinloch Hourn, Barrisdale or Carnoch to Loch Quoich, or from Sourlies to Loch Arkaig. These are so harsh and inaccessible as to effectively prohibit commercial traffic through the ages. Men and animals can walk these routes, but little can be carried. Even today only the first of these passes has a road. Knoydart's communications, and therefore orientation, have always been seawards; west to Skye, north across Loch Hourn to Glenelg, or south to Morar. Boats can carry heavy loads and the distances involved are not great, usually only a mile or two to Glenelg or North Morar, about three to Skye.

Climate, Soils and Geology

Knoydart's climate is also unfavourable to agriculture. Along with other parts of the west coast it is affected by the warm- water currents of the Atlantic Gulf Stream. It enjoys relatively mild winters, especially on the coast, with a great deal of wet and windy weather. This favours pastoral, rather than arable, farming although in past times the climate was not always as it is now. The Vikings, in particular, enjoyed a climatic optimum between about 800 and 1200 AD.

Knoydart's natural resources are limited. It has only a tiny amount of cultivable land, with plenty of rough grazing of varied quality. It has some woodland but, as we shall see later, this was not always of economic value. Its rivers support some salmon and it has peat. It is surrounded on three sides by the sea and this has always been its richest resource. The underlying rocks, as for the rest of the Rough Bounds, are an intractable mix of Moinian schists. The soils are thin, patchy, and heavily leached by the incessant rain. The only mineral of any value is mica, which was exploited briefly during the Second World War.

Until the eighteenth century, Knoydart was inhabited on the basis of agricultural potential alone. There were attempts by the Forfeited Estates Commissioners to establish a fishing industry but these ended in failure. It is only in the recent past that sporting interests, or the desire to have a good view, have become determinants in settlement. Any historical summary must reflect this agricultural orientation. People settled here, not for the mineral resources or the presence of local industry, not because of strategic ports and harbours or established trade patterns, but because they could grow crops and graze animals.

Early Topography and Cartography

Our earliest visual impression of Knoydart comes from Holland. In 1654, Blaeu published Volume 5 of his Atlas Novus and made Scotland one of the best-mapped countries in the world. In this volume, on a map showing 'Braid-Allaban', Knoydart appears; not quite as we visualise it today, but with the deep embayment at Inverie instantly recognisable. Kilchoan is marked as a settlement and the glens named at Meadail, Guseran and Barrisdale (See Plate 2). Although this map is attributed to Robert Gordon of Straloch, there is good evidence that the groundwork for the western coastline was done by Timothy Pont, the father of Scottish cartography, at the end of the sixteenth century. Pont, minister of Dunnet in Caithness from about 1600, was responsible for the majority of Blaeu's maps of Scotland. He travelled the length and breadth of the country, making sketches and writing descriptions of the areas he surveyed. His motives are not known, although Jeffrey Stone has suggested that it may have been in connection with the newly reformed church in Scotland.

The Rough Bounds

Certainly some of the great statistical and analytical surveys in Scottish history are connected with the Protestant Kirk. Webster's population survey in 1755, the Old and New Statistical Accounts, the collection of 'Moral Statistics' by the Inverness Society for the Education of the Poor in the Highlands in 1822, are all good examples of this appetite for data. Whether it was because the new church needed and wanted the information, or whether it was because ministers were among the few with the education, and the leisure, with which to conduct such investigations, is a matter of almost theological nicety. At any rate, clergymen were always at the forefront of surveys in the Western Isles, from Dean Munro in 1549 to John Walker in 1765 and John Buchanan in the 1780s.

After his death, some of Pont's papers passed to Robert Gordon of Straloch, who had known Pont personally, and thence to Robert's son, James Gordon of Rothiemay. Others among them went to Holland where they became background material for Blaeu's Atlas. There is a collection of his surviving manuscript maps in the National Library of Scotland. Pont not only drew maps, he also made notes of what he saw, as an aide-memoire and to help him in the later process of composition. Not all his original jottings have survived, but in the Sibbald Collections are copies of some of his notes as made by James Gordon. In 1907, Sir Arthur Mitchell edited further copies of these amongst the Macfarlane Papers and pointed out James Gordon's contribution. 'There is no doubt that James Gordon was largely copying when he wrote, but he commented, deleted, and amplified as he copied'. Nevertheless, Mitchell attributed the great bulk of these notes to Timothy Pont, giving them 'exceptional value'. This is an important issue. If the notes which appear in Macfarlane are really Pont's then this makes them the earliest description of Knoydart by at least 100 years. They were probably made between 1583 and 1610 and give us a glimpse of the area as it emerged from the Middle Ages.

Pont's notes survive in two forms, a long and a short version, both of which are printed in Macfarlane. The short version is James Gordon's copy, but bears such a striking resemblance to the long version that it is obvious that they each derive from the same...