I will refrain from detailing the cruelties and barbarities to which, in their outward voyage, the last of the clan were subjected; how they were decimated by starvation and fever; how the old perished daily and the young lost health and heart together; and how the aged Mhari and the young and blooming Minnie died off the foggy Bank of Newfoundland. On board the Duchess a small allowance of meal with a liberal quantity of brackish water was their daily food; but than they were amply furnished with anti-slavery tracts, Addresses to the Women of America, and shilling copies of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Whether or not it is owing to the apathy or incapacity of the man—the solitary man—the supposed legal and diplomatic Briareus, to whom the government of Scotland is intrusted, or to the utter ignorance of that country betrayed by British legislators, that the sufferings of our Celts arise, I pretend not to say. The fault lies somewhere.
Ignorance of Scottish affairs and of Scottish wants and wishes, together with the criminal apathy of Scottish representatives and the overwhelming influence of centralization, are doubtless the cause of much of the misery and ruin of the Highland population; and the day may come when Britain will find the breasts and bayonets of her foreign legionaries, or the effeminate rabble of her manufacturing cities, but a poor substitute for the stubborn clansmen of Sutherland, Ross-shire, and Breadalbane.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
MY REGIMENT.
'To be Ensigns in the 2nd battalion of the — Highlanders, Allan Mac Innon, Gent., and John Belton, Gent., vice Dowb, promoted to the Turkish Contingent.'
Such was the announcement which I read in a Gazette sent to my lodgings one morning, about a fortnight after my first interview with Colonel Crawford. I now ceased to be 'gent.' in any sense of the word, and found myself in one day a full-blown ensign, with a fortune of 5s. 3d. per diem, and a passport to go where glory invited me, in the shape of whistling-dicks and Minie-rifles.
Thus, thanks to the faith and love borne me by twenty-five peasant lads of Glen Ora, now all duly attested and accepted soldiers, I had surmounted the barriers of interest at the Horse Guards; the necessity of pounding 5001. with Cox and Co., the puzzling, cramming, and quizzing at Sandhurst, with a hundred minor annoyances.
Let the reader suppose my subscription to band-fund, mess-plate, and commission fees all paid—three trifles amounting to twenty-one guineas, by which one's first three months' pay is legally borrowed under the Royal authority; let the reader imagine my outfit procured—my uniform, camp-equipage, canteen, iron-bedstead, et cetera, provided—and all to be paid for by Providence, or the plunder of Sebastopol, if the aforesaid 5s. 3d. failed to do so—and behold me, then, an ensign in a 'crack regiment,' and like Don Juan—
'Made up by youth, by love, and by an army tailor.'