Sutherland, a maritime county in the extreme north of Scotland, is bounded W. and N. by the Atlantic, E. by Caithness, SE. by the North Sea, and S. by the Dornoch Firth and by Ross and Cromarty. Measuring 63 by 59 miles, it has an area of 2126 sq. m., or 1,360,459 acres, of which 47,633 are water and 12,812 foreshore. The Atlantic coasts, deeply indented by sea-lochs, are bold and rock-bound, in Cape Wrath (q.v.) attaining 523 feet; the south-eastern seaboard is comparatively flat. On the Caithness boundary rise the Hill of Ord (1324 feet) and Cnoc an Eireannaich (1698); but the mountains of Sutherland are all in the west—Benmore Assynt (3273), Coniveall (3234), Bendibrick (3154), Ben Hope (3040), Foinnaven (2980), Canisp (2779), and Suilven or the Sugar-loaf (2399). The Oykel, tracing the Ross-shire boundary, and falling into the Dornoch Firth, is the longest stream (35 miles); and of over 300 lochs and tarns the largest are Lochs Shlin (16 × 1½ miles) and Assynt (q.v., 6¾ × ¾). The geology is of great interest—Archæan gneiss predominating in the west, then Silurian, and then Old Red Sandstone. Coal has been mined at Brora off and on since 1573; and a find of gold at Kilnaden in 1868 for a time caused a rush of 'diggers.' The total percentage of cultivated area is only 2.9, in spite of costly reclamations carried on by the 3d Duke of Sutherland (1828-92), the largest proprietor—so costly indeed that during 1853-82 the expenditure on his estates exceeded the income derived from them by nearly a quarter of a million sterling. The live-stock includes over 10,000 cattle and 200,000 sheep; and the deer-forests, grouse-moors, and fishings (especially good for trout) attract many sportsmen. The climate varies much, and also the rainfall, which increases westward from 32 to 60 inches. Sutherland returns one member to parliament; its county town is Dornoch (q.v.). Pop. (1801) 23,117; (1851) 25,793; (1881) 23,370; (1891) 21,896. The Northmen, who down to the 12th century often descended on Sutherland and pillaged it, called it the 'Southern land,' as lying to the south of the Orkney and Shetland islands. An earldom of Sutherland was held from about 1228 by the Freskin family, but passed by marriage in 1514 to the Gordons, whose line also ended in an heiress in 1766. She married in 1785 George Granville Leveson-Gower, second Marquess of Sutherland, who in 1833 was created Duke of Sutherland. To him was due the credit or discredit of the so-called 'Sutherland clearances' (1810-20), by which the small tenants, living wretchedly in the interior, were compelled to remove to the coast or to the valleys near the sea.
See Sir Robert Gordon's History of the Earldom of Sutherland (1813), Bishop Pococke's Tour in 1760 in Sutherland and Caithness (1888), C. W. G. St John's Tour in Sutherlandshire (2 vols. 1849; new ed. 1884), A. Young's Angler's Guide to Sutherland (1880), A. Mackenzie's History of the Highland Clearances (1883), and J. E. Edwards-Moss's Season in Sutherland (1888).