LETTERS TO HIS SON. 425 



had given money to make a suspension-bridge over it, 

 just in order that the people on the Lairg side might 

 get easily to church. But on this Sabbath there was no 

 preaching, the minister being from home ; and though 

 the men of the district officiated, their addresses were 

 all in Gaelic. The father and grandfather of Mrs 

 Mackay's husband were, in succession, ministers in this 

 parish, and there is an interesting monument in the 

 churchyard to their memory, and to that of two of the 

 sons of the son, the one a captain in the army, who 

 " fell," says the epitaph, " in the moment of victory at 

 the muzzle of the enemies' cannon, at the memorable 

 battle of Assaye, fought between General Wellesley and 

 the Mahrattas ; " the other a commander in the navy, 

 of whom it is said that " his narratives of the shipwreck 

 of the Juno, and of his exertions in the Red Sea, where, 

 under God, he saved part of the 86th Regt., will com- 

 memorate his talents, fortitude, and humanity." Now, 

 regarding the narrative of the shipwreck of the Juno, 

 something curious can be told, in which you may take 

 an interest when you grow older. There is a very 

 famous description of a shipwreck in Byron's poems, 

 into which there are introduced many circumstances 

 new to poetry. And it was in this narrative that Byron 

 found almost all of them. Indeed, his description may 

 be in great part regarded as but a metrical rendering of 

 Commander Mackay's narrative.' 



TO THE SAME. 



' Assynt, August 20th, 1852. 



' Harriet, you, and Bessie are the public for which I 

 write; while poor little Hugh, who is, I suspect, not 

 intelligent enough to feel any interest in papa's adven- 

 tures, must be regarded as that ignorant, but not un- 



