One of the bystanders, as we were
told afterwards, advised her to ask for more, but she said a
shilling was enough. We gave her half a crown, and I hope got some
credit for our behaviour; for the company said, if our interpreters
did not flatter us, that they had not seen such a day since the old
laird of Macleod passed through their country.
The Macraes, as we heard afterwards in the Hebrides, were
originally an indigent and subordinate clan, and having no farms
nor stock, were in great numbers servants to the Maclellans, who,
in the war of Charles the First, took arms at the call of the
heroic Montrose, and were, in one of his battles, almost all
destroyed. The women that were left at home, being thus deprived
of their husbands, like the Scythian ladies of old, married their
servants, and the Macraes became a considerable race.
THE HIGHLANDS
As we continued our journey, we were at leisure to extend our
speculations, and to investigate the reason of those peculiarities
by which such rugged regions as these before us are generally
distinguished.
Mountainous countries commonly contain the original, at least the
oldest race of inhabitants, for they are not easily conquered,
because they must be entered by narrow ways, exposed to every power
of mischief from those that occupy the heights; and every new ridge
is a new fortress, where the defendants have again the same
advantages.
