This Is Said
To Have Been The Last Open War Made Between The Clans By Their Own
Authority.
The Highland lords made treaties, and formed alliances, of which
some traces may still be found, and some consequences still remain
as lasting evidences of petty regality.
The terms of one of these
confederacies were, that each should support the other in the
right, or in the wrong, except against the king.
The inhabitants of mountains form distinct races, and are careful
to preserve their genealogies. Men in a small district necessarily
mingle blood by intermarriages, and combine at last into one
family, with a common interest in the honour and disgrace of every
individual. Then begins that union of affections, and co-operation
of endeavours, that constitute a clan. They who consider
themselves as ennobled by their family, will think highly of their
progenitors, and they who through successive generations live
always together in the same place, will preserve local stories and
hereditary prejudices. Thus every Highlander can talk of his
ancestors, and recount the outrages which they suffered from the
wicked inhabitants of the next valley.
Such are the effects of habitation among mountains, and such were
the qualities of the Highlanders, while their rocks secluded them
from the rest of mankind, and kept them an unaltered and
discriminated race. They are now losing their distinction, and
hastening to mingle with the general community.
GLENELG
We left Auknasheals and the Macraes its the afternoon, and in the
evening came to Ratiken, a high hill on which a road is cut, but so
steep and narrow, that it is very difficult.
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