The Arichonan Clearance has been treated fairly extensively by University of Aberdeen's Allan I. MacInnes, in an article entitled, "Commercial Landlordism and Clearance in the Scottish Highlands: the Case of Arichonan."
Most interesting (to me) is his remark that "... Arichonan does not easily fit the traditional picture of Clearance associated in the Scottish Highlands with crofting communities, that is, communities of tenant farmers with small holdings of land. In the first place, Arichonan was a traditional township whose survival was anachronistic. Most townships had been broken up between the 1730s and the 1820s, to make way for cattle ranches and sheep walks as well as crofting communities, in what can be termed the first phase of Clearance. The second phase of Clearance from the 1830s to the 1880s is usually associated with the attempted removal of crofting, with the rampant commercial pastoralism associated with sheep farming and with the turning of whole glens over to the shooting of deer and other game." (p 49)
Check out the 2 posts and sketches below. They help to clarify what exactly MacInnes means by "town" versus "croft".... and the additional insight that Arichonan was - in 1848 - a very 'old fashioned' sort of place.
MacInnes is also very interested in the Poltalloch landowner's experience with his Jamaican plantations, and how this translated into management of his Highland estates.
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