Having described the sort of cottages erected for farm-labourers in Dumfriesshire, we shall now notice those erected for the same class in the Rhinns of Galloway, on the estate of Mr. Macdouall of Logan. These erections, for which the name of hut or hovel would be more appropriate than that of cottage, are built of turf, or mud, or stones, or of a mixture of all these. They are commonly covered with straw, though sometimes with slates. The interior of each contains but one apartment, open to the rafters (which, as may be expected, are blackened by smoke), and having no floor but the earth. The fire is made on the ground, at one end of the room; and, by way of chimney, a quadrilateral structure of straw rope, warped around a frame of wood, is projected from the wall over the fire, and continued upwards through the roof, terminating about 1 ft. above it. The windows are very small, and fixed. Mr. Macdouall receives sixpence a week for cottages of this kind, from labourers to whom he pays tenpence a day, the common wages of the district. A gentleman resident in that part of the country told us that he knew one of Mr. Macdouall's labourers, who, in one of these cottages, and on the above wages, from which all broken time is deducted, has to support a wife and six children. Rags, filth, cutaneous eruptions, and sometimes atrophy, in the children; emaciation, debility, and premature old age, in the adults, are the inevitable effects of this state of existence. It is but just, however, to add that Mr. Macdouall grants, by way of indulgence to his labourers, land on which they may grow their potatoes, provided they manure and clean it.
