 Dr Lachlan turned Rùm into a sheep farm , with its population replaced by some 8 @,@ 000 blackface sheep , but the price of mutton and wool was in decline . In 1839 Lachlan was forced to relinquish his tenancy of Rùm , bankrupt , penniless and , in the words of a Cape Breton letter from 1897 , " much worse off than the comfortable people he turned out of Rùm 13 years previously " . The same letter described Lachlan as " the Curse and Scourge of the Highland Crofters " . 
