LEWIS. HISTORY OF THE WESTERN ISLES. 183 



scarcely acknowledged the power of the sovereign who 

 ruled the kingdom. The voyage of James the Fifth 

 through the islands produced a temporary tranquillity ; 

 and the examples then made of several chieftains, whose 

 names are on record, prove that the number of these 

 independent sovereigns had considerably multiplied since 

 the grant made by James the Third to the Lord of the 

 Isles. That tranquillity soon ceased. After the death 

 of James, fresh rebellions and a renewed state of anarchy 

 arose, while the piracies and depredations of these ferocious 

 people rendered them the terror both of Ireland and 

 of the neighbouring coasts of Scotland. During these 

 troubles the power of the Campbells, employed by the 

 policy of the times against the chieftains, rose on their 

 ruin, and among other deprivations, Isla was taken from 

 the Macdonalds and granted by James the Sixth to Sir 

 John Campbell of Calder. 



The history of the commonwealth, and that of the 

 reign of William III., still however show, that the same 

 turbulence and the same notion of independence con- 

 tinued to prevail among the clans ; but it is unnecessary 

 to protract their history to a later date, as the ter- 

 mination of their independence and their reduction under 

 the legitimate power of government have passed almost 

 in our own times. 



Such was the system that produced the feuds, the 

 battles, and the massacres, of which every bay and 

 every cave still furnish some tradition. Yet there 

 are those who can look back with complacence to a 

 history abounding with the most outrageous acts of 

 cruelty ; to a system compounded of tyranny and 

 slavery, to perpetual war and famine and desolation ; 

 to the absence of all the arts, the habits, and the 

 feelings of civilized life ; the contempt of laws, and 

 the most profound ignorance of all which distinguishes an 

 European from a Cherokee. A change of terms is often 

 the test of truth ; and, in recollecting the realities of Indian. 



