REMINISCENCES OF SONEPORE. 289 



escaped, and at the break of day embarked. Wearily, 

 wearily the galleys plough the placid sea. And the voice of 

 lamentation and weeping was heard that night under the walls 

 of Castle Brochel. This was the period of " spoils and 

 slaughters." 



In 1745 Macleod of Raasay, with 100 men, and Mackin- 

 hon, of Strath, with 120 were the only Chiefs in Skye who 

 joined the Standard of the Stewarts. The ill-clothed, ill-armed 

 Highland Army was the derision of the people of the South. 

 But under the ragged tartans beat hearts filled with the truest 

 sense of chivalry and the noblest feeling of devotion. The cause 

 was desperate, the expedition was being led into the jaws of 

 death, the gallant assembly in the picture gallery of Holyrood 

 was doomed. The followers of Prince Charlie faced the might 

 of England as a forlorn hope with halters round their necks. 

 Nor in any case was there a prospect of aggrandisement from 

 the Stewarts, who were an accursed race luring men to 

 ruin. Their Panders and Prostitutes indeed rose to eminence 

 or founded noble families ; but cheap titles and worthless 

 words were the rewards of the faithful. And the descendants 

 of the martyrs who fell on the scaffold and in battle, or died in 

 prison and in banishment, were suffered to languish in poverty 

 and neglect. The spirit of the Highland gentleman was exem- 

 plified in Donald Macleod, of Bernera, who, being requested to 

 attend his Chief at Dunvegan in the government service replied, 

 " I place at your disposal the twenty men of your tribe who 

 are under my immediate command, and in any other quarrel 

 would not fail to be at their head, but in the present I must go 

 where a higher and more imperious duty calls me." This same 

 brave Bernera, surnamed the Trojan on account of his fighting 

 and begetting qualities, fought at Sheriffmuir, Falkirk and 

 Culloden, and had twenty children, by his first wife, none 

 by his second, and nine by his third a girl of sixteen whom 

 he married when he was seventy-five. His sons lived till the 



