ALTSAY BURN. RAID OF CILLIF.-CHRIST. 55 



pursued the first division of the Macdonclls, under their leader, Mac Itaonuill. 

 Stimulated by revenge, they continued the chase without intermission; and at 

 length overtook the guilty fugitives near Altsay-burn, where they had ventured to 

 halt for refreshment. The hostile clans, mutually fatigued in body, but still burn- 

 ing with revenge, rushed upon each other with the most deadly rancour. But 

 the Macdonells, who had already exhausted their revenge, and were consequently 

 more enfeebled, could not resist the fury of their opponents, to whom the 

 prospect of immediate retaliation had given strength of arm and swiftness of 

 foot. The conflict was maintained for some time with mutual fury ; but at 

 length the Macdonells, overpowered by numbers, were driven into the burn, 

 or torrent, where many of them, missing the ford, or impeded by the rugged 

 rocks by which its channel is encumbered, were overtaken and slain by the 

 Mackenzies. Mac Raonuill, a man of athletic frame, having made good his 

 retreat to a point where the torrent rushes through a chasm of great depth 

 and breadth, took a desperate leap, cleared the abyss, and landed safe on the 

 opposite bank. One of the Mackenzies, hot in pursuit, but with less of the 

 wild stag in his limbs than the Macdonell leader, and blinded, perhaps, to the 

 danger by the hope of overtaking his prize, followed at a venture. The attempt 

 failed: his feet fell short of the brink; but catching fast hold of a birch sapling, 

 he broke his fall, and hung dangling over the abyss that boiled beneath him. 

 Turning round and seeing his pursuer in this critical state of suspension, Mac 

 Raonuill coolly drew his dirk, approached the tree, and with a smile of demoniac 

 satisfaction at the despair of his victim, lopped off" the branch, and dropped 

 him into the gulf beneath. :l There," said he, with deadly sarcasm, " I have 

 left much behind me with ye to-day take that too !" This done, his athletic 

 limbs carried him considerably ahead of his pursuers ; till, reaching the cool 

 margin of the lake, he plunged in, breasted the waters for some time, and was 

 finally picked up by a boat to which he made signals. 



The worsted party of the Macdonells, who had figured in the morning- 

 tragedy, and now fled by Inverness, were surprised in a public-house by the 

 other detachment of Mackenzies, who made sure of their prey. The building 

 was surrounded the doors and windows secured lighted matches applied to 

 the thatch : the flames burst forth in an instant ; and in these flames thirty- 

 seven of the Macdonells did penance for the atrocious proceedings of the morn- 

 ing. Such was the Raid of Gillie-Christ, or Christ-church, and such the speedy 

 retribution by which it was followed. It is a revolting picture of the barbarous 

 state of society at that period, and of the excesses into which the rival clans 

 were perpetually hurried by the impulse of ungovernable passions. 



