the end of the 18th century, there has been a steady drift from the country to town. Unfortunately, much of Scotland's rural past is in ruins. Derelict cottages and ruined farmsteads are noticeable throughout the Highlands, the western islands, and the Border country. Such is a typical modern trend, as young people choose not to accept the hard life of farming and the scarcity of opportunity in the isolated areas mentioned. As an encyclopedia entry points out, "Many small communities, particularly in the western Highlands and islands, consist almost entirely of elderly people. Increasingly tourism is the major industry in these beautiful, but remote, pockets."
One event was instrumental in uniting the Highlanders and Lowlanders in a single cause: the crofting agitation of the 1880s. Crofters, or tenants who engage in crofting, or farming a small enclosed field, had become overcrowded relative
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