3 OCTOBER 1846, Page 7

SCOTLAND.

"The Times" Commissioner has been sent to the Highlands of Scot- land. He dates his first latter from Ardgay, Ross-shire, on the 22nd of Sep- tember: the result of his investigation thus far is, that there has been a general failure in the potato crop, and that there is consequent scarcity and privation; but that good employment is abundant in the Eastern High- lands, and that with activity and self-dependence the pressure may be met. He extends his investigation to the general causes of poverty in the High- lands, and discovers that they are ethnographical—the idleness and helpless- ness of the Celtic race. In Ireland, the descendants of the ancient Scoti submit to filth, poverty, and hopeless lack of improvement, because they "will not be throubled" with any exertion: the same race in the Scottish Highlands "will nae be fashed " with any necessary effort at improvement.

The Morning Chronicle has also a special correspondent in the North of Scotland to report the condition of the people.

In reply to a letter from Mr. Bailie, M.P. for Inverness, Sir George Grey states that a Commissariat officer will be sent to the Scottish High- lands, to make a report to Government on the probable supply of food for the people; but that direct pecuniary advances cannot be promised.

The traffic on the North British Railway was interrupted on Tuesday by floods having injured the line, and washed away three bridges.

Dunblane has had a narrow escape from a tremendous explosion. The children of a sub-contractor on the Scottish Central Railway, who slept in an attic at the Cross, set fire to the bed-curtains with a candle, and the room was soon on fire. On the same floor of the adjoining house, and separated only by a partition, lived another sub-contractor; on the alarm of lire he escaped with his filmily and whatever he could carry off with him, his retreat being hastened by the know- ledge that he had stored in his room nearly half a ton of gunpowder! Fortunately, the fire was soon extinguished without spreading to the adjoining room.

A dreadful accident happened on Monday morning on the railway works near Aberdeen, opposite the Devanha brewery. "Several arches of the inclined plane had been completed, and the necessary wooden erections to support it while build- ing were taken away last week; and arrangements were in progress to proceed with others. A little before eight o'clock in the morning, three of the arches gave way, burying among the stones, bricks, and rubbish, a number of the work- men. Measures were immediately taken to relieve the unfortunate individuals: but we lament to state that, after a tedious and arduous task of upwards of an hour, seven were taken out dead, having evidently been killed instantaneously; four others were got out much bruised." Two of the injured men have since died, making a loss of nine lives. The precise cause of the disaster not known.

The Glasgow Constitutional gives the following particulars of a very fatal dis- aster in a coal-pit. "On Monday morning a dreaffal accident from explosion of fire-damp, whereby six lives have been lost, occurred at a pit connected with the Clyde Iron Works, the property of Messrs. Dunlop, situated near Toll Cross, a few miles up the Clyde from Glasgow. The pit in which the accident occurred is called BogWs Hole Pit, and is situated within a stone's throw of the river-side. We understand it is a working which has been daily open of late, and no premoni- tion of danger had taken place in connexion with it. .About four o'clock on Mon- day morning, five men and a boy went down in the course of their ordinary emu - parflons; immediately on the lights which they carried coming in contact with the foul air, the explosion took place, by which the whole have been deprived of life."