Down  to  the  time  when  the  war  began  to  bring  into  prominence  so
many  places  of  which  the  wprld  at  large  had  never  heard  before,  the
diminutive  station  of  Nigg,  situate — on  the  main  line  of  the  Highland
Railway  system — eight  miles  to  the  north-east  of  Invergordon,  served,
not  a  town,  and  not  even  a  village,  but  a  straggling  country  parish  com-
prising the  agricultural  district  known  as  "  Easter  Ross  " — an  expanse
of  fields  and  pastures  broken  only  here  and  there  by  scattered  houses,  the
nearest  approach  even  to  a  collected  group  thereof  being  Nigg  Ferry,
where  some  clusters  of  more  or  less  ancient  dwellings  sheltered  a  few
hundred  souls.  The  population  of  the  entire  parish  probably  did  not
exceed  about  fifteen  hundred  people.  As  for  Nigg  Station,  the  small
amount  of  traffic  dealt  with  there  consisted  mainly  of  grain,  agricultural
produce  and  live  stock,  with  just  sufficient  passengers  daily  to  establish
the  fact  that  there  really  was  a  resident  population.
Yet  this  very  unpretending  country  parish  was  destined  to  play  in
the  Great  War  a  part  which  effected  within  its  limits  a  transformation
scene  no  less  striking  in  its  way  than  those  enacted  at  Invergordon  and
Dalmore.
