Instead of agricultural and pastoral
produce, importations of wool, or samples of grain, from the infant
colony, there was sent to the Scottish Court a ghastly cargo of
twelve human heads in sacks; and it was hoped that, after such an
example of severity, matters might succeed better. But the settlers
were deceived. After a feeble and protracted struggle for a few
years, sickness and famine, perils by land and perils by water,
incessant war, and frequent assassinations, destroyed the colony;
and the three great western chiefs, Macdonald of Sleat, Macleod of
Harris, and Mackenzie of Kintail, enjoyed the delight of seeing
the principal gentlemen adventurers made captive by Tormod Macleod;
who, after extorting from them a renunciation of their titles,
and an oath never to return to the Lewis, dismissed them to carry
to the Scottish Court the melancholy reflection that a Celtic
population, and the islands on which it was scattered, were not
yet the materials or the field for the further operations of the
economists of Fife and Mid-Lothian."
In 1610 his Lordship returned to the Lewis with 700 men, and
finally brought the whole island to submission, with the exception
of Neil Macleod and a few of his followers, who retired to the rock
of Berissay, and took possession of it.
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