Standing on the links in Cromarty, at the mouth of its great firth, is a 13-foot-high slab of Caithness stone carved with the names of 39 emigration ships that departed for North America in the 1830s and 1840s. At the centre of the stone are engraved words of Hugh Miller from a report he filed to the Inverness Courier in 1831: “The Cleopatra, as she swept past the town of Cromarty, was greeted with three cheers by crowds of the inhabitants and the emigrants returned the salute, but, mingled with the dash of the waves and the murmurs of the breeze, their faint huzzas seemed rather sounds of wailing and lamentation, than of a congratulatory farewell.”